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I teach math in a small college with small endowment; we do not have lots of budget to go around. When giving a test to a large class, ideally one should print out the problem sheets ahead of time and distribute them to student individually during test time. But the copy machine in my department is best described as rickety and unreliable.

In other campuses, I used to use lockdown browser Respondus or Proctorio for the tests, especially in short Summer semesters. But we do not have this luxury in my current campus. The LMS we have, BrightSpace by D2L, does not come with lockdown browser enhancement.

Is there any alternative method to using lockdown browser?

Thank you for your time.

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  • $\begingroup$ How large does "a large class" mean in this context? $\endgroup$
    – Jochen Glueck
    Commented Jul 5 at 3:30
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    $\begingroup$ Respondus and Proctorio are not so much "locked down browsers" as they are "abusive spyware". I hope you find an alternative. $\endgroup$
    – preferred_anon
    Commented Jul 5 at 8:00
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    $\begingroup$ @preferred_anon: It's not abusive if it's running on hardware owned by the school and the students are clearly warned that their activities on said hardware may be pervasively monitored. $\endgroup$
    – Kevin
    Commented Jul 5 at 23:03
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    $\begingroup$ @Kevin I disagree; the school should be forbidden from making such an agreement a condition of taking the exam. $\endgroup$
    – preferred_anon
    Commented 2 days ago
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    $\begingroup$ @preferred_anon: This will, to some extent, be a matter of local laws and privacy regulations. But at least in some countries, you very much can make such an agreement mandatory, because the student always has the option of using their personal device for all personal browsing, and is clearly warned of the consequences if they choose to do anything personal on the school device. $\endgroup$
    – Kevin
    Commented yesterday

5 Answers 5

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I once faced a similar issue.

My classes were in-person and not very big, so the following solution was sufficient for me:

  1. email a PDF of the exam to the students

  2. tell them that the PDF is the only screen they are allowed to have open (and also put that in writing at the top of the PDF)

  3. sit at the back of the classroom, every student's screen in plain sight, while they take the exam

Of course I was mostly doing other stuff, not staring at their screens the whole time, but it wasn't too much trouble to glance up every so often to do a spot-check.

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The simplest solution would be to go to a local copy shop, office supply store, or pack-and-ship store and have them print the exam papers for you. Photocopies are generally a few cents per page, and printing from a digital file can sometimes be even cheaper (especially if you don't need them the same day, or supply your own paper). I know it's an extra expense, but it's not much and it's usually worth it when you consider the cost of the time, resources, and sheer hassle involved with trying to implement some sort of electronic solution. Your department may even reimburse you for the cost if it was due to a failure of the equipment provided.

I once had an instructor who asked every student to bring $2 on the first day of class to cover printing expenses. Only about half the class actually did it, but it was enough to cover his expenses for the entire course. On exam day, he'd hand everyone a printed exam plus several sheets of blank paper for scratch work and recording answers. Writing answers on separate paper meant the exam could typically be consolidated down to a single page, plus we were instructed not to write on the exam so he likely re-used the papers with the afternoon class.

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  • $\begingroup$ That is also feasible. Thank you for your input! $\endgroup$
    – A.Magnus
    Commented 2 days ago
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Maybe put it on the blackboard?

