Last week was midterm week at Leiden Univeristy, and I, like many other students, had a week full of exams and stress. Talking with my friends, it looked like these exams were all different: some of them were on the computer, others had to write on paper, some of them were in big rooms in the university’s buildings, others were in the sport centre or even in a church (crazy, I know).
Technology in Italian schools
During a seminar of our course, we ended up talking about how we used to do exams at school in our home country. I was shocked to learn that most of the people in the class have always been used to do exams on the computer. I could’ve never even imagined doing an exam on my computer until university. And even in university, taking exams on the computer felt so new and so modern, after years of using pen and paper. In my country, Italy, technology in school has always been a taboo. My English teacher in high school was so against the use of technology in school that he’d rather hear the the scratching noise of a new chalk on the blackboard than use the electronic touch blackboard on the TV. So doing an exam on the computer was off the table.
“Before technology started being used in education, everything was different. We know it well because we were there (…). The coolest thing you could have back then was a multicoloured pen.” (Antonio Fundarò, 09/29/2021, orizzontescuola.it) (Translated by me).
But during the Covid era, technology was necessary to keep studying. Online lessons, online platforms for assignments and exams, and all the consequences of these things, like connection problems, microphones and webcams dying in the worst moments, older teachers being oblivious about how some things even worked (my Latin teacher actually entered the wrong videocall and had no idea how to get out). But at the same time, sometimes it was great to stay at home, especially because the whole Covid situation was definitely not good for our mental health. Because of all these things, I still don’t know whether I enjoyed or hated those two years of online school.
Since I’ve finished high school, I didn’t really pay much attention to the developments of technology in Italian schools, so I tried to search some articles and news about it. I found a lot of articles about how many advantages technology could bring in education, like encouraging the students’ creativity and collaboration among them, strengthening the bound between the students and the teachers, making students more motivated, helping students with ADHD or similar issues, and making studying more accessible and easy for everyone in general (from articles I found on the Italian websites orizzontescuola.it, vivalingue.com and scuola.net). There are also many articles about the role and responsibility of the teachers in the process of implementing technology in education: a few events have been organized to update the teachers on how technology is developing, and what are the best strategies to implement technology in school and to teach the students to use it. I think this last thing in particular is really positive, especially nowadays with the raise of AI technologies as well. It’s good to know that they’re not trying to hide the problem anymore.
However, I couldn’t find much about what exactly are the technologies implemented in education, how do lessons, assignments and tests look now, how the rooms in the schools look now, and what do students use to take notes during class. The articles I found were mostly about the advantages of technology in education, but I still don’t have a clear image of what exactly is bringing all these advantages, and I have nobody to ask this question to because all of my friends back in Italy finished high school at least two years ago, and a lot of stuff can change in two years.
During the Covid era, one of the major concerns about school was how to teach first grade children how to write and read. I don’t really know how they exactly did it, but I think each school and each teacher found their own solution to this problem. However, there were rumors about my classmates’ little cousins not being able to read or write properly despite being 8 years old.
If you go on the website of the Italian Ministry of Education, under “bullying and cyberbullying”, you can see many guidelines on how to prevent bullying and cyberbullying from happening in schools. The last point is about guidelines on the “positive use of digital technologies” in schools. However, these guidelines are still work in progress.
This is an image I found in the article on orizzontescuola.it. I have no idea where they got this from, but this is obviously not an Italian school. Unless the children were going on a field trip somewhere else, it looks like an image from Shutterstock or similar sources (another article, on focusscuola.it, was explicit about the sourced of the pictures being Shutterstock). But regardless of where is this picture from and where and when was it taken, would VR really be used in schools as a study tool? Not only in Italy, but in schools everywhere.
Technology in university
In university, the use of technology was completely different. It’s much more normal to use the computer to take notes. I had already started doing it during lockdown for some subjects, especially for History and Philosophy because the teacher was always in a rush when explaining things, for some reason, and taking notes by hand during her lessons was getting harder and more tiring. So when I started university I completely swithced to the computer for taking notes, for most subjects at least, because I study languages and I still do feel the need of writing some things by hand. Taking my notes on the computer is definitely faster, and it’s easier to organize them.
My very first online exam was in university. In my university in Italy we use the computers in the computers room, and we can use our own only if there are some technical problems. Most subjects still have written exams on paper.
Is doing exams on the computer easier than on paper? I feel like it depends on the subject. I can’t imagine doing translation exams on the computer, I’ve always done them on paper and I feel like they wouldn’t work online. Or maybe they would, I just have no idea how. But I have done many multiple choice exams on the computer.
During my university carrier, both in Italy and in the Netherlands, I have taken exams on paper that would’ve been way easier if we were on the computer, and viceversa, exams on the computer that could’ve also been done on paper. An example of the first case is an exam I took last year in Italy for a Subtitling course. Writing on paper what we had always done on the computer was very difficult. But generally speaking, that exam was very badly structured. I feel like it should’ve been done online, considering how the course was organized.
It is true, however, that sometimes technology does not make things easier. I feel like it can make things either extremely easy, or extremely hard, there is no in between. And my most recent exam in Leiden University was a perfect example of technology making things extremely hard. The exam per se would’ve been exactly the same if it was on paper. What made it twice as hard was all the technical problems that I had. It really felt like computer were rising up against me for some reason. I started on my own computer, as it usually works here in Leiden. But because of all the technical problems, I had to change to one of the rental computers our university offers. And I had to change computers a total of four times. Programs that weren’t supported, log in difficulties, computers disconnecting from the Wi-Fi… it was a mess, to say the least. I geniuenly felt the need of having a sheet of paper and a pen in front of me, but unfortunately there was no paper version of the exam.
In that moment I wondered, does technology really make things easier? I wasn’t the only one who was stressed: both the professors were, the supervisors too, and the technician bringing the rental computers was probably having the worst day at work he’s ever had in some time. All of this wouldn’t have happened if the exam was on paper. Sure, that would’ve meant printing at least 40 exam sheets for everyone, and therefore using a lot of paper. But it wouldn’t have been a waste of paper. What happened, however, was indeed an unnecessary waste of time and energies, for everyone involved.
What makes everything harder when using technology in university, and education in general, is probably security: preventing hacker attacks, privacy settings, preventing people cheating in exams… all of this leads to having to use a lot of programs and applications. And using all of these for the first time when entering in university as a new student is always very stressful.
I feel like the whole technological system used in education should be reorganized in a way that it actually makes things easier, instead of stressing us about any technical problem that might happen, especially because sometimes those problems are unpredictable and very hard to deal with. The exam should be what worries us, not our computer losing connection while in the middle of taking the exam.
It should also be acknowledged that technology really doesn’t work in some aspects, and we should consider to stop using technology in those aspects.
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