Overview

Moodle Quizzes can be run so that students complete the Quiz in a locked down browser called Safe Exam Browser (SEB). The Safe Exam Browser restricts what a student can do whilst completing the Quiz. Typically, the student will be unable to access any other application or web page on their computer apart from the Quiz itself.

Moodle's Safe Exam Browser is one of many approaches to supporting academic integrity, and should be considered in the context of assessment design for academic integrity.

If you are looking for guidance on running a invigilated exam without Moodle's Safe Exam Browser, see the Moodle invigilated online exam guidance.

If you are running a summative test or exam in Moodle, as well as referring to the Module Assessment guidance in the Academic Manual, you also need to use this guidance and checklist to ensure you have set up the Quiz or Assignment properly and have considered what to do in case anything goes wrong with the technology. 

What is the Safe Exam Browser?

The Safe Exam Browser is a customised web browser that limits what students can do on their computer whilst they are taking a Moodle Quiz.

Who sets up and manages the delivery of lockdown browser assessments?

Lockdown browser assessments must be departmentally managed. This means that departments are responsible for all aspects of administering the assessment, including the Moodle quiz setup, invigilation (online & in-person), marking, and student communication and support.

The guidance on this page should be used by departments coordinating and running lockdown browser assessments locally. In addition to this guidance, departments are strongly encouraged to conduct their own research into the suitability and feasibility of implementing this assessment option.

Key Considerations

There are several factors you should consider before proceeding with lockdown browser assessments:

Proficient Moodle experience

The lockdown browser assessment includes advanced features and settings, such as quit passwords and access to in-browser tools (i.e. permitted internet sources). Administrators setting up the assessment within your department should have a strong grasp of these features to ensure correct setup.

Sufficient departmental admin and invigilation resource

You will need to consider the availability of staff to manage all aspects of the lockdown browser assessment delivery, managing the online and in-person logistics involved, from set up to invigilation support on the day and marking of submissions.

Appropriate equipment and venue

In the case of in-person delivery, it is the responsibility of departments to ensure that every student has access to a suitable device pre-tested with the lockdown browser application, as well as reliable Wi-Fi connection and power supply. Additionally, departments will need secure a suitable venue for conducting the assessment, such as securing UCL PC cluster rooms on campus.

SEB is currently installed in all PC cluster rooms (except Birkbeck rooms for which it is not currently supported).

It can be installed on Windows, macOS, and IOS devices. It does not work on Chromebooks. 

Student preparation and familiarisation

Departments should ensure their students are informed of their requirement to complete a lockdown browser assessment well in-advance of the assessment day. Students should be provided with an opportunity to practice on a demo Quiz - on the same device intended to be used on the day - before their summative assessment.

Assignment content

While traditional in-person exams comprise of pen and paper formats, lockdown browser exams necessitate students to work within the confines of a browser. Therefore, departments should pay special attention to the content of your assignment or question paper to ensure the instructions are appropriate for this assessment method.

Responsible for 'troubleshooting' on the day

With the heightened security measures involved in a lockdown browser assessment, unique issues may arise that would not otherwise in pen and paper or non-lockdown browser assessments.

Assessment regulations

Your assessment records and information should accurately reflect the delivery of an in-person digital exam (such as a lockdown browser exam). Departments must ensure that the relevant parties have been consulted (i.e. Student Lifecycle team) and changes have been requested and approved (please refer to UCL's assessment review guidance and module amendment regulations).

In advance of the exam - checklist

As early as possible

• Brief students - your students should be informed at the earliest opportunity that they are due to take a lockdown browser assessment and what is expected of them (departments are responsible for providing guidance and communications to their students)
• Secure appropriate devices and venue. Ensure the devices to be used have access to the latest version of the lockdown browser application (installation guidance) and that the venue has enough space to accommodate students with sufficient spacing in between each workstation to minimise potential for cheating.

  • For example, book a PC cluster room:  

    • It is recommended that you book a room with 10% more computers than you need, this will ensure that there will be spare computers in the room in case of a computer failure.

    • If you use a non-centrally bookable room, please familiarise yourself with the login requirements/facilities in the room BEFORE the assessment takes place.

    • From the 2024/25 academic year, PC cluster rooms will have Safe Exam Browser installed.

  • If not using a PC cluster room, you will need to make arrangements for ensuring devices are available to students (i.e. bring your own device or department-provided) and an appropriate room is secured.

• Decide what you will do if there are technical issues that prevent you from running the exam on Moodle - e.g. have paper copies ready to be printed, reschedule.

6 weeks before

•   Students who require special arrangements must notify Student Support and Wellbeing.

