[Building Sakai] Is Respondus LockDown the only answer?

[Neal Caidin]

FYI - Respondus LockDownBrowser does work on Mac.  

-- Neal

On Feb 8, 2013, at 3:22 PM, Matthew Jones <matthew at longsight.com> wrote:

> The Respondus product is really only useful at a secure testing facility where you have proctors and a secure environment already. It is only available for Windows, so users with Macs (which at many Universities is almost half of the population) won't be locked down by anything like this anyway. Students at home can have a second computer that's completely unlocked and while typing is slightly slower than copying and pasting, it isn't significantly.
> 
> The only two real solutions that ever come up
> - Randomized draw from a large question pool. If you have a 10 question exam from a pool of 50 questions, then it's unlikely 2 students will get the same questions anyway, so cheating isn't possible.
> - Require testing at a secure location with a proctor
>   - When I worked at the University of Michigan we had a large online only program. Online only students were still required to either come to campus for Exams or go to an pre-approved testing center. (Often another university or public library was acceptable)
> 
> It sounds like if copy/pasting is your biggest worry, the unselectable fix might work well for you. Though it's just about as easy to just setup a cell phone to record the screen and share on Skype or Facetime that as copy/pasting. Then you can talk too!
> 
> 
> On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 3:02 PM, Paul Dagnall <pdagnall1 at udayton.edu> wrote:
> Sam
> You're right. Nothing is ever going to be 100% airtight. My goal is only to make it harder. Faculty ask us if students can cheat. We tell them they can and give them a few lines. It would be nice to also say we've taken some steps.
> 
> My thinking is that only x% of students will attempt to cheat. Only y% of that x% will try cheating outside of a very obvious path. So, closing the door will stop many who wouldn't think to check if it was locked.
> 
> For example, a common faculty concern is that students can copy and paste questions from the test. If we optionally wrapped the Samigo question text with jquery's unselectable class, it would make copying more difficult (though clearly not impossible). A closed but unlocked door.
> 
> Again, I know we can't make it bulletproof. I'm just asking if there are any alternatives to Respondus before we consider going down that road.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Paul
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Sam Ottenhoff <ottenhoff at longsight.com> wrote:
> I would suggest that your attempts to lock a user's personal computer are entirely futile.  If you want a secure environment for assessments, you need a secure lab.  The war against students and their array of personal devices was lost several years ago. 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 2:04 PM, Paul Dagnall <pdagnall1 at udayton.edu> wrote:
> Hi Sam - Most of our students use Sakai from their personal computers, so that is the case we are most concerned with.
> 
> 
> On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Sam Ottenhoff <ottenhoff at longsight.com> wrote:
> Paul, are you worried about the use of lab computers or personal computers being used at the student's convenience?
> 
> 
> On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 1:55 PM, Paul Dagnall <pdagnall1 at udayton.edu> wrote:
> We're looking for any information others can share about their experiences/attempts to limit print/copy/navigation activity while completing Samigo assessments.  We are currently upgrading to 2.9 and would like to add this functionality to our environment.  Students currently have the ability to copy text, print screens, etc while taking assessments which isn't desirable in many situations.  
> 
> We've briefly looked in to Respondus LockDown browser but it appears to carry some serious overhead for the student.  Students need to download/install the LockDown browser on their computer and use a specific browser to take the exam.  We're after something a little more seamless and invisible to the student.  I understand that it will be impossible to close every hole  but we'd like to make it a more difficult to cheat.
> 
> I would be interested to hear what other Sakai schools are doing in this area.  
> Are there other approaches I'm not aware of?  
> Are there other companies that provide a similar product to Respondus LockDown browser?
> Are my concerns about the negative student impacts of LockDown browser unfounded?
> Thanks very much in advance for any light you can shed on this.
> 
> Paul Dagnall
> Application Developer & Administrator
> University of Dayton
> 
> 
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