By Matthew Shanbom, Asst. Section Editor
For the Advanced Placement exams this year, many have been moved to larger classroom spaces such as the gym to allow for larger scale examination. While this change allows for more efficient use of proctors, it is not as beneficial for the students.
The organization of testing in a large scale testing environment may be detrimental to some students. The use of tables instead of individual desks may lead students to believe they have less personal space since the tables are shared. Additionally, in a large scale environment students may feel claustrophobic in a room with 50 students and many dividers. The unnecessary stress caused by proximity of other students. Imagine a fish tank with 15 fish swimming around with plenty of room. All of a sudden, the owner comes back from the store and adds 30 more fish to the tank. This is how it feels testing in the gym. People go from having their own personal space to absolutely no space.
Additionally, with the larger space of the gym compared to a classroom, the walk to the bathroom can take longer which can take away valuable minutes from the test. If a test taker really needs to go to the bathroom, they have to get the proctors attention in a large room, then walk all the way to the gym bathrooms and back which takes longer than the average walk to the bathroom.
With more people in a space, there is a higher chance that a test taker could cause a disturbance to the entire room. If there was a one percent chance that a person would cause a disturbance, there would be a 50 percent chance if there were 50 people in the room. This upscale and the increase in disturbances can distract students who are taking their test and possibly cause a large enough disturbance to end the entire test session.
The problem is serious. Testing environments are too big.