4 weeks before

• Get students to download and practice using the Safe Exam Browser:  Familiarise your students with the Moodle Quiz Safe Exam Browser before they sit the assessment. Students should be given an opportunity to complete a demo assessment on the device they will be using on the day; it is recommended that departments schedule a practice session where students can complete a practice quiz with the Safe Exam Browser. The student guidance on Safe Exam Browser explains how they can install Safe Exam Browser.
  

• Identify and brief the invigilators who will attend the exam in each location.

  • It is essential that you have enough invigilators to ensure that candidates are not cheating. Invigilators will need to be familiar with the Moodle environment and with your test. 

• Notify Digital Education. Please make sure to complete the Exam Notification Form so that any necessary checks on your Moodle quiz settings and/or room can take place with at least four weeks notice before the exam is schedule to take place. 

  • Digital Education will then ensure that no changes to the Moodle system are planned for, or near, the exam date. 

  • ISD will be notified so they can ensure PCs are in working order (for centrally bookable spaces only).

3 weeks before

• Practice material & briefing students:  Familiarise your students with the Moodle assessment tools before they sit the exam, e.g. ask them to complete a trial quiz or upload a test assignment. 

  • Prepare a practice quiz for your students, or use Digital Education's example quiz.  

  • Let them know the scoring rules, number and types of questions, any navigation constraints and the time limit.

    
    

• Include an informative introduction (in the description of the quiz or assignment settings). 

    

• Setup and check your quiz settings against the Moodle Quiz settings below.

  • If it is your first time running a Moodle quiz, you can ask Digital Education to check your settings in advance.

2 weeks before

• Check the Safe Exam Browser on student devices (if using a PC cluster room, ensure they have the Safe Exam Browser application).
• Test your exam:  Check the exam thoroughly and ask someone from your discipline to run through it and provide feedback.
  
  • Safe Exam Browser opens and loads Moodle quiz.
  • Images load and are mentioned in the question text (so if they don't load during the exam students know they are missing information).
  • Text is large enough and easy to read.
  • Questions and answers are clearly articulated.
  • Distractors (wrong answers) are not too obvious. 
  • Double check the answers, if using multiple choice questions.

1 week before

• Remind students to ensure they are able to log into Moodle at least 2 working days before the exam. If they are unable to log in, please ask them to contact the One Desk IT. If on the day a student cannot log in, please contact the Digital Education team, who will be able to set a temporary password for the length of the exam.

• Remind students they will need to use the Safe Exam Browser to complete the Quiz and so students will need to remember their password. 

Before the exam

• Print a copy of the M42-Moodle Quiz Invigilator Checklist for the invigilators.

• Download and print the Digital Examination Attendance Sheet to record the attendance at the exam.

• Display "Exam in progress" signs on the doors so other staff and students don't interrupt the exam.

• Notify students to ensure they open the Course Index on the left and open the block drawer on the right for navigation and to see timers. 

Recommended Moodle Quiz Safe Exam Browser Settings

Moodle Course Access:  Please be aware that all tutors and course administrators that have access to the course will be able to see the quiz questions and answers. If this is a problem, you can request a new Moodle course be set up for the exam that provides only those who need it with access to the exam questions.

Description: This functions as an introduction and should include the scoring rules, number and types of questions and the time limit. If some students will receive extra time, this should also be mentioned. If using numeric questions, it should be clear whether students need to enter the unit as well as the number. This should ideally be mentioned in every question it applies to as well. 

Some draft text is provided below.

--

It is essential that you download Safe Exam Browser and test it before the day of any assessment. Your tutor should provide you with a test assessment to complete.

Safe Exam Browser is already installed in PC cluster rooms.

Before starting a Safe Exam Browser Quiz, make sure to:

1. Turn off any additional monitors.
2. Quit all applications apart from the web browser you are using to access Moodle.
3. Take a moment to remember your password – when you launch Safe Exam Browser you won’t have access to any saved passwords or password managers.

To begin the exam, click “Launch Safe Exam Browser”.

Note. You should only click Download configuration if you receive any error messages when launching Safe Exam Browser. 

--

You may add some additional standard text such as the statements below, that explain to students how their Moodle exam will work. You can copy and paste them into the  Description  text box as appropriate:

• You won't be negatively marked for incorrect answers, so you should attempt to answer all questions. 
• Moodle will save your answers each time you click to the next question.
• When you have finished press [Submit all and finish] - You will need to confirm you want to finish. Once you confirm, you will not be able to re-enter that exam attempt!
• If you want to revisit a question you may  click on the Flag question link in the grey box beside it,  or write down its question/page number,  so that you can easily return to it.

