What is Electronic Bluebook?

Electronic Bluebook is a secure test-taking program created by CompuTest, LLC. Electronic Bluebook provides teachers with a very secure testing option while providing students with a reliable program for typing their exam answers. Electronic Bluebook essentially turns students' computers into typewriters. While working in Electronic Bluebook, students are limited to

• typing text
• deleting text
• highlighting and moving text within the document

Once in the program, students cannot access the internet, computer files, or any other programs and cannot use any word-processing templates, macros, or shortcuts.

Features

Electronic Bluebook provides the following features to students using the program to type their exams:

• undo and redo functions to correct accidental deletions
• line and page indicators to quickly navigate as well as determine whether any line or page limits a professor may set have been exceeded
• bold, italics, and underline functions
• a timer indicating how long one has been typing in the program
• automatic backups of exam answers every 30 seconds to protect against loss of an answer in the event of a computer problem
• automatic insertion of exam identifier, course name, section number, and professor names on each page of the answer, so that students do not have to spend time typing this information on each page

Secure and Reliable

Electronic Bluebook is secure and reliable. Students' answers are stored on a disk or the school's network in an encrypted format that can be accessed only using the Electronic Bluebook Decryption Program. As a student works, Electronic Bluebook continually creates a back-up of the student's typed answer that is inaccessible to the student but which may be recovered by the test administrator in the event of a problem. Electronic Bluebook runs on all computers using a Windows-based operating system, and, because the program uses so little of the computer's memory while in use, the program presents little risk of crashing or causing problems for the user's computer. Further reliability and safety is built into the program by its disabling of the many function keys that, if inadvertently struck, might cause other problems.

Easy to install and use

Electronic Bluebook is easy to install and use. The Electronic Bluebook program may be downloaded from this website, or the school may place the program on its website or provide the program on CD for installations. After a simple installation, students are ready to use the Electronic Bluebook program (note that schools may also download the program onto school computers and make these computers available to students). No tutorial is necessary or required before using the program for testing, although all students should open the program prior to the testing session to ensure that the program installed properly. Menus walk students easily through the installation process and through the use of the program in the exam setting. The program, once downloaded, remains accessible on your computer until the semester ends. A new version of Electronic Bluebook is available for installation each semester.

Test administration made easy

Electronic Bluebook is easy on test administrators. Unlike some other programs in the secure testing market, Electronic Bluebook does not require professors or test administrators enter the test questions themselves into the program. Rather, students who opt to type their exams simply receive the exam like non-typing students do and then type their answers into Electronic Bluebook. After students finish typing their exam answers, their answers are automatically stored onto disk that are turned in to test proctors, or, if the school opts for the network version of the program, exam answers are automatically stored onto a network drive for easy access by administrators (as an extra safeguard, students also turn in disks with the exam answers in case of problems saving exams to the network). Using the Electronic Bluebook decryption program, the registrar or another administrator can then print out the students' answers for grading by professors. Each exam answer printed out using the decryption program provides a cover sheet indicating time spent in the program by the student to allow monitoring for irregularities in the use of the program. This cover sheet may be removed for grading purposes, however, in the event that a student has been given added testing time as an accommodation. The student's examination number, the course name, section number, and professor's name are printed on each page of the exam, and the pagination indicates how many pages were typed to make for easy verification that all pages of the answer were printed.