What is black, the size of a printer, costs $12,000 and kicks out 700,000 pieces of paper a year?
“An OpScan 8 NCS Pearson optical mark reader,” Janet Krause said. “Anyone in the business will know what that is: it’s the machine that reads Scantron test sheets.”
Krause is ASU’s associate director of University Testing and Scanning Services, the on-campus department that is in charge of getting test results back to professors and onto student’s grade sheets.
“People sometimes think the machines that do this must take up whole rooms,” Krause said.
In fact, the optical mark readers fit comfortably on Jessica Collins’ and Amy Li’s desks. Collins and Li — the department’s two Scantron-processing employees — handle every form that comes through the department.
Between the two of them and a part-time worker that is brought in for finals week, the department processes more than 700,000 documents from all four campuses each academic year.
Inside Collins’ office on Thursday, the reader had just gotten a new stack of Scantrons, the small conveyor belt shooting the sheets under an electronic reader into two trays.
“The top trays are the good ones, the bottom ones the bad ones,” Collins said.
A sheet “kicks through” to the bottom tray as she finishes her sentence, and Collins draws it out of the machine, raising an eyebrow and holding it up.
“Despite some students’ popular belief, pen still does not work,” she said. “I’ve seen worse. When professors let students take Scantrons home, some of them come back with coffee stains in one corner, scribbles all around it, or they are catawampus — that’s when the paper is all crunched up and we spend time trying to flatten it out.”
Krause also said she often sees Scantrons with profanities scribbled on them.
“That is probably the point where the student gave up all hope,” she said.
For more than 20 years, the department has been processing work from the majority of the University’s professors, who can send in their tests and get the results back usually within one business day.
The department collects from all four campuses twice a day using a courier service, grabbing up every test that professors leave in designated drop boxes.
Keeping the process efficient and secure is crucial, Krause said, and everything is locked up at the end of the night.
“The forms are always safe here,” she said. “We even have special plastic bags to put the envelopes in if the weather is bad when the couriers are picking them up or dropping them off.”
So far this semester, more than 175,000 documents have been processed — including Scantrons, teacher evaluations and other test forms, Krause said.
Collins and Li are currently preparing for finals week, their busiest time of the year.
Jerry Kingston, an economics professor in the W. P. Carey School of Business, has been at ASU since 1969 and said he’s been happy with the services at the testing office in his time here.
“And I’ve been using them for four light-years,” he said.
Collins and Li both agreed that having a good sense of humor is a good way to keep the mood light while looking at stacks of Scantrons all day.
“Having windows helps,” Krause said.
Collins said she often thinks about cutting a hole in the wall so she can talk to Li, who is in the office right next door.
“Until then we will just keep yelling around the wall,” Collins said.
“Sometimes I just start talking to make sure I have not turned into a machine,” Li said. “It’s good to know you’re still human.”
She lifted a Scantron off her desk and scratched at a blue splotch on the bottom corner with her fingernail.
“Is this bubble gum?” she asked.
Reach the reporter at kpatton4@asu.edu
