Whiteboard… Seriously…
I just took the practice exam and Wow, the whiteboard function (or malfunction) is a disgrace. NCARB, you should be ashamed of yourselves for adding this albatross to an already daunting task. To use us as your Research & Development for this feature is frankly disgusting especially since these are paid for exams. If you haven’t already (and I’m sure you haven’t), please have your board members sit down and take an exam, even this practice exam and with a straight face tell us that it doesn’t hinder the process. R&D should happen before a launch and certainly before being deployed to those paying for exams. I understand the concern with at home testing and all but this is really cruel during an already trying time. The least you could do is to allow those of us testing in person the option of physical paper and pencil.
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Agreed! It's just awful!
NCARB should really select a pen/stylus type of mouse if they want to continue using that whiteboard.
Rebekka O'Melia, Registered Architect, NCARB, B. Arch, M. Ed, Step UP, Step UP ARE 5.0 Courses
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Agreed! The whiteboard does not work, and writing with the mouse takes time away from our test. The test is already stressful enough to add the stress of a malfunctioning pad. I do not understand why we can not have the option of physical paper and pencil when taking the test in person. We are visual learners in this career, and pencil and paper are essential!
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NCARB, please understand that the whiteboard takes time away from our test!
I have spoken to 3 people about the test, and they all warned me about the whiteboard; how is the whiteboard even a part of the conversation for an architecture licensing test. It should be an essential tool for tests, not an obstacle.
In our careers, we are praised for thinking and sketching through our hands, but when we test for our licensure tests, the very tool that is our livelihood is replaced with a... mouse. Please explain to me how this is even logical.No other career writes with a mouse, not even graphic designers. Keep in mind that every other person taking any other test other than the ARE gets a physical Calculator and unlimited paper.
And I will paraphrase my colleague.
"If you haven't already (and I'm sure you haven't), please have your board members sit down and take an exam, even this practice exam, and with a straight face, tell us that it doesn't hinder the process." -
I completely agree and both times I've used the whiteboard it's been serviceable at best and downright scary/frustrating at its worst. Often time the board will freeze up and refuse to close. There's a delay in sketching with the mouse - not to mention the horrible dissonance between sketching by hand and through an awkward digital medium. Nowhere near as quick and precise as pen and paper.
Is there any formal explanation for their reasoning to take away the physical paper? Is COVID legitimately the source concern? Or is it a remote proctor security issue? For an industry where the value of pencil/pen and sketching is lauded so often, it's pretty unbelievable that NCARB can let this fly as is. Hoping they reconsider.
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My turn...... After all this studying, I have been doing research to see about pencil and paper as in past testing. To much my disgrace, I went thru the practice test and quit after question 3 because of the onscreen whiteboard. I have no idea how to write electronically and don't know how to even study for that and become effective, and then not to use it ever again. Does anybody have any idea on how to practice using this demanded, frustrating, and archaic source?
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The whiteboard is in the Demonstration Exam, which you can access on the right hand side when you log into your NCARB account. Practice until it's easier!
Hope this helps!
Rebekka O'Melia, Registered Architect, NCARB, B. Arch, M. Ed, Step UP, Step UP ARE 5.0 Courses
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The whiteboard - didn't behave, during the exam, the way that it behaved during the practice / demonstration exams..
It wouldn't scroll down... wouldn't make more space for me.. to .. explore .. anything
To organize any information.. In any kind of coherent way at all.
And what is up w the Text tool? Every time you click back into the whiteboard window, it makes a new text block ON TOP OF the text block that you just recorded...
And why can't you at least allow the whiteboard to be in a totally different window than the exam questions?? Why does it have to be on top of the questions? And then DISAPPEAR every time a new question is opened?
Only for me to waste my time, once again, RESIZING the window, that won't give me new white space unless I delete everything I've recorded henceforth. And won't let me zoom out and change the text size. And I spend 3 hours trying to not overlap every resource that I need to solve these problems instead of actually solving the problems.
