Welcome back to the channel guys. This is Josh MacPherson, the head instructor of tstprep.com
where it's our mission to get your TOEFL score as quickly and easily as possible. And I am pleased
to have Shrikant join us again to talk about some follow-up questions we had about the Home Edition
of the TOEFL IBT. It was released in March, a couple months ago, to address the pandemic issue so people
can take the test at home. And there has been, it's been a great response, but also there's been a lot
of questions as well about the test and how it is administered, and Srikant has agreed to come back
to answer some of those questions. So, first of all thank you so much for taking the time to come
back and talk a little bit more about this. Thank you Josh, it's a pleasure to talk to you
again and I'm very happy to answer any follow-up questions on the TOEFL IBT Special Edition.
So, there are some questions, and I want it, I want to get into them so people can stop asking me
these questions. So, the first thing, the big thing is note-taking. So, as far as students know, I'll
just kind of give a summary, and let me know if that's correct, so students can use a whiteboard
which is, you know, a little whiteboard that can fit on their desks to take notes and erase those
as well as they're taking the test. Or they could have a piece of paper with a plastic
sleeve. Unfortunately, I don't have it, it's like with a plastic sleeve, I guess something, I guess
there shouldn't be any writing, but something like this, and they could put one piece of paper in here,
right, and they can just use this only one piece of paper, but they can have an eraser and erase those
notes, if their page gets filled up. Is that right? That's correct, yeah. So, I think it's
important for people to make sure they have dry erasable markers, you know, whether they use the
a mini whiteboard that can fit on a desk or they use the paper inside the transparency sheets.
It's important to make sure they have dry erasable markers because at the end of the test they will
be asked to erase everything on the whiteboard or sheet and show it to the proctor, right, that's
really important. And depending on how many notes somebody takes, they may need to erase it through
the test, so that they can reuse the page. So, that's why it's important for them to have the dry
erasable marker but also have ways to erase it through the tests as much as they need. And that's
why we only allow one of these things, right, so they cannot have multiple whiteboards or multiple
transparency sheets, but they can absolutely reuse them as many times as they want during the test.
Another question that I get a lot is when students actually go to register for the test, they can't
see the dates until after they pay pretty much. Is that correct and what's, do you have any advice
for students nervous about, you know, paying without seeing the schedule. Yeah, so again I realize this
is not an ideal solution, right. So ideally, you know, someone should be able to look at the exam
dates that are available to them before paying for the test, but because we had to come up with a
solution really, really quickly to help students during this crisis, this is the arrangement
we were able to make with our scheduling partner ProctorU, so that's what we have.
Yeah, it's actually four times a week, so Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday's,
four days a week, but 24 hours in each day. So, every hour there's a new session that
begins, and, you know, there's still plenty of capacity, so you know, students have a lot
of options, and right now they can still get almost any day or any slot of the day
that they want, you know. Some will be more popular than others, but if the student has
flexibility to take in over a period of few days, maybe a couple of weeks ahead, a month
ahead, then they have a lot of flexibility. So, we haven't really had any major issues where
someone has not been able to find something that's reasonable to fit in with a schedule.
Another question comes up about the Mac, you know, so that some students, you know,
they only have a Mac, they don't have a PC, but I think you mentioned that that as long
as you have a Windows operating system, you can take the test. That's
right, yeah. So, we listened to concerns that many many students had about being able to
use Mac's, so we've come up with an option that's been available for a few weeks now,
where they can still use their Mac as long as it has a Windows operating system installed
in it, that is used for this purpose. I want to clarify that this solution will not work with
an iOS operating system, it has to work with Windows and it could be on a Mac computer.
So now, after the student registers, they can schedule the tests within a shorter
time period now, is that correct? That's right. That's another improvement we made recently.
So, previously, after registration, when you went to schedule the test, you needed to
schedule a test 72 hours in advance of the actual session. So, we have dropped
the 72-hour requirement to 24 hours. So, that greatly simplifies students,
simplifies the planning and scheduling of sessions for students as a result.
It's not been an issue from what we've been seeing. It's important to point out, though,
that for the Special Home Edition version of the TOEFL IBT test, the expected score
turnaround time is between six to ten days, for the IBT test that's taken in a test center it
is six days, right. So, in this case, it may take just a few days longer to get scores than in
the test center version, and it's important for people to realize that there is a difference
there, but it should not take more than ten days unless something goes wrong, and it hasn't yet.
So, if some students have had issues, you know, we apologize for that, and we will absolutely
resolve those issues on a case-by-case basis, but it should be between six to ten days.
Version that's one of the test center, right, the traditional TOEFL IBT, even over the last six weeks
or so that we've had the special Home Edition available, it never went away fully, right, yeah.
It was always available in some countries where it was safe and legal to do test center testing. So,
it is never gone fully, and in some countries, people have had the option to do the test center
version and the Special Home Edition version as well, and that's where it stands today. So
obviously, as things start coming back in many countries, we're starting to open up more and
more tests centers again, you know. Over the next few weeks we'll do more of that, including
here in the US, so I think people will find that test-center testing is more easily available looking
forward, but they still have the option to the Home Edition, until the situation comes back to
completely normal, and we don't know when that will be the case, but until the situation comes
back to completely normal, we will still continue to offer the Home Edition as an option. And right
now, of course, registrations for the Home Edition are available till the end of June, and we are
reviewing at this point whether to extend registrations for beyond June at this point.
If the Home Edition is offered in the country, it's available to everybody in that country,
regardless of whether they're in a place where test center testing is available or
not, right. So, if it's available in Japan, for example, or India, or anywhere, it's available
to everybody in that country and so, you know, we will continue to offer the Home
Edition until such time that things go back to fully normal, right, so that people have a
choice. Because until things come back to normal, we won't be able to meet all the
capacity with just one or two, via one or the other of the products, so we want to be able to
offer both. But because we don't know when the situation will come back to normal, we
have offered the combination until the end of June at this point, but we are reviewing right
now whether to extend that period, but we will do it progressively and monitor the situation.
We have not had even one university tell us that they do not accept the score from
the IBT Special Home Edition version, right. Some universities have confirmed their acceptance of
the home edition on their website, but many have chosen not to do so, because while you know in
their view it's just the IBT, it's a different version of the IBT and then, you know, if they
just talk about the IBT, that's good enough, right, so that's what I want students
to understand that the idea is accepted almost universally, the IBT Home Edition is accepted
almost universally by universities worldwide. With regard to the licensing boards in
many professions, you know, you're right in that some have chosen not to accept the Special
Home Edition version of the TOEFL IBT test, and there's not much more we can do about that.
It's almost entirely their decision, and we have no updates to provide on that. The one thing
I will say, though, is that we realize that some students cannot use the accommodation to fulfill
the requirements for these licensing boards, so what we are doing is we are trying to add more
dates and more capacity for when test center testing does resume in many countries, so that
people can take the test center version more easily and fulfill the requirements by doing so.