The Modern Day Test Bank

Sparty11 years ago

You wake up Tuesday morning to a slew of texts, but unfortunately most of them are replies to messages you sent the previous night and don’t even remember. Among them, you read a text announcing an impromptu beer Olympics at the senior house. Although drinking is the last thing you feel like doing at the moment, you know this can quickly change after a shower and breakfast. Just as you are about to get some food, you remember the accounting project assigned three weeks ago that is due tomorrow. You are now facing a difficult dilemma: play aggressive flip cup all day in patriotic apparel, or sit in the library for 8-10 hours staring at Excel sheets, Yahoo Answers, Facebook, and ESPN.

You scramble to find someone who has already finished it. After sending a few texts you wait in anticipation for a response. Unfortunately, when the response simply says “b;eer oklympcu” you know there is no hope. To reinforce your decision, you tell yourself, “I’m late. I’ll probably get stuck with fucking France anyway.” Then as you’re walking out of the house, it hits you: there’s the test bank in the basement!

Although you haven’t used it before, you figure it’s worth a shot. After all, you remember someone mentioning how “clutch” it is when you were rushing, somewhere in between “We are a non-hazing fraternity,” and “Here, shotgun this.” Well, you go down to the basement, and let’s just say that the test bank was more of a let-down than any of Obama’s campaign promises.

The “ACC 202” folder contains the following:

-Plenty of ACC 201 documents, all from the same person (I commend the effort there. Close, but not quite.)
-3 Psychology 351 homework assignments from 2004
-1 Failed Econ Mid-Term
-500 flyers from Spring Rush 2009
-Shards of broken glass
-Finally, a yellowed ACC 202 final that was probably there before you were even a stain in your father’s pants.

Well, off to the library.

The concept of a chapter “Test Bank” sure sounds great on paper. At the end of the semester, you collect all your old homework, exams, quizzes, and papers and put them in the appropriate folder, so that someone in the future can benefit, right? And of course, if you ever need something, you borrow it for a few hours, 4.0 the test, then put it back where you got it from. If your chapter actually operates like this, congratulations. If your chapter gives 0 fucks, or some guys simply “forget to return the test” (aka pathetically give it to a girl– although I doubt there’s ever been a “Communications” or “Elementary Education” folder anyway), then your test bank probably sees less action than a soccer mom’s Jeep has seen the trails.

Computers and the Internet have certainly changed the way we learn and do class assignments. Homework can be submitted online, and some classes even offer online exams and quizzes. I figured a way to solve this.

Dropbox is a free application that allows you to store all your files online, and features private “shared folders” – folders that allow you to invite others to add documents and view other files in said folder. After using Dropbox to store documents I may need from time to time, such as my résumé, it hit me that we could make test bank that is available on your computer, any time of the day. Go to Dropbox.com to register and install the application.

Once it is installed on your computer, the folder is connected to the Internet on your computer and you rarely even have to go back to the website, except to add more people. Then, click on create a shared folder. To invite everyone, copy all the email addresses from your house’s mass email list and paste it. The whole process takes less than 5 minutes. On a side note, I would recommend naming it “______ files” rather than “______ test bank” in the off chance that the wrong person catches wind of it (i.e. nationals).

This will send them an invitation, and only those who are invited to the shared folder may access it. Adding files only requires you to drag the files that are already on your computer to the Dropbox folder that appears on the menu bar after installation.

To start out, you get 2GB of space – but for each person you refer, you earn another 500mb (up to 18GB total) – which is more than enough for class documents. My house has thousands of files but has only used 1.1GB of space. Inside the test bank folder, you can add a folder for each class so it is easy to get to what you need – if you’re the first to add documents from a class just create a new folder and name it with the course name for consistency. You can also create unshared folders for personal use, such as your resumé, something you may need at work, or anything else that you usually have to access through email.

Overall, I highly recommend this program, considering it only takes a few minutes to set up, and there’s really not much to it. It sure beats sifting through papers that haven’t seen the light of day since some mustached bro put it there in ’84.