I enjoyed Sandy Bhangal-Chaib‘s chat with Ray Nicosia a few days ago quite a lot. I took away a couple of points. Specifically:
- People cheat at test centers and people cheat remotely. It takes an enormous amount of effort and diligence to secure test centers, and equal amounts of both to secure remote tests.
- Remote testing isn’t something to be dismissed out of hand. Instead, efforts can be taken to implement it in a secure way.
Both are important points. With everything going on in the UK, I sometimes fear that there is an effort to gaslight score users (and the UK population) into believing that test centers are more secure than they actually are. This seems to be part of an effort to stamp out the use of remote testing for high stakes purposes.
But when we understand that people routinely cheat at test centers it is possible to consider remote testing in a more nuanced way.
Anyway. Ray’s talk was the most cogent defence of the coming Duolingo HOELT that I’ve heard in some time. Indeed, it was more convincing than anything I’ve heard from the big green owl itself in recent months – all without even uttering the word Duolingo. This is amusing, if one stops to think about it for a moment.