I knew the content.
I just had no tools with which to do the calculations and organize the information.
So, I failed my PA test yesterday.
.. And how am I supposed to gather the heart to retake it?
I guess I have to now study for another exam called 'Passing the ARE with Your Hands Tied Behind Your Back'
And I have to wait 60 days to do it.
Just Realized:
I took the exam using a 49" wide screen monitor. And I think that the NCARB software did not work well with that. It's unfortunate that I didn't know that that would be the case. And that that would prevent me from having the tools that I needed to pass an exam that I was prepared for and paid for.
At least. I hope that the normal experience isn't what I experienced yesterday.
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I took the test today, and the first thing I did afterward was check online to see if others had problems with the whiteboard. In my case, it was definitely an issue. I couldn’t even write on it because it lagged so much that it became completely unusable. I also tried using the text tool, but it was just as bad. It really got in the way, especially during the case studies, where you have to switch between documents to put all the information together.
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I just took the PPD and I am contemplating if I should wait until NCARB improves their system. The Whiteboard was a huge obstacle. If we were given touch screens, maybe that would help a little but trying to write notes with the mouse and using the textbox was literally wasting my time. I am scared of taking PDD since it involves a lot of long calculations (per my study resources) and I would need to navigate through my notes. I see nothing wrong with the proctors giving us a piece of paper, especially for calculations.
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Hi Ruby,
Take NCARB's PDD practice exam - there are some calculations, but questions are meant to be answerable in 2-5 minutes at most (even on the case studies). If it's going to take you 10 minutes, there's probably a different way you're meant to do the calculation.
You'll end up answering at least 20 questions incorrectly on nearly every ARE - if you can identify at least some of those questions as you test and spend as little time as possible on them, that gives you more time to work through everything else. You might flag and save those questions that you only know how to do in a 10-minute kind of way to the very last so that you get as many other questions as you can correct first - remember, each question is worth the same one point toward your score, regardless of type or location in the exam!
The tab function on the whiteboard is the best way, I think, to handle that - keep notes for these longer questions on separate tabs that you don't have to go back to once you've completed the question. Otherwise you bury too much information in too many places and it becomes impossible to quickly navigate. I've had good luck keeping the first tab for really really brief notes/calculations for multiple questions, and opening a new tab in sequence anytime a question requires more complex calculations or sketches or working-out. This way notes are segregated by question and presented in sequence so that you can quickly find them for any question. You can give each tab a new title offhand, but I would not spend the time required to do that - it's too expensive.
Best,
Ralph, the Amber Book Team -
It depends on what you're writing and how critical legibility is - you've only got to be legible enough for yourself for about 4 hours - these aren't notes you'll be referring to in 4 months or 4 years. The textbox is pretty nasty to use, but I'm also terrible at writing legibly with a mouse. I'm not aware of a way to edit the text in a text box once you've clicked out of it, but you can right click and remove it. I use both, depending on what I want to write. If it's very basic numbers or a single word, I'm more likely to just scribble it with the mouse - it's less-reliant on not making a typing error. If it's a longer number or a few words, I'll probably use a text box. You can right-click a text box you've clicked out of to delete it or to duplicate it, and it is possible to use the "select an object" cursor button to grab a text box and move it or change its size, though it's more difficult to do than I think is worthwhile for most cases.
I do use the shape tools extensively for sketching - they're usually much quicker to sketch most of the things you'd want to sketch than trying to draw with the mouse is, and then I annotate the drawing as little as I need for myself - you're not making a drawing for anyone but you. I almost never draw with the pen tool - it's too sloppy and too slow.
In any case, you're always trying to make the minimum effective amount of notes in the whiteboard - time you spend on that is time you can't spend answering additional questions, and since each question only counts one point, best to prioritize answering more questions if you're at all short on time.
Best,
Ralph, the Amber Book Team
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