Tips for the Digital ACT

Advice for the Digital School Day ACT!

Some nomenclature you’ll possibly hear:
TestNav = This is the software used for school day testing
PSI = The software used for Saturday testing. (This is less relevant since Edison Prep recommends that no student willfully ever take a Digital ACT and students have 100% autonomy to pick the wiser paper test on all Saturday/Sunday National test dates.)

The computer you use:
1) You will likely have to use your school issued device on a school-day test in most high schools. Your specific high school will likely have given you their own set of instructions re: installation of the TestNav app and device compatibility check! Check your school email!

2) If not, laptops with any of these are ideal:
A) Use mouse – precision with mice is higher than with a trackpad. But your desk space may be a bit cluttered tooo if you do.
B) Use the largest laptop monitor that you can. Scrolling with the reading section is tougher with a smaller screen.
C) Having a touchscreen is a plus if available, since bubbling and going to the next question can be a lot easier.
D) Less important: If your laptop has a “10-key” it makes the calculator functions on Desmos go better. NOTE: This is not as big of a deal since most people will be using their TI-84 as well.
E) If your digital ACT is via “Bring your own device” (BYOD), you have to run through the computer check ahead of time. The ACT sends out over a dozen email and text reminders to do so, but some students ignore them and then aren’t able to take the test!

Before Test Day:
Make sure to download the TestNav app in advance of the test to avoid any test day issues. Your school will hopefully have you do a dry run/computer check a few days before the exam. ACT may also send you emails and texts about running a “device check” if you are taking a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) ACT.

Bring your power cable just in case. Laptops are supposed to be fully charged before the test and last the whole time. Students with extended time we wonder if the laptop can last 3.5 hours.

We strongly recommend getting a wireless or wired mouse!

On Test Day: 
Before the exam begins:
Before you even type in your name and hit “Start,” go up to the top right hand corner, hit the person button, and consider changing your contrast settings. Many students like white on black (like dark mode on your phone) especially on the reading section.

Students *can* adjust it once time has started but it eats time during the test, so any zoom or contrast or other settings should be altered before the exam begins.

During the test:
A) Adjusting Desmos to your liking, if needed: While you can alter contrast settings before the school begins. You cannot set up your Desmos settings before the time starts, unfortunately. Toggling the graph settings can ruin your time and pacing. NOTE: Most anything you would do on Desmos, a well-educated student who knows how to wield their TI-84 can do 99% of math problems better/faster on TI-84, so this doesn’t matter much.

B) Zooming: Control + scroll wheel on the mouse really helps a lot for the zoom in and out. Control +/- can be used if not.

C) The Answer Eliminator (the giant X at the top): The Answer Eliminator has one major usability issue: You have to turn it on and off. You toggle it on to eliminate, and then toggle it off to select your answer. Some students will actually just write a bunch of small ABCDs at the top of their scratch paper to do it that way and cross off the ABCD on your scratch paper. (Think Bart Simpson writing on the chalkboard ABCD ABCD ABCD.)

D) Bookmarking questions: You can bookmark your questions to come back to the same way you’d circle a question to come back to on a paper test. Definitely do that! If you don’t want to use the bookmark tool, you could

E) Countdown timer: Sadly, for the school day test, you cannot mask (hide) the countdown timer the way you can on the Saturday/Sunday Digital Test. On either version (TestNav or PSI), as soon as you hit the 5 minute warning, the timer shows up for the last 5 minutes and cannot be hidden.

F) Highlighting on Reading: On Reading, the highlights go away between questions. It’s unusually cumbersome; you have to click and drag, and then select the color that you want. It adds a layer of clicking because each highlight consists of “Click, drag, select your color.” Most students do not benefit from using the highlighting and we recommend not using it. It behaves slightly differently on the PSI (Saturday) version, but students shouldn’t take Digital on Saturday by choice, so no big deal.

G) Highlighting on Science: You can’t highlight science images because they are PNG files, so you can’t highlight a point on a graph. That said, you can highlight a number in a table or other text.

At the end of the test:
Do not get trigger-happy!  There’s a big green button that says “Submit,” where it’s like “Congrats you have finished! Submit final answers?” But then below it will say “Unanswered questions are listed below,” and any questions that weren’t answered will be listed. Be sure you’ve actually answered all the questions before hitting the big green Submit button!

Try out the Digital Interface for Yourself!

Click here: https://tn.actonline.act.org/client/index.html

Please feel free to share this video with anyone you know who’ll be taking the Digital School Day ACT!