Heads up: home proctoring ambiguity

[studyingfortests]

So I took the last of my CLEPs using the new at-home proctoring.  That turned out to be a mess in requiring me to hunt down a friend's PC and then try to remember how to use Windows again. (Odd, since College Board's remote proctor does, indeed, support Macs, but apparently College Board didn't want to.)

Everything went OK until I went to review the questions at the end of the test.  I had extra time, and after I reviewed my answers, I clicked a button that said "exit" which I thought exited the test review and back to the test, but no... it took me to a screen that said "Your test will end in 10 seconds." No button to abort or anything. I thought "OK, this is a little weird."  And then at the end of 10 seconds... the whole CLEP exam window disappeared and it dumped me back to my home screen.

The crack proctoring attendant was pretty useless.  I messaged him 3 times, and got no response after waiting almost 10 minutes, so I called the toll-free number.  A woman answered (it sounded like she was in a barn the echo was so bad), and after about 10 minutes back and forth between her, her "back end people", and the online proctor who finally responded, they claimed that everything was fine and my test had been uploaded to College Board. 

But I never saw a score result, or got an email with a score result.

I called into College Board and there was a message that said "If you're currently taking an exam and having a problem, leave a message and someone will call back immediately."  No one called.

I called the next morning, and spoke to someone in an offshore call center who took a bunch of info and said "Someone will contact you in the next 7 to 10 business days", and assured me there was no one it could be escalated to. 

Since I didn't particularly want to wait 10 days to find out if they'd gotten my exam, I found an email of an executive and emailed and asked if someone could get back to me. Got a call early the next morning saying they were looking into it and it would be resolved within 24 hours. 

It turns out this person said that they have had issues with the online exam software that has ambiguous buttons, and the button I pressed should not even have been available in that screen, but they had gotten other complaints, and it was going to be removed. (Apparently the  correct "exit review" button was mismarked or not there at all.) Apparently the button I chose allows you to exit the test and cancel your score, but it's supposed to lead to another screen that explains this and asks you to confirm, and that didn't happen.

Long and short... he called back the next day and told me that they'd scored the exam and to login to my College Board portal. I did so and saw I'd passed the exam.  But I still never got the score report via email, which leads me to think that Thomas Edison may not have gotten it either.  So I've left a message about that.

Anyway... all of this to say, they are still apparently working a few bugs out of the online proctoring system, but, at least when I got to someone at College Board rather than their offshore customer service center, they were quick and responsive and helpful.

[Kab]

Sounds like a nightmare.
So the software has issues at the moment and nobidy is there to help....

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[rachel83az]

That is pretty much the opposite of what you want to have happen with these kinds of things. Once again, CollegeBoard shows that they don't care about students and it's better to use other resources for credit if you can.

[GizmoJack]

Yikes!  Good thing you passed. Probably not much leverage if you had to take the test over again.

[bjcheung77]

Wow, interesting, good thing you were able to get through all of it. This is the first time they've created online exams for home, there are kinks to be worked out and they're working on them. I think the online proctoring is though a third party, so it's technically out of their hands. Anyways, good luck on future exams!

[jch]

It's really disappointing that College Board has still not figured out remote proctoring. PearsonVUE had their OnVUE remote proctoring system working reliably for most of their numerous exam programs by the end of spring 2020.

[rachel83az]

It's really disappointing that College Board has still not figured out remote proctoring. PearsonVUE had their OnVUE remote proctoring system working reliably for most of their numerous exam programs by the end of spring 2020.

De facto monopolies don't care about their customers.

[ss20ts]

De facto monopolies don't care about their customers.

All the CollegeBoard has ever cared about was making $$$$$. They care about absolutely nothing else. It's the biggest scam going and has been for decades.

[studyingfortests]

Update: After I left a message for my escalated contact, he called back and was able to confirm that, indeed, the score report had been sent to TESU, and a few days later, TESU acknowledged they received it.

Hopefully the fix the online proctor issue. other than the fiasco with the mismarked button, it looked identical to the one I took at a test center.