I took my first laptop exam today. As I mentioned a few times earlier, BU seems to be a little behind the curve in allowing exams to be taken on laptops. First year students were allowed to use laptops last year, and I think today was the first day that laptop use was open to anyone that could manage to obtain possession of a laptop and floppy drive (laptops are not provided, but the school is happy to increase a student budget to allow laptop financing).
A couple points:
I later learned that part of the problem might have been that I didn’t install an update from Examsoft that I had received an email about a couple weeks ago. D-oh! I guess I’m not used to updating software that I never use either.
The laptop is miles above in these respects. I could type fast, move things around, write and outline and then fill it in with text, and keep materials close (my laptop is much smaller than the bulky typewriter. It’s footprint is about the size of a bluebook. Best of all, my professor will actually be able to read my exam.
Finally, in addition to the many physical benefits of laptop typing, I think using my own laptop gave me an emotional benefit. I’ve spent a lot of hours hitting these keys to input notes and thoughts to this little machine. My classroom experience and much of my home studying has involved this computer, and I think there’s a psychological benefit to using taking an exam in the same format that I type my notes and revise my outlines.