On 01/10/2014 14:53, Simone Barbaresi wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I expect we all offer a lock down PC desktop service for those
> students who require the use of a PC during examinations. It may be
> done through simple network ACLs, unplug the network lead, proxies,
> firewalls, null gateways, VDI, virtualbox etc or a more complex home
> grown solution with bells and whistles or even a shop bought
> product.
>
> Here at Bangor we've developed a clunky service which doesn't scale
> and requires IT staff to baby sit it, so the question is: what do you
> use at your University to provide an examination desktop?
It varies a bit.
We have a set of accounts to which a fairly restrictive set of policies
are applied, such that Word (or in some cases other apps) are the only
allowed software, no internet access etc. These are network accounts
with their own filestores, but the exam admins have access to these and
can clear them out between exams.
These handle most computer-based exams, to the extent that IT generally
doesn't have direct involvement in (or knowledge of) individual exams.
So, the policies etc apply to a set of exam usernames, not to the PCs
themselves, as we typically do not know that a given set of PCs is about
to be used for an exam. Lockdown settings are mostly part of the user
config in any case.
Some exams need the ability to print, which complicates things.
Additionally, there are cases where we have to hand-craft something for
a specific case where the exam needs to use other software. We have had
cases of exams being held using software specifically supplied for
holding the exam (typically an app that provides a full-screen
always-on-top browser control for web-based exams, with a whitelist of
allowed URLs).
Mike
--
Mike Sandells
The University of Liverpool - Computing Services Department
Work: [log in to unmask] http://www.liv.ac.uk/csd 0151 794 4437/7789
Home: [log in to unmask] http://www.mikejs.com
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