Educators at [Penn State] hope the [testing center], which opens this spring, will lead professors to embrace computer-based testing while at the same time acting as a major cheating deterrent. Students will have to swipe their ID cards and allow staff to match their faces with a photo on file. Each test taker will get a specific computer assignment, and the person they’re sitting next to might not even be from the same class.
The comments beneath the article certainly bring up a lot of possible negatives to this idea, but I have to say that I'm for it. If a center like this could operate like the GRE does, cheating would definitely be reduced; while the article focuses on copying-your-neighbor's-paper style cheating, the inability to access the internet while typing the paper certainly reduces downloaded papers. ALSO--anything that eliminates having to decipher student handwriting gets my vote!
Thoughts?
