Honorlock: Example Proctor Settings and Test Taker Guidelines for Remote and In-person Exams

Honorlock’s standard exam guidelines cover a number of situations by default. To allow any of the listed behaviors, instructors must indicate them as permitted in Test Taker Guidelines or in Additional Instructions:

• Laying down in bed or elsewhere when taking the exam is not allowed.
  • Expected to be sitting at a desk with face and desktop area in view
• Student desk must be totally clear.
  • Unless Open Book Allowed, Notes Allowed, and/or Scratch Paper Allowed is/are selected in Guidelines.
• No visible writing on the desk or walls is permitted (important if you plan to require a room scan).
  • The AI that completes the room scan looks for things like other faces (which it will sometimes detect with art), writing on the wall, cellphones, and speech detection. If the AI sees anything that seems suspicious, the AI won’t stop the exam; it will flag it and have a live proctor check out the video of the room scan. The live proctor reviews the video to examine why the AI flagged it. The live proctor can weed out flags due to seeing a face in a portrait or writing on the wall that has nothing to do with the exam. If the live proctor sees something suspicious, they will pause the exam, pop in via chat and ask that the student remove the item from the wall and rescan the room.
• All third-party programs and windows must be closed before logging into the proctored test environment.
• Loud music, television, or other distractions playing in the background are prohibited.
  • Unless Background Noise Allowed is selected in Guidelines
• All communication between the Test Taker and other people or parties aside from the test taker is not permitted near the testing environment
  • Unless Public Area Allowed is selected in Guidelines
• A test take must not leave the room during the exam
  • Unless Restroom Breaks Allowed is selected in Guidelines
• No breaks will be permitted during an exam.
  • Unless Restroom Breaks Allowed is selected in Guidelines
• Test takers cannot wear hats or have hoodies up over their heads
  • Unless Hats Allowed is selected in Guidelines
  • Religious headwear is always acceptable and does not require an instructor to make an exception.
• Headsets or earbuds are prohibited.
  • Unless Headphones Allowed is selected in Guidelines
• Cell phone use is prohibited.
  • Unless Mobile Phone Use Allowed is selected in Guidelines
• Face must remain within view of the camera
  • Religious face coverings will always be allowed
  • If Open Book Allowed, Notes Allowed or Scratch Paper Allowed, then the face sensor is automatically desensitized to prevent flags for looking down.

Example settings for exams taken online with no in-person supervision from an instructor: 

Proctoring Settings to turn on

• Record Webcam
• Record Screen
• Record Web Traffic
• Test Taker Photo
• Test Take ID
• Room Scan
• Disable Copy/Paste
• Disable Printing
• Browser Guard

Carefully review the Test Taker Guidelines and select those that are applicable to the exam you are giving. For the highest exam security, none of the Test Taker Guidelines should be selected. However, the context of your exam may require some of the Test Taker Guidelines to be selected. Review standard exam settings and guidelines above to help determine what Test Taker Guidelines may be applicable for your exam.

Honorlock strongly encourages you to clarify in the Additional Instructions section and expand upon any of the Test Taker Guidelines you chose to enable. These guidelines and additional instructions will be visible to test takers when starting their assessment and will be used by live proctors to determine what is and isn’t allowed during the assessment. 

Select Show Additional Instructions below the Test Taker Guidelines to open up the Additional Instructions area: 

Example settings for exams taken online in a classroom setting where an instructor and/or TAs are monitoring the exam session:

Proctoring Settings to turn on for In-class exams

• Record Screen
• Record Web Traffic
• Disable Copy/Paste
• Disable Printing
• Browser Guard
• Important Note: any setting that uses the student’s camera (Record test take photo/ID, Room Scan, Record Webcam) will increase the WiFi load.

Carefully review the Test Taker Guidelines and select any that are applicable to the exam you are giving. See standard exam settings and guidelines above to help determine what Test Taker Guidelines may be applicable for your exam. If you enable the Record Webcam feature in the Proctoring Settings for in-class exams, be sure to consider the following Test Taker Guidelines:

• Hats Allowed
• Public Area Allowed

To minimize stress for yourself and your students, communicate to students that because of the sheer volume of people taking the exam at the same time, there may be some WiFi issues as everyone begins the exam. Follow these guidelines for to optimize the experience:

• Once students are in their seats, have students turn off their WiFi and then turn it back on so that their computer connects to the closest WiFi access point in the room.
• Have students disconnect all other unnecessary devices (tablets) from WiFi except for the computer they are using for the quiz to cut down on extra “noise.”
• Do not have everyone start the exam at the same time. Stagger student start times by 5-10 minutes in batches of 50.

Honorlock strongly encourages you to clarify in the Additional Instructions section and expand upon any of the Test Taker Guidelines you chose to enable. These guidelines and additional instructions will be visible to test takers when starting their assessment and will be used by live proctors to determine what is and isn’t allowed during the assessment.