Writing Proficiency Exam
60-89 credit hours
is the range of time when a student must take the exam
2 times
is the limit for taking the test
What happens if you fail twice or opt out:
Students must take a seven-week course
• Students complain about technological issues when taking Inqsit tests.
• Writing Proficiency Exam to switch to Blackboard at end of semester.
• Inqsit tests will be phased out shortly after also.
Technology issues can add to the stress of taking the Writing Proficiency Exam, but a shift to Blackboard is looking to correct this issue.
Ball State students have to take the pass or fail Writing Proficiency Exam when they have at least 60 credit hours, but they must pass it before they have 89 credit hours — the test is a graduation requirement. If they do not pass on the second attempt, or opt out, they must take the seven-week WPP 393 Writing Proficiency Course.
Halfway through taking the exam on inQsit, junior actuarial science major Adam Schrock’s work disappeared.
“I wrote about half and I look back at my screen and it had all been deleted,” Schrock said. “All the words were gone. It was like I hadn’t done a single thing and I was going into the closing paragraph.”
Junior speech pathology and audiology major Ryan Heneisen also experienced problems with inQsit.
Before he could submit his exam, inQsit stopped working with two minutes left.
“[The practitioner said] they got it,” Heneisen said. “I left and they emailed me four days later and said, ‘We never received your exam.’”
In the email, he was told 400 people took the test, but only a few people had technology problems.
Heneisen doesn’t think that’s a good enough record.
“If you can’t have consistency for everyone, you should figure out another way to do this,” he said. “[Let us take it with pencil and paper] if the computer system isn’t going to work for everyone.”
Fawn Gary, Unified Technology Support director, said after this semester, Blackboard will replace inQsit, which should help ease the technological problems.
Blackboard tests communicate back to the testing server, so if a network connection or power connection is interrupted, it will have a partial save of the student’s work.
Although she does not administer the exam, Gary said she rarely hears about problems with the testing application itself, just that it does not save when there is a break in connection.
Anna Priebe, Writing Proficiency Program director, said the test will transition to Blackboard when the university makes the switch at the end of the semester.
She said the change will help with lost work.
“I cannot say that computers won’t die,” Priebe said. “We rely on the lab caretakers to make sure the hardware is working correctly, but I can say that it will be easier to get back to what has already been written and automatically saved.”
Priebe was not available for comment to give an exact number of students experiencing problems.
When a student’s work is interrupted or lost, they have two choices: they can request to have their attempt voided and take the test again or write and submit an outline of what they were planning to write.
“[The practitioner] immediately went around and got a paper, which is the protocol,” Schrock said. “They have a paper in case that happens because that’s how frequent of a thing it is.”
He took the outline option, but when he got his results back, he failed.
Heneisen, who didn’t know his test was not submitted until a week later, ended up having to retake the test this semester. He said it was the only option he was offered because there was no way to reclaim his work.
Although both had another chance to take the test, technology problems could force a student into the Writing Proficiency Course if they experience problems as a second semester junior and can’t take the exam again before they have senior status.
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