When I took the MME/ACT, it was all on paper. But everything is digital nowadays, right? I mean, does the high school class of 2014 even request for paper copies of scores to be sent...? Some quick Googling took me to the ACT's website, where some quick trial-and-error of old potential usernames (ohhh, blondie73) told me that I had, at some point, actually made an account with the ACT. And my score report from the 2007 MME/ACT is still available. Crazy.
This brings me to my point of a digital footprint, albeit on a smaller scale. We've talked about this before in class, but looking up my old scores really hammered it home. People not that much older than myself have a box of papers in their parent's basement to turn to if they ever were curious about their own long-forgotten tests. And, really, there's no reason I can think of where I'd need to know my ACT Writing subscore ever again, but it slightly blows my mind that I can call from any computer if the whim ever arises. And that says nothing of the students now who will be taking exclusively online standardized tests. Their records will probably ONLY be available online, for who knows how long past when they'd reasonably need to access them.
This all, in my opinion, is a separate scenario from the "online footprint" associated with embarrassing statuses, corny photos, and other social media evidence gathered over the years. What I'm thinking of here is specifically this accumulation of records and other information scattered across different sites. Just off the top of my head I know I have accounts with the ACT, SAT, AP, GRE, MTTC, and probably various other ones that I'm forgetting. This is an academic online footprint, a curation of your educational progress, digitized and preserved so that you can prove to your grandchildren that you got a 35 on the science subtest in 2007. (That's just hypothetical - there are many reasons I'm an English concentrator, and my science subscores may be one of them).
I know police records and the like have been online for years, but what I'm thinking about here is more the "box in the basement" stuff - the forgotten tests and report cards you sift through maybe once a decade. I know I still have my K-12 records somewhere, complete with gold stickers and crumple marks from where the reports were shoved in my backpack. Maybe I'm focusing too much on just a tiny part of online learning, but this idea of an academic digital footprint kind of amazes me. I'm not sure I'll ever look at my ACT score again, but it's there, in case I ever want to. I wonder how long it will take before report cards, test scores, everything, are all just uploaded somewhere instead of being sent home. Or maybe they already are... UM does pretty much all scoring online, but at least when I was in high school, we still had paper report cards mailed home.
Will this change the way we approach the grades and tests? Would you care more if you knew every score of yours was preserved indefinitely somewhere on a server? Could we better analyze progress and setbacks? Would this help? Would this detract? Would it make no difference? And, what does that mean for us?
This is such an interesting viewpoint on the idea of digital footprint! I know most of my test scores are tucked away in my mom's basement in an old filing cabinet that hasn't been touched in years. But, when I think about the idea you present in this post (and my vague knowledge of how computers and the internet actually work) I have this image of millions of numbers cataloged somewhere that contain our digital test scores that can be, like you said, called upon where ever and whenever. But to me, I'm kinda seeing this digital footprint as really informal, as though all of our scores are merely numbers associated to unknown people around the country and world. I bet nobody at ACT could recognize my name and score from everyone else's. This is almost like an anonymous footprint besides being identified by a username we created back when we were 17 and a score we achieved after 4ish hours of testing. I hope this sounds like a coherent idea. It's definitely an interesting perspective when you think about it! Great post topic!
ReplyDeleteYour comments of looking at the ACT score reminded me of getting my records together for the MAC program. I had to search in a box in my basement to find me AP ID number, so that I could go online and request a report to be sent. Then, about a week later, I had to print off a form and mail (the type of mail that requires a stamp) a request to get my MTTC test sent to U-M. I remember being surprised and annoyed that there were some records that I couldn't just submit online.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the online collection of scores could help predict student outcomes. There is all that data out there. If someone could anonymously collect it all and do some sort of statistical magic on it (something Anne be able to explain) they might discover all sorts of patterns.
I agree with Kelsey! This is a very interesting idea. I'm sure there are so many game sites that I've gone through, some years, some a few months, some a few days. There are so many random websites , forums, anything really, that I've made accounts for and forgot about it. Oh man, It would be so nostalgic to track back those websites that account for various sagas of my life.
ReplyDeleteTo answer you question (in my opinion), I don't think that digitalizing tests scores would change much. For me, the ACT would be for college. Once I get into college, the score did not matter to me what so ever. The same goes for the GRE. I just took it last year and I will never look at it again, unless I find myself needing to apply to another masters program (I don't plan on it). For me, I know those scores will always be there but it's not public. Being stored on a server is no better than it being stored in my mind or on paper in a filing cabinet at home.
We'll be speaking more about this later in the year, Emily, but as you well understand, the matter of our digital footprint is an increasingly serious one for our students as they recognize the fact that they will be getting "googled" by prospective employers, etc. Here's another item on the list of things that don't fall into a particular subject area, but are really important for students to consider proactively. Is it enough to leave this to students and their parents, or is this a responsibility that we as educators must undertake?
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