Good morning,
Hope everyone had a good Fall Break! Before I go into today’s tip, I’d like to invite you to take a brief survey on the newsletter as a whole here: https://forms.gle/N1UwGmVmxYSJ3EUu9. I’m hoping that this survey will help Educational Technology better serve the needs of faculty in its outreach.
Today’s tip comes from an issue that came up a few times for students taking midterm exams using LockDown Browser. Let’s talk about the two main ways that students can access LockDown Browser and how Canvas plays into that.
Canvas has two quiz engines: Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes. Both engines do slightly different things, with New Quizzes having different question types and being created in a different way than Classic. If you inherited a course, you can tell if you have a New Quizzes quiz if you go to edit a quiz and see a “Build” button at the bottom instead of a “Questions” tab at the top:
New Quizzes quiz, with a “Build” button at the bottom of the page.
Classic Quizzes quiz, with the “Questions” tab where you add questions.
For students taking a quiz with LockDown Browser, both quiz types start the same, with students going to the assignment page. On that page, when they click the option to take the quiz, they’ll see a link to download the browser.
Screen students see with a Classic Quizzes quiz. New Quizzes gives an error if you try to view in Student View.
The page notices what device they are using, so if they’re using a Chromebook, they’ll see a link to download the Chrome extension, while if they are on Windows or Mac, they’ll download a program. If you have enabled iPad use, they should see an option to install the app from the App Store. (The iPad setting can be enabled from “Advanced Settings” on the LockDown Browser page.)
Here is where you’d enable iPads from the LockDown Browser page, although note that it can sometimes be tricky with a New Quizzes quiz, as you’ll see.
After students download the browser is where the difference between quiz types comes into play.
Respondus has shared two PDF quick start guides for using the browser, each for different quiz types. I recommend sharing this information with your students, particularly if you use New Quizzes for your online tests:
If students are having trouble with New Quizzes, they may need to check their pop-up settings in their browser. Additionally, it could be the case that the browser isn’t set up to launch. Here is a guide on settings students can try to change: https://support.respondus.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409595601179-Clicking-on-the-Launch-LockDown-Browser-Button-Has-No-Result.
Sometimes the initial browser can make a difference. Switching to a different browser (one where default settings are enabled) can help. Likewise, we have occasionally had luck with going through the Canvas app on iPads, which sometimes launches better than Safari.
I hope the guides are helpful as we move forward into the semester, particularly if you want to use LockDown Browser as your proctoring tool. As always, I recommend you create a practice test using the same quiz engine to allow students to check their devices prior to any big assignments and to give them a chance to find alternate options if they can’t get it working.
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