Pearson onscreen platform installation woes

[mpatkts]

I have put my RM CC4 package (November 2014 version), instructions and notes in Google Drive. If this can be of help to anyone please send me a private message and I will send them the link. We have just run the ICT exam with no problems but I still check connectivity on all 46 computers before each exam. O ye of little faith (in Pearson)!

[speckytecky]

Yikes! My school has decided we will be running BTEC Onscreen Exams this March! Naturally receiving the mega Pearson Document I had a quick look and though Ouch! My next port of call was my ever trusty Edugeek and a quick search landed me up on this 19 page thread which I see started off in 2013.

 

Being a lazy sort of cove I was wondering if anyone has an up to date experience of this Package. We are an EBD school and will be running 17 students through the exams on a vanilla Server 2008 / Windows 7 domain. Thanks in advance for any feedback and of course thanks will be duly given for all helpful replies.

[Duckstein]

I'll be honest, the first time we set it up, it was a bit of a faff. Now, we have it running pretty damn smoothly.

 

We have the administrator dashboard, and admin service installed on the Exam Officers machine, and the Invigilator Dashboard installed on the teacher machine at the front of the class. The test player is then, obviously, installed on the student machines in the room. The only small faff we have is when students are taking the tests, we step them through setting the connection to the Invigilator machine, as it does not automatically pick it up. I normally will do this loudly in the classroom and ensure that all students have connected.

 

It is, for its hassles, actually a decent piece of exams software, and bar any students screwing up by exiting the software unnecessarily works pretty seamlessly

[hyb80]

Little tip for tests that drop out or an unexpected reboot during a test. Not sure if this has been cover further back in the thread but knowing this has help us out

 

To log the user onto another PC you need to exit the invigilator dashboard, go back in, log student on to the new pc, DO NOT START TEST, Press SHIFT+ALT+F12 , Select Recover test

[Zourous]

From my experience there are a lot of connectivity issues with this software, so make sure you give it a good test with one of their demo tests once all installed. The student software can and will crash so make sure you know what to do in advance and maybe try and simulate this in a demo beforehand. Press the alt + shift + F12 on the student software once loaded to access a hidden menu (get the password beforehand from pearson, they won't tell you until you ask them!). You'll see from here that you can check connectivity, recover an exam and reset test violations should they happen.

[jumpinjamez]

Little tip for tests that drop out or an unexpected reboot during a test. Not sure if this has been cover further back in the thread but knowing this has help us out

 

To log the user onto another PC you need to exit the invigilator dashboard, go back in, log student on to the new pc, DO NOT START TEST, Press SHIFT+ALT+F12 , Select Recover test

 

learnt this the hard way .We had a couple of reboots and the recover works great but did have a Exam invigilator click start test and that test was lost.

[hyb80]

Yeah we had that too. Our exams office likes to book 40 of these at a time which leaves me with very little spare capacity but I refuse to use wireless laptops

 

I only found out this tip by calling them up and asking them if they had any known tricks for speeding the process up

[Zourous]

Little tip for tests that drop out or an unexpected reboot during a test. Not sure if this has been cover further back in the thread but knowing this has help us out

 

To log the user onto another PC you need to exit the invigilator dashboard, go back in, log student on to the new pc, DO NOT START TEST, Press SHIFT+ALT+F12 , Select Recover test

 

When you say log "exit the invigilator dashboard" don't you mean "exit out the test player" as surely this would stop the test for everyone else who is still going?

[hyb80]

No i mean exit the invigilator dashboard, I asked that same question. Apparently it is the only way for the dashboard update its status of tests/failed tests.

[Zourous]

No i mean exit the invigilator dashboard, I asked that same question. Apparently it is the only way for the dashboard update its status of tests/failed tests.

 

And by doing this it doesn't interrupt the other tests that are still going on?

[hyb80]

No it doesnt, if you want to test it you can order down some demo tests and try it out. start a test on a client, turn that computer off, log out of inv dashboard and back in, log into test player on a different comp.

[speckytecky]

Ghee whiz - this thread is now 20 pages long. Says volumes about this Software. Why are we allowing them to foist it upon us. It sounds a complete nightmare and a complete crock. With massive reluctance I'm going to start deploying it tomorrow.

[Duckstein]

I don't find it that bad! Once up and running, it is a piece of cake to use

[mrbios]

I must admit, considering the state of the last on screen testing program, this is actually quite good i found...

 

Was able to deploy the client software silently via SCCM where needed. Deployed invigilator software to all teacher PCs (Not that we'll ever need them all, but its good to have the option), whacked administrator software on mine and the exam officers PCs. Beyond that point everything has worked exactly as expected...the only issue that i could forsee arising is if an invigilator ever wanted to be on a laptop (Thus putting themselves onto a different vlan to the student PCs) but it's a simple issue to avoid.

[t3ckn1k]

I have read a lot of this now, but don't see much mention in regards to the offline version (Test Player)... I have recently had to install both the lan and offline version. Both versions simple enough to install. We are having massive problems with the offline tests which pearson after 3-4 days admits there are other people having the same problem. Start an exam go from first question by clicking next. Screen then performs a loss of focus, you try the key sequence to unblock but discover you cant as there is an error message in the background stating an unrecoverable error and the only way to even restart the test is by clicking yes and wiping all the original data. Unable to get any further. For a system that's been around for over a year its a bit poor.

[speckytecky]

The