NCARB ARE Exam Changes

Agree.

Pencil and paper are essential tools needed for all facets of our profession, especially the exams.

We NEED paper to process our thoughts. It is not the same as a digital whiteboard. Otherwise offices would have tablets all over the place instead of paper. Please do better and listen to the test takers.

You are setting up testers to fail by taking away sketch paper

I would like to advocate for paper at the exam site and a digital whiteboard for the at-home exam.

It is absurd to eliminate physical scratch paper for people who think visually.

I have had 2 exams crash multiple times during the exam.

5 years ago Featured

Why not send us paper in an envelope, we can open it in front of the camera, use it during the test and then mail it BACK to NCARB afterward. This would create equal experience for all candidates and it can be regulated. Paper is vital to my testing ability.

If this is the only solution for online proctoring, please eliminate online proctoring!! KEEP PAPER

The boards on NCARB have been purposefully sabotaging exams (letting them crash) in order to move the exam to a subsidiary testing facility PSI. The exam will "mysteriously work better" once NCARB can profit off of it The whiteboard will be no different. They want us to fail. Wake up people!

No. Just no. We already have to deal with the random formatting and questions that are never covered in any of the (expensive) review guides. We don't need another layer of nonsense to complicate things. So many experienced mentors and architects tell us we need to go back to paper to figure things out, and here you are going the complete opposite direction. Please just stop.

Scratch paper is fine. No need to change.

Please do not take away the scrap paper!

I have spent the past four years designing schools. One of the things I’ve realized is that it’s important to support multiple ways of learning and thinking. The ability to write, sketch, and think on a piece of paper is tantamount for me as an architect to solve problems. The decision to eliminate physical scratch paper for candidates is not thoughtful and doesn’t honor the variety of ways which we engage with our work. One size doesn’t fit all. If one chose to go to a test center instead of taking the test on line, the must be a reason.

Seems that NCARB doesn't know how architects operate at all. We are always carrying around a note pads in order to sketch, take notes and communicate an idea. Is how we think, how we communicate . Its been our most used tool through the years. Eliminating the scratch paper not only makes it more complex to do simple math equations and sketches. It also removes our basic use of communication in our profession.

Please leave scratch paper on the exam!

We absolutely need scratch paper. I took an exam Monday, and you should see what my scrap paper looked like. It would be IMPOSSIBLE to do that on a digital white board .. ESEPCIALLY IF THAT board is on the screen the exam is also on! I would absolutely risk getting Covid , test in a center so I can use scratch paper. If we are in a center being lived monitored, we should be able to have scratch paper period.

This is so short sighted of NCARB. The testing software is already clunky and now we no longer have the option to use scratch paper! Just do not offer an online option and keep the scratch paper.

Our local representatives should have poled the testers in their respective areas. Making this drastic change to the way testers operate in such a short time period is unacceptable. The city I live, Lake Charles, was hit hard by the worst hurricane in Louisiana's history this month. Our firm is working overtime to assess damages to schools and provide temporary classroom spaces for the public schools over several Parishes. Rushing to take this exam before the date of Nov. 16th is not fair and not right.

PLEASE ALLOW ON SITE TESTERS to occupy physical scratch paper. This is how we learned in school and should maintain this practice throughout.