Students think the College Board is running a Reddit sting
I took the AP Chem exam last Thursday, fortunately without incident. One of my friends was unable to submit his AP Literature assessment, facing the same error popup that has plagued so many of the other students. I've heard from several other students in my district that have had a similar problem. My brother had an AWS Lambda error message when he tried to access his exam the first time; CollegeBoard had surpassed their Lambda service limits (Fortunately he was able to access his exam after trying again).<p>Their online tooling has never been great–AP Classroom takes at least 3 tries for me to access, one to log in again which then redirects back to AP Central, one that just redirects back to AP Central, then finally one that takes me to my assignments page.<p>This certainly isn't an easy problem to solve. CollegeBoard definitely should have designed a more stable system to host their exams on, but as with anything digital, there's always an opportunity for error–even moreso since everyone takes the exam at the same time (which is an entirely different can of worms, with students in Guam taking exams at 1a, 3a, and 5a).<p>If I were to design these assessments, I'd have it be an untimed, synthesis-based assessment, more similar to AP Computer Science Principles[0], with their Digital Portfolio. Simply having a deadline for all students to upload to a basic tool (which already exists as CB's Digital Portfolio system). Like the current exam, have the submissions sent back to teachers for validation (there's nothing on the current system that validates your identity, simply paste in your AP ID and enter your name/dob, and you're in the system).<p>I think if a student can write a well-formed essay over a topic, they can get college credit. In science classes, they could design an experiment and simulate a lab report. CS classes can create a program, etc.<p>[0]: <a href="https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-computer-science-principles/exam" rel="nofollow">https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-computer-scien...</a>