Jane’s Experience: Technical Issues Affecting the Online HPAT Exam

Jane took the Ace the HPAT course and the HPAT exam in 2024. The exam is taken online now rather than in-person. This system has pros and cons, and unfortunately one of the downsides is the possibility in some cases of technical failures on the day. Here Mia describes her experience where IT problems interrupted her exam and impaired her performance.

The first checks that my online proctor carried out went well and after these checks were completed, my exam was unlocked and I could begin. However, roughly 80 minutes into the exam, the proctor left the session and my exam was locked. 

I tried to connect to the tech support team but I was left waiting for 20 minutes. When somebody was finally connected to my session, they did not answer any questions that I typed into the support chat box and instead took control of my keyboard to carry out more checks in my computer settings. I was transferred to three different people from tech support, none of whom answered my questions as to why my proctor had left and when I would be able to resume the exam.

After 60 minutes of this, a new proctor joined my session to continue my exam but they were also unable to explain why I was locked out for so long.

I completed my exam without further issues but the hour of uncertainty did interrupt my focus.

I emailed ACER and ProctorU after the exam to explain the situation and to see if they could tell me why my first proctor left and why I was subsequently locked out of the exam for so long, but they were unable to answer. 

ACER did offer a resit or extra time to look over my answers if I had lost time via the timer on the exam itself. However, as my issues were with ProctorU, not ACER themselves, they were not able to help me.

Hopefully having an idea of what could potentially go wrong the day will help readers of this blog in their own test-taking experience.