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    $\begingroup$ Low tech! What a concept. See hsm.stackexchange.com/q/12945/229 $\endgroup$
    – Gerald Edgar
    Commented 2 days ago
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    $\begingroup$ Thanks for the response. But sometimes it is not entirely possible because some problems are long and drown-out, involving graph, etc. Thank you again though. $\endgroup$
    – A.Magnus
    Commented 2 days ago
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    $\begingroup$ @A.Magnus Not to mention the fact that not everyone will have the same level of access to whatever is written on a blackboard / whiteboard at the front of the room (e.g. it is going to be easier for someone up front to see what is going on than someone in the back). And students are likely to feel somewhat aggrieved by the perceived cheapness of the method---they've paid good money to take that class, basic supplies should be provided (e.g. exam sheets). $\endgroup$
    – Xander Henderson ♦
    Commented 2 days ago
  • $\begingroup$ @XanderHenderson the accessibility argument is good, but the "perceived cheapness" is not particularly compelling. Yes, they can be given paper - maybe A. Magnus has bluebooks available? - but for certain types of exams and rooms this would be a very feasible solution, and one students maybe prefer to LockDown Browser. An accommodation for partly visually impaired students, if there are few, would be easy to provide (namely, one written piece of paper). Actually pdfs are worse from this standpoint for math stuff, most mathematical ones are not usable by screenreaders (or so I am told). $\endgroup$
    – kcrisman
    Commented 21 hours ago
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    $\begingroup$ @kcrisman I mentioned "perceived cheapness" only because that is an actual thing which was commented upon in a class I TA'd for while in grad school. In a 30 person class, 8 people complained about the instructor not handing out paper exams, and writing problems on the board. Several of them asked how hard it would be to just print out the damn problems. So you may not find it compelling, but my experience tells me that students want to be handed paper exams (when it is possible to do so). $\endgroup$
    – Xander Henderson ♦
    Commented 21 hours ago
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If you have admin rights, you don't need a lockdown browser for this. You can block the global internet on Windows (or Linux, but I presume you use Windows) via firewall rules.

Search for "block all sites except one", this is a common practice. Here is one video. Leave only the LMS accessible. Here is the option with Tinywall or older Windows firewall.

Then, give students a limited parental-control account for test-taking, where everything that could be used to cheat is blocked.

A very small proportion of students will be able to bypass the blocks, but you probably shouldn't worry about their test scores, as it takes pretty good CS skills.

Ideally, you'd ask your systems administrator to do this via group policies, it's an easy task for any full-time admin, commonly done in organizations.

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    $\begingroup$ This assumes that the instructor has administrator/ root access to all of the machines being used for testing. This send like an unreasonable assumption in many / most cases. $\endgroup$
    – Xander Henderson ♦
    Commented 2 days ago
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you. Let me look at its possibility. $\endgroup$
    – A.Magnus
    Commented 2 days ago
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    $\begingroup$ @Therac Often, students are bringing their own machines. It simply isn't realistic to expect all of them to put those machines into a "safe" or "locked down" status. It just isn't practical. I also really don't feel like it is worth it. There is a Duning-Krueger effect in play here: those students who don't know the material also generally lack the skills to cheat effectively. I tend to prefer to tone down the stress level during exams---if students are less stressed out about how important an exam is, they are less likely to attempt to cheat. $\endgroup$
    – Xander Henderson ♦
    Commented 2 days ago
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    $\begingroup$ Why do you assume that cost is the issue? My institution has many laptops which students can check out from the library to use, but most students would rather use their own, so we don't have full classroom sets---it would be a waste of money. $\endgroup$
    – Xander Henderson ♦
    Commented yesterday
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    $\begingroup$ As I said above, my college does not maintain classroom sets of computers. It doesn't make sense to keep several hundred machines around when they would likely only be used two or three times per year. And yes, it is very much on the honor system; but I also think that a lot of instructors are overzealous about cheating, and overstate the effect that cheating has. Like I said above, the majority of students who cheat are bad at it. $\endgroup$
    – Xander Henderson ♦
    Commented yesterday
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The D2L Brightspace platform does have access to the Respondus LockDown Browser built in by default. (My school switched to D2L recently and I have it available in each course page under Quizzes > LockDown Browser.) See the D2L knowledge base page for more information.

If you don't see access to it right now, contact your system administrators, as they do need to configure it in advance, per that help page (in particular, someone needs to go into Admin Tools and click the Respondus v4.0 checkbox; note at the very bottom of the help page what it looks like to the instructor when it's turned on).

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