Open the quiz: Ensure that the quiz availability times are accurate.

Close the quiz: We recommend disabling the quiz close time, as a count-down timer will automatically appear for the last hour the quiz is open, which could confuse students. If you disable the quiz close time, you must manually close the quiz after the exam, so no absent students can see the questions.

Time limit: Don't use Moodle to time exams - if there is a network problem during the exam students will lose time. Instead use the clock on the wall to manage timings manually, with invigilators announcing time as in a written examination.

• That way if there are any technical issues extra time can be easily issued without Moodle automatically submitting quiz attempts. 

• This also allows students who have been granted additional time to complete the exam due to a disability to do so without having to grant them extra time within the Moodle quiz.

When time expires:  For on-site invigilated exams, we recommend setting this to There is a grace period when open attempts can be submitted, but no more questions answered, with the grace period set to 1 week.  This is to avoid non-submitted attempts from entering the 'never submitted' state, and allows a period of 1 week when the student can go back into the quiz and click submit, but not answer any further questions. This setting will prevent questions entering the Never Submitted state which can occur if, Attempts must be submitted before time expires, or they are not counted is selected. If an attempt becomes Never Submitted then it cannot be graded.

Attempts: If this is set to more than 1, students will be able to attempt the exam more than once. The usual setting is 1.

New page: We recommend you set this to Every question.

• When questions are presented in a series of pages or screens, students' responses will automatically be saved at the end of each page, ensuring that their responses are not inadvertently lost. 
• Also, students can easily flag a question that they wish to return to later.

Double-check questions per page by doing a quiz preview. If it still shows more than 1 question per page you will need to repaginate your quiz. To do this: 

1. Go to the Quiz Settings tab.
2. Expand Layout and select Every question in the New page drop-down menu and tick the checkbox next to Repaginate now.
3. Click Save and display.
4. Click Preview quiz to check the quiz has been updated.

Shuffle within questions (shuffle answers): We recommend you change this to Yes to minimise the chance of students cheating by copying the answers of the people around them. (If enabled, the parts making up each question will be randomly shuffled each time a student attempts the quiz, provided the option is also enabled in the question settings. This setting only applies to questions that have multiple parts, such as multiple choice or matching questions.) - Please make sure that you have the questions to suit this option E.g. If an answer is None of the above, a subtle change would be None applies.

Shuffle questions: Every time the quiz is attempted, the order of the questions in this section will be shuffled into a different random order. This can make it harder for students to share answers, but it also makes it harder for students to discuss a particular question with you. 

How questions behave: This should be set to Deferred feedback, meaning that students do not get to see when they have answered a question incorrectly. All feedback is deferred until after the quiz has been submitted and graded (and only available then based on the Review Options).

Review Options: All review options should be unticked.  Once unticked, this will default to 'The attempt' being available the 'During the attempt' only .  If you choose to allow students to see their exam attempts later, you can change these after the exam has concluded and the results analysed by the teaching staff.

Untick Review Options                                                                                                                              Review Options after saving

Password:  A password ensures only students in the room can complete the exam. 

• Use a password that is easy to enter, but hard to guess. E.g. "purple". 

• Only use lowercase letters.

• Avoid special characters. 

• If the password is easy to enter students will be more likely to all start their quiz at the same time.

Activity completion setting 'Require view':  Student must view this activity to complete it.  Ensure this is not selected. 

Safe Exam Browser recommended settings

Open the Safe Exam Browser option set.

The “Require the use of Safe Exam Browser” dropdown contains the following options:

• Yes – configure manually (Option A required if you want to allow certain webpages to be accessible to students)
• Yes – Use an existing template (Option B you can select from existing UCL templates.)
• Yes – Upload my own config (Option C advanced users only)
• Yes – Use SEB client config (not recommended as this will use any configuration the student’s SEB has rather than the configuration you have set up.)

There are three recommended options which are outlined in turn.

Option A: Configure manually

This option allows you to configure the basic settings of the Safe Exam Browser. It is required when you want students to access specific webpages outside of the Quiz.

To use this option, select the following:

• Require the use of Safe Exam Browser: Yes - Configure manually
• Show Safe Exam Browser download button: Yes
• Ask user to confirm quitting: Yes
• Enable quitting of SEB: Yes
• Quit Password: Generally recommended to prevent student exiting the Safe Exam Browser during the assessment. Required if exam is being completed on an iPad.
• Enable URL filtering: Yes
• Expressions allowed: Add any URLs you want students to be able to access. You can use * as a wildcard to allow multiple pages from the same domain. For example, adding https://bnf.nice.org.uk/ will allow the BNF homepage, whereas https://bnf.nice.org.uk/* will allow a student to access any BNF page.

