Whiteboard Review
Dear NCARB,
I tried the whiteboard tool for a couple of minutes and it does not compare to scratch paper in any way. The board needs to ask themselves what was their intent in allowing candidates the use of scratch paper. I believe that if they are honest with themselves about this, they could not support this new tool.
I thought about listing the many aspects of the whiteboard tool that are not functioning correctly, but making a list implies that this is something that is fixable. It is not. Please do not let the tail wag the dog on this one NCARB. Please address the need for scratch paper through online proctoring, their must be more then one solution here.
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Progress with NCARB is always 1 step forward at the expense of 3 steps backwards.
This new whiteboard is stepping backwards many years to ARE 4.0, where Candidates will be spending lots of time learning how to use silly software NCARB invented, which isn't helping them or making them better Architects.
The execution of the new digital whiteboard is soo poor. Will NCARB ever recognize that everything they have ever done involving software has been a well documented failure? -
I just tested it out as well, and after jotting almost legible notes for a few seconds, it stopped registering mouse clicks. The text types in one long line without ever breaking for a new line/paragraph and then the white board froze when I tried to zoom back out and scroll over to the left side of the page where I had started. This is atrocious.
Can we share screen shots of the white board here? Or is that in violation of NCARB super secrecy?
Also of note: took PDD last week and it froze. Test center admin was stumped. Ended up restarting the computer and luckily my work was saved, but I just sat there in the test room for about 10mins while he went back and forth and fiddled with it. I'm at a 40% crash rate :) :) :)
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Architects have Revit, Cad, archicad, rhino, sketchup, vectorworks, excel, one note, word, photoshop, illustrator. the list goes on and on. Why is the whiteboard as simple and poorly-executed as MS Paint? We are trying to become ARCHITECTS with a capital A. This is by far the weakest digital software an architect could hope to use in their career (not even going to compare to handwritten notes and sketching - NCARB is beyond that and no sense in trying to tell them they are wrong because they don't listen to the test takers) but the interface, the horrid commands (arrows? really innovative stuff here /s) are questionable at best. When would i use those? dimensioning a crooked plan i cant even draw because of a sloppy pencil tool? The straight line should be able to lock orthogonal, at the very very least. There is no point in drawing vectors at TEST SPEED in which you are racing against a clock if you cannot draw properly. freehand mouse pencil in a nightmare. I am not even going to touch upon the glitchy, broken usage that does not respond to every click. the buggyness goes without saying, but everyone who comes here will comment on that. But if this is the quality of tools they launch on actual exams, I cannot see anyone using it with a passing score. Come on, NCARB.
They also promised unlimited space. The screen does not show the entire page (at least i could not view anything past a certain point) and the page count is capped at 20. The zooming does not zoom to show all??? Not saying anyone would need more, but they promised unlimited space. Please start at one note's interface and function, and improve from there. Don't go backwards to MS paint.
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Melody, I came here to see if others have tried structures math. I've been trying to use the whiteboard to calculate a simple supported beam with a uniform load. Took me a while to find out how to type square ( ² ) and cubic ( ³ ).... Now I cant figure out an easy way to cross out units. Over 5 minutes just to type a simple formula. This whiteboard is just wrong and it's hard to believe NCARB is making us do this.
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