Law Schools

T14 Law School Adopts Exam Software For Finals That Students Can't Even Use

Students at Georgetown are really, really pissed off.

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‘I hate you, Exam4!’

It’s mid-October, and if you’re a law student, you know what that means — it’s time to start getting concerned about finals. Heightened alarm usually begins sometime before Thanksgiving, but one highly ranked law school is making law students freak out ahead of schedule thanks to a tech faux pas having to do with the school’s choice of exam software.

This semester, Georgetown Law decided that law students would be using Exam4 for all of their finals. As it turns out, there’s one teensy, tiny problem with this: Exam4 doesn’t support the latest version of Windows or macOS, and the latest updates for at least one of those platforms started rolling out earlier this month, meaning that many law students won’t be able to use take their final exams on their laptops.

Students at Georgetown are pissed off. “Instead of staying on top of my schoolwork, I have to deal with these frustrating tech issues,” said one source. “Georgetown should either eliminate using this new Exam4 software altogether, or they should wait to start using it until it can handle the latest versions of Windows and macOS.”

Georgetown students put together a website and a petition against Exam4, and more than 550 students have signed it thus far. Here’s an excerpt from the petition:

As law students, we understand the pedagogical value of ensuring that exams test what we have learned throughout the semester, not what we can Google during an exam. We also understand the administration’s interest in preserving the academic integrity of exams.

However, as law students we also understand the importance of one’s individual right to privacy, and the evaluation of risk and benefit that the law traditionally undertakes when evaluating measures that would infringe upon that right. As of the writing of this letter, neither the Office of the Registrar nor the developer of Exam4 have provided a transparent evaluation of the multiple security concerns raised by the lack of documentation for this software.

Maybe Georgetown ought to reconsider using Exam4 for this semester’s exams. Remember that time when people had to handwrite the bar exam instead of taking it on their laptops because ExamSoft wasn’t compatible with the latest MacBook Pro? The situation the Hoyas have going on here is kind of like that, but worse because so many more people will be affected by this tech screw-up.

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Please don’t torture your students, Georgetown. They don’t need the extra stress.

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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