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Microsoft word update messes up exams in Denmark (www.dr.dk)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Sorry for the Danish post i hope you can translate it.

The Ministry warns that Microsoft programs can create problems for written exams for students with Mac computers.

Users who have updated the programs to the latest version may experience the programs running slowly, freezing and crashing. This means that the examinees are delayed in their work and that parts of the answers risk being lost, write the Agency for Education and Quality and the Agency for IT and Learning in a notice to schools.

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[–] 170 points 2 years ago (22 children)

I know it sounds crazy, but a better free alternative exists.

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  • [–] 99 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    It sounds insane to me they would use a suite where they have no control over its state.. Can't they at least block the updates? Just imagine you're a student and your success depends on the incompetence of others

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  • [–] 100 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    your success depends on the incompetence of others

    This is an excellent lesson to learn in school since it happens a lot in life.

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  • [–] 32 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    Fair enough, but if it was at work or something you can at least say, 'eh at least I still get paid' Here you have no recourse options.

    edit: Having read the translation now. It seems the students do have a choice in which software suite they use. So I guess they did have a recourse. So in the end it was their own responsibility. I guess it was a good lesson then.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Here you have no recourse options

    I can't speak for every University, but some have a way for you to appeal issues like this to the Dean.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Just a note to avoid some confusion some people may have: gymnasium in denmark is roughly the same as high schools in the US. While I’m sure the problem also affects university students, the focus of this article is on the high school students specifically.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I would imagine they have a similar setup as here in Norway (who's also experiencing this issue) where the students own the machine and they aren't centrally managed, especially the Mac's

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah I assumed they would be centrally managed, but they are not apparently. So then I don't really see why they would get a time extension to be honest. You could easily game that then and just fake it crashing.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    A single person experiencing an error is bad luck and may go through an apeals process. Half a class experiencing the same error jeopardizes the legitimacy of the exam for enough students that they decided to handle it collectively. It may be a third party tool but it is one they are expected to use which changes things. Had it been a few students using libre office they would probably be out of luck as they would have used non standard software.

    Another important note is that many exams now require digitally handing in the assignment, so the only alternative to writing the assignment in a text editor would likely have been to scan a handwritten one and convert it to pdf, if that was even allowed. So while particular hardware and software isn’t required, the limitations of the exam makes it impossible to completly avoid errors such as these.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (13 children)

    What do you recommend? I love LibreOffice on Windows and Linux, and it still works well on macOS but the GUI seems weird on it, the buttons are really large. I still use it but my partner is put off by it.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    LaTeX, code and compile your documents instead of fighting with word.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    While I agree with you that LaTeX is an impressive tool, I would not choose it for an exam whith a short duration. It is great, but for short documents that should be written quickly, I don’t think it’s the best tool.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    I (almost) only use LaTeX now, I find it easier than having to manually set headings etc. I find it great even for just one page notes.

    The few times I do not use it is when I have to colab on a document with someone else.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I’ve used it a lot for reports when I went to university, but for short notes I would prefer markdown and for a few pages or documents where formatting is trivial I still find it easier to use LibreOffice or word. I find it likely that most high schoolers would find it easier to use word for any document than LaTeX which they probably have never heard of and would be unable to get support for unlike word which is commonly provided by the school. So while understand where you are coming from, I don’t think the students are in a situation where that would be a plausible solution. Especially due to the many pitfalls and the learning curve you have to get through for using LaTeX as efficiently and for as complex formatting as they already know how to do in word. LaTeX has a way higher ceiling of quality, but the floor is also much lower for those new to it and without the drive to learn it.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    This is actually what I did when I was in school, and overall it was quite pleasant. There was some WYSIWYG LaTeX program too that I shared with some colleagues when we were working on a document together, I remember it working okay.

    But I don't see the average student, especially studying non technical stuff, to pick up LaTeX just for normal sort of essays. Even I am fairly rusty now. And honestly I don't even know if I could have managed it during high school, where I had to write English essays and stuff with specific formatting for references. (I am grateful that my engineering education was less strict about that sort of thing).

    I was hoping that someone would suggest a self hosted web document suite, I think "Nextcloud" is a popular one. Then it should work on any OS, and you don't have to worry about syncing files. Even if you can pay to have someone else host an instance (not sure if this exists), and ideally a program that can keep a local backup synced to your PCs would be a big step in the right direction. Syncthing seems pretty great, though I haven't used it much, and on iOS it doesn't seem to be able to run in the background.

    edit: I just read another comment that recommended OnlyOffice, this seems like another good option (source: this reply: https://lemmy.ca/comment/9415293). Aside: is there a proper way to link to a comment on lemmy that will go through your own homeserver?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Honestly Markdown is perfectly fine 99% of the time. It also has many advantages by just being much simpler

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    This is what I do for my own notes now, but could it work for students writing essays and that sort of thing? I suppose there must be some markdown to HTML/PDF/etc converters (also probably ODT or DOCX or whatever).

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    OnlyOffice is nice, but a tad controversial. It's UI is much much closer to how 365 looks.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Cool, thanks! This is what I was looking for. I've briefly tried playing with Nextcloud before, but this seems like another good option.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Nextcloud is a lot of things. A bit overkill for just it's office offering tbh. But, if it fits your workflow, and you like other things it offers go for it. The snap package actually makes it very easy to tinker with (despite the deserved hate of snaps in general).

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