Notes on use of SafeExamBrowser

Notes on the feasibility of using SafeExamBrowser for final exams, after some practical experience 30May morning with English9 final exams.

Summary:  Planning for final exams online, from MPR:

1- Best to stagger logins, so that the servers are not overwhelmed by a surge of requests;

2- SafeExamBrowser is markedly less functional with editable textboxes (i.e. not good with lots of essay questions)

3- SafeExamBrowser is probably most appropriate when we need a few students to take an online quiz without our close monitoring.   

4- Need to remind SafeExamBrowser users -- maybe add some text on the YISS splash page like this:

The SafeExamBrowser is designed with some features different from a regular browser.  Certain features are disabled:  switching to another window, copypaste and selection keys.  Because of extra security, the response time may be a bit slower than usual, so be patient.  Note the “busy traffic” blinking icon shows in the upper right corner when the browser is still downloading more information.  You may Refresh the page by clicking command-R; but do not click it while the “busy traffic” icon is spinning.

5- In a large room with multiple proctors, until we can confirm improvements in performance, better not to use SafeExamBrowser -- if multiple proctors are available to roam, and to use remote-access, all focused for that period, that should be sufficient to prevent online cheating.

6- confirm service-level-agreement for existing AccessPoints in room221: how many concurrent users can attach, with 1mb/second performance?

7- minor point: contact the Renweb moodle system administrator to notify him in advance of any crucial database (testing) periods, so he can warn in case of any conflicting maintenance schedule.

Technical background:

The chain of data connections:  all traffic goes back-and-forth through this chain.  Large amounts of data go back and forth, increasingly so as fancier screens are introduced and security requirements are tighter (as each data packet has to protect itself and authenticate itself to its destination):

1. webpage display
2. browser filters
3. computer firewall
4. wi-fi access point
5. wi-fi router
6. ethernet router
7. school’s firewall
8. internet between US & Korea
9. the Renweb routers
10. Renweb firewall
11. Renweb servers
12. Renweb moodle database

Notes about the above chain:

#12:  Although the moodle database servers are generally robust enough to serve our relatively small demand, at times when we know of a crucial high-demand period (such as final exams), we can notify Renweb’s Sysadmin, just to avoid the occasional offline maintenance times.  This is particularly important given our timezone difference with the US, as they typically schedule maintenance for US nighttime (our daytime).

#4 #5: In my mind remains a question about the extent of delay caused by capacity in the room’s wi-fi accesspoint/router, particularly when noting the large amount of data in a moodle page.  I believe that MAP testing is, ironically, an older system that was designed to send smaller datasets.    Each new version of moodle has fancier displays that take lots of data traffic.  I believe a small percentage of our problem was the heavy load on the wi-fi access point(s).

#1: In the case of moodle, one egregiously large consumer of data is the fancy editing panel that displays on every editable-text box.  Because this is downloaded (automatically) separately after the rest of the page displays, and it does not display any hourglass warning, in a slow period anxious students start typing before the edit-panel is fully downloaded -- then the text often disappears.   This uncertainty leads to confusion, more impatient button-clicking and retyping, that leads the window to attempt to re-download itself, which starts the cycle again.

#2: The SafeExamBrowser exacerbates the problem because it prevents some of the copypaste buffer storage that in a regular browser keeps the pre-typed data;  it also has a very tiny hourglass-warning display, so anxious users often click click click click, which causes the browser to stack up all the refresh commands, throw away anything in the buffer (for security reasons), and re-download the screen again.  This is especially problematic when the screen contains several editable-text windows (a lot of data to download!).

SafeExamBrowser

Ironically, the SafeExamBrowser security features are most needed with essay-type questions (that is, preventing the switch to another browser and copypaste text from one window to another);  and yet it is also the most difficult.

It would work if the number of editable-text windows is limited -- for example, 1 large essay, so you prep students to wait for the entire editable subwindow to display before starting to type.

I started the day with both quizzes set to require SafeExamBrowser.   I quickly removed the requirement for the multiple-choice portion; and then removed the requirement for the essay portion after I saw many of the problems continue.  

Several students complained that the SafeExamBrowser seemed to “delete”  their text from the editable-text boxes.  I believe that was because they had typed into the boxes and then clicked elsewhere before the window finished displaying fully.  So it would be more correct to say that SafeExamBrowser did not save the text they had typed.