The remaining manually configurable settings can be completed as required.

Option B: Use an existing template

This will work for most Quizzes where the student does not need to access webpages or applications outside the Quiz.

The 'Exam - all settings enabled' template applies the following settings:

• Quitting SEB without a password allowed.
• Enable reload.
• Show SEB task bar, reload button, time, keyboard layout, and Wi-Fi control.
• Enable audio controls.
• Enable spell checker.
• URL expressions allowed: none (No external webpage access allowed).

To use this option, select the following settings:

• Require the use of Safe Exam Browser: Yes - Use an existing template. This is a preconfigured set of options.
• Safe Exam Browser config template: Select the template you wish to use.
• Show Safe Exam Browser download button: Yes
• Enable quitting of SEB: Yes
• Quit Password: Generally recommended to prevent student exiting the Safe Exam Browser during the assessment. Required if exam is being completed on an iPad.

To submit a template to be available across UCL, please contact IT Services

Option C: Upload my own config

This option is for advanced users only. It requires you to download the Safe Exam Browser and run the included program called “SEB Configuration tool”.

Specific settings including access to applications can be allowed. Any configuration should be extensively tested.

The configuration can then be exported and uploaded to Moodle to apply the settings for the Quiz.

The file must be saved with the setting “Use SEB settings file for...:” set to  “starting an exam” so that the configuration file is not encrypted and it can be used on Moodle.

For guidance on configuration please see the Safe Exam Browser documentation.

Back

On the day of the exam

Immediately before the exam starts:

• Help line: make a note of the number to call during the exam if you experience any technical problems.

  • Call the ISD Service Desk on 020 7679 5000 (Ext: 25000 within UCL).

• Complete the attendance sheet: You can use the Digital examination Attendance Sheet.

• Identity checking:  Ask students to bring their UCL photo ID cards and check this off on the attendance sheet (above).

• Logging in: Ask students to log in to Moodle as they arrive and navigate to the exam to begin reading the exam guidance. 

  • Exam guidance will inform students of the scoring rules, number and types of questions, any navigation constraints and the time limit.

  • Note: Students will not be able to log in until you give them the password.

  • Allow 5-10 minutes before the exam for large groups to log in and ask students to stagger logins where possible to avoid performance issues.

During the exam:

At the end of the exam:

It is essential to ensure that all students have submitted their responses before they leave the room - otherwise (a) they may be able to re-open and complete the exam from another location, and (b) they will not receive a mark for the test. 
  You can use the Report inside the quiz from the Results tab to see who has not yet submitted their responses - those who have not submitted will have 'In progress' in the State column and a '-' in the Completed column. 

•   If the entire group remains in the room until the end of the exam, then it will be easy to spot any open tests from the grader report, as they will be the ones without a score.
•   If students ask to leave early it is advisable to check their individual record in the Grader Report.
•   If you do discover that a student has left without submitting their answers, please contact Digital Education (via the ISD Service Desk) for advice.

After the exam:

Moodle provides statistics on your results and quiz questions, including a calculation of the discrimination efficiency of each question. You can access the report  from in the quiz ( Results > Statistics ).  For further information see the  Moodle Docs page .

Other tips:

• You should provide students with a practice Safe Exam Browser exam before the day of the actual exam so that students can install and test Safe Exam Browser works on their own device.
• You must set a Quit password if students are completing the Quiz on an iPad. Otherwise, the iPad will not lock down the screen and students will be able to change applications.
• You can add PDFs to the Quiz by creating a link in the text of a question or in the text of a description. Ensure that links are set to open in a new window so that students aren’t taken away from the quiz page. You should open the PDF and then add the URL to the file to the the list of allowed URLS in the Safe Exam Browser settings. Always print out spares of any PDF document to have just in case.
• Students who require specific accessibility tools such as a screen reader will need to sit their own version of the Quiz without the Safe Exam Browser to use their assistive technology or a custom configuration (option C above) will need to be configured and tested.
• Students may need to authenticate their account using MFA when they log on to Safe Exam Browser which will require their phone.

Troubleshooting:

• If you suspect that there has been a problem with security or cheating during the exam, please contact Digital Education who will be able to advise you on how to proceed.
• If there are technical problems, you should allow extra time for students to complete the exam, so they are not disadvantaged.
• If you are having problems during a digital examination call the One Desk IT on 020 7679 5000 (Ext: 25000 within UCL).
  

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