Take a HEIC: Make Sure AP and Other Test Uploads Work from Your iPhone and iPad

Article Comments
21

Nope! We would have known that the post office person would guide them in how to do it correctly and not simply refuse to accept the package (or tear it up after they had been given).

Depends on the college, but what we certainly don’t do is gatekeep them on a random bit of computer knowledge in the context of a completely different kind of test.

I mean, reverse the situation: a student uploading their college application is asked a question about American history (crucial to going to college in the 21st century, of course!). If they don’t answer it correctly before the deadline expires, they lose their deposit and have to start all over again.

No?

22

This one is completely the College Board’s fault. Given the lack of understanding of files and formats by teenagers as noted here…to give instructions to take a photo of your essay and send it…and then not to accept the default camera format of the far and away most pop phone among teenagers…well that’s just monumentally stupid…right up there with the NASA engineers forgetting to convert from metric to US measurements. Whether HEIC is a common worldwide format or not…it is the default iPhone one for several years now and I would guess that most teens get the latest model every year.

You have to ask yourself…what we’re they thinking…and the answer comes to you…they weren’t.

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23

If the web site required uploads of a particular format, there is no reason to allow the submission of any upload that is not one of the accepted formats. The web site should have rejected the submission with an error message saying that only the following formats can be uploaded, etc.

When you set up a new iPhone, Apple does not tell you at all that photos are stored in a particular format. There is no information at all on the Photos app itself that a particular photo is any particular format. There is no tool in the Photos app that allows you to convert a photo to another format. In short, nobody with an iPhone should be expected to know that their photos are stored in a particular format - how would they know? The setting for this is buried deep in the settings app.

Victim-shaming seems wrong here. The test takers are the victims, they are not at fault.

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24

Your analogy would work if you had said that the college had given me the question well in advance of the application’s due date and said that I would need to answer that question for my application to be accepted. The College Board clearly listed the allowable file formats beforehand!

25

Oh, my analogy works fine, thanks.

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26

For the basic SAT and AP courses, proficiency in image formatting is not a requirement. A student could be a wiz in history, literature, math or whatever and not know what photo format their OS or Android defaults to. Since the College Board stated requirements for using smart phones or tablets, they should have included information that HIEC or other formats are not acceptable and maybe links about checking Apple or Android sites.

27

…as well as links to every other phone manufacturer, instructions on how to discern file formats on every smart phone operating system, including phones manufactured and supported around the world…Do you see how it is so much easier, and arguably clearer, to specify a smaller number of file formats than it is to provide information on every phone and every operating system ever in use?

And let’s not forget those who actually took a picture with an electronic camera and transferred the file to their computer. We would need instructions for every came and every version of every operating system.

It’s not as though everyone is on just one or two “standards” in the world.

28

My thinking is that the premier and cutting edge college testing and advisory company in the US, a company that positions itself as The Leader in digital and online testing and technology, should have known enough to do some use case testing with appropriate audience members. And error analysis should be a part of any use case tests for large and diverse audience populations. It’s not like iPhone and iPad ownership is a rarity among the pre college age group; according to Piper Jaffray’s" first half 2020 survey of the teen market:

“Eighty-five percent of teens own an iPhone and 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone, both new all-time highs”

http://www.pipersandler.com/3col.aspx?id=5956

And expert knowledge in computer file formats is not necessary to be an excellent and accomplished student in most college subjects.

Though I hate to divulge my age, I took the SAT and AP tests in the Before Personal Computers era. I had to take a day off from my Saturday job, shell out the fee for the test, which added up to what I earned over a few Saturdays. I also had to schlep across two NYC subway lines each way to a strange neighborhood in a strange borough and find the school without the benefit of GPS. The College Board did not provide directions, and the ones I got were rather inadequate. I made it just in the nick of time when they were about to close the doors.

But there were some kids who were had not remembered they needed to bring number 2 pencils but were able to bum extras from other kids. One girl was crying because she could have been turned away and missed the only chance to take the test. The requirement was in a long list of requirements; it could have been me also if I had not aleady had number 2s I liked to draw with always in my bag. We were kids, not unlike many pre college kids are today. And I didn’t know about blue books till College either.

29

In the US, it’s Android or iOS for mobile devices. HEIC is no longer a rare or unusual image format. The College Board positions itself as the premier and industry standard measuring service for pre and college skills testing, and THE cutting edge, digital technology leader for online testing. If this is true, and if they wish it to remain to be true (they do have some recent competition), they would make their testing inclusive of new and more modern formats that are rapidly gaining usage among its target audiences.

It is the College Boards’ job to make their tests accessible and available to all who apply, including those who are not technically savvy at all. iPhone and iPad users are probably a big % of their test takers, and owners of newer models should not have to jump through hoops, or be shut out, after they paid what is probably for a kid a nice chunk of change, to take a College Board test. And a lot of unsuspecting kids got screwed very badly in this mess.

30

You and I are likely the same approximate age: at least in terms of technology available in college!

Colleges want resourceful students like you who are responsible and accountable. Such students identify issues, foresee problems, and take action to correct them. Your story about how you got through the college process reflects that (and roughly mirrors mine).

Now, if I were put in a time machine and transported to today’s technology, as I was reading through College Board’s the instructions for submission (see my graphic above), if I had no clue as to what a file format was, I would not simply assume that everything was fine. Instead, just like the blue books, I would have found out about them, educated myself as necessary, and ensured that I was ready by exam day.

31

I will not restate the need to find a least common denominator, which the College Board did. I have never seen anything from the College Board saying that they are at the forefront of digital technology. Personally, I think that their website is one of the worst, if not the worst, I know of. It is inconsistent, clunky, knocks off users repeatedly (I typically have to log in 4-5 times in a one hour session), and it almost impossible to find what you’re looking for.

