The scratchpad is inside the Mock Exam runner as of this morning. Press Tab from inside any section to open a side panel where the candidate can work out a problem — free-form text on the left, a five-line calculator readout on the right — and press Tab again to close it. The state is preserved per-question, per-section, for the duration of the session.
A Pearson test center gives the candidate a laminated booklet and a dry-erase marker. The candidate writes, revises, erases, moves to the next item. The Brightroom runner has been missing the digital analogue of that booklet since the public beta opened in September. This is the booklet.
What it is
Two halves. The left half is a text area the candidate can type into freely — exactly as they would write on scratch paper at a test center. No formatting, no autocomplete, no spellcheck. The right half is a five-line calculator readout where the candidate enters one expression per line and sees the result of the whole stack at the bottom. The two halves are independent — the calculator does not parse the text notes; the text notes do not affect the calculator. That separation is deliberate.
How it works inside the runner
Three states.
Closed (default). The runner is the full screen. No panel, no chrome. The candidate sees only the item, the timer, the section bar, the bookmark affordances.
Open. Press Tab. A side panel slides in from the right and takes the right third of the screen. The item stays fully visible to the left — the runner does not reflow. The candidate types into the scratchpad with no rendering latency; we tuned the input path for the same sub-frame responsiveness the flagging and review affordances already had.
Per-question state. Each item carries its own scratchpad. Move to the next item, the scratchpad clears. Return to a previous item via the bookmark-and-review screen at the end of the section, the prior scratchpad reappears with the candidate's notes intact.
What we cut
Three modes that we built, tested, and did not ship in this version.
Handwriting input. The most-asked-for feature in the public beta. We held it for two reasons. First, handwriting on a desktop without a tablet stylus is materially slower than typing, even for candidates who prefer paper. We do not want to ship a mode that disadvantages a candidate who picks it. Second, the test center experience is paper and a marker, not a tablet — so a digital tablet mode is less faithful to test day than free-text typing. Handwriting may come back when the test center experience moves to tablets, which is GMAC's stated direction but not their current spec.
Math notation rendering. A version that rendered LaTeX-style fragments live as the candidate typed. It rendered beautifully when it rendered correctly and confusingly when it did not. Under time pressure, the candidate cannot afford to debug a rendering quirk. Free-form text is the version that does not surprise the candidate.
Cross-question scratch. A single continuous scratchpad across the section, mirroring the physical booklet. Internally, the modal of usage is per-item — candidates open the pad, work the item, move on. The continuous mode produced a long scrollable surface that nobody scrolled. We kept the simpler version.
What this changes about the Mock surface
Two things.
The Mock is now genuinely a test-day rehearsal. The scratchpad was the largest remaining gap between the Brightroom Mock and the Pearson surface. Candidates who finish a Mock today with the scratchpad open should sit the live test in October and recognize the surface they have been rehearsing on.
The pacing trace gains a working-out signal. The engine now logs scratchpad-open duration alongside time-on-task. A candidate whose time-on-task is two minutes but whose scratchpad was open for ninety seconds is doing different work from a candidate whose time-on-task is two minutes and whose scratchpad never opened. Section Analytics, currently in private alpha for the Ultra cohort, will surface that decomposition in the next iteration of the pacing panel.
Who gets it
Every Mock Exam attempt, on every Pro tier and Ultra, gets the scratchpad starting today. Practice sessions do not — the Practice surface is not a test-day rehearsal and the scratchpad is a faithfulness affordance, not a productivity one. Diagnostic sessions do not either. The scratchpad lives inside the Mock surface only.
The next note will be about Section Analytics opening to the broader Pro cohort. We expect that one in the autumn.
— Brightroom Product