Now, for those issue, I would say criticize the College Board. But, they have never been a worldwide digital technology testing services. This year is the first that they have undertaken widespread computerized testing of this sort. Yes, they had exceptions for special needs students, but not anything like this. Again, I think that they moved mountains to make the testing process as easy as possible given the time frame. Did you know that they put online review videos for all of the courses in the last two months as well? They shifted their entire working model in just a couple of months. Some companies are able to do that, but most are not.

32

Sure – and they deserve credit for that. But they also have to be aware that such a transition is likely to be imperfect and flawed, and that punishing the students because of that imperfection is not the way to go.

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33

One of the lessons I’ve learned over my years of writing books is that when you’re documenting something in an application and it’s requiring a lot of text, that’s an indication that the feature (or app) is badly written. When we were running Take Control and publishing books about particular apps that were in beta, we would often go to the developer and say “We’re having trouble explaining how to use this feature, and it would be much easier if it worked like this.” Much of the time, they’d change the feature to match our suggestion and it would be easier on everyone.

That’s basically what happened here. The College Board did document the necessary file formats on its Web site (though much less consistently in email), but the mere fact that it needed to do so much documentation is indication that it should have just updated its site to accept HEIC.

34

True…but there are relatively few formats for smartphone images. Almost everything Android uses jpeg likely as well as iPhones up until the X or whenever it changed. For the College Board not to accept the standard iPhone format was monumentally stupid. They didn’t need to accept every possible image format…just the ones they were likely to receive. Complete lack of understanding of the target audience combined with technical incompetence.

This was a no brainer, ridiculously simple to avoid mistake.

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35

Right. Using that same logic, the College Board should have done what I originally thought they were going to do, and what the vast majority of students actually di: require that students type their answers so that no photographs of hand-written responses would be allowed in the first place.

36

A quick look at the College Board’s PR pages turns up a lot of press releases like this:

https://www-stg.collegeboard.org/membership/all-access/academic/college-board-s-springboard-digital-program-receives-recognition

And links that got picked up in the press:

I didn’t know that the College Board is a non profit that developed and oversees AP programs, and many responsible, resourceful and dedicated students are up in arms about College Board’s
latest disaster and have initiated new class action lawsuits. The AP exam class action one of quite a few recent ones against the College Board:

“Students whose AP exams could not be submitted last week have filed a federal class action suit against the College Board. Many students could not submit their answers and were told that they would have to take a makeup exam next month. The suit seeks to force the College Board to score their answers. FairTest: The National Center for Fair & Open Testing joined the suit, which claims breach of contract, gross negligence, misrepresentation, unjust enrichment and violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Plaintiffs will seek “compensatory damages in an amount that exceeds $500 million” and “punitive damages in an amount sufficient to punish defendants” and “to deter them from engaging in wrongful conduct in the future.”

And I think is especially creepy for a nonprofit to engage in on the sly:

"According to the SAT testing class action, the College Board deceives students into handing over their personal information by claiming that the data could “[g]uide your counselors in helping you plan your future” and result in better outcomes for college acceptance and financial aid.

These representations reportedly prey on the fears and worries of high school students which convinces them to sign up with the “Student Search Service.”

After the College Board reportedly tricks students into giving their personal information to the Student Search Service, the association sells information for between $0.42 and $0.47 per student. Information sold by the College Board allegedly includes names, birthdates, addresses, email addresses, GPA, gender, ethnicity, citizenship status, and more."

And this:

“The suit charges that the College Board knowingly went ahead with the use of recycled questions, despite knowing of the security risk the use of such questions creates. The suit notes that Reuters in 2016 published an in-depth report on SAT security problems, with a focus on the way versions of the test leak in Asia, and that these versions contain questions that are later recycled on other tests.”

I think that Apple has done a brilliant job of integrating its devices into an ecosystem. Rather than dumbing Macs down, they’ve ensured their products and services play nice with one another. It’s what sets them apart from Microsoft, Google, etc. in software and Samsung, Dell, HP, Sony, Lenovo, etc.

37

There is broad consensus that macOS has been “dumbed down” in one way or another. Very broad, as in virtually everybody but the fanbois.

Also, whoever claimed that a desktop OS would have to be dumbed down to make it “play nice” with mobile? Nobody in their right mind would argue that because it’s preposterous. Apple can ensure Macs and iOS devices play nice without dumbing down anything. A shame they didn’t and in the process removed valuable features and options from macOS. That helped neither iOS nor integration, but did serious damage to the Mac. Fortunately, nothing that good leadership and solid engineering couldn’t fix. :crossed_fingers:

38

Just because they are “non profit”…does not mean they don’t make money. They just don’t have shareholders, keep the money themselves, and put it “towards their mission”. My wife worked for several large doctors organizations…I will skip the names but you would recognize them if I put them in…that were non profit and those folk were rolling in money.

Lots of nice trips for the executives, and the Christmas Party was at places like The Palms in DC…where the stuffed shrimp appetizer was larger than most entrees would be and the lobster dinner was 2 lobsters and a side of filet mignon. Then a cheesecake dessert that we had our fill at dinner and enough leftovers from all of that for 2 more dinners at home and a lunch.

But they were non profit…right.

39

There really isn’t.

40

I worked for two well known and highly regarded non profits, and I can verify this is quite often 100% true. One of them had leaders who were frequently “in meetings” or “attending conferences” or “seminars” that just happened to be in luxury resorts or hotels and Michelin Guide rated restaurants in highly desirable travel destinations. Some would also coincidentally schedule meetings In cities their families live in just before holidays, to enumerate just a few. I took a job with this non profit because a few years earlier I worked for a non profit whose leaders were 100% dedicated to their mission and not a penny was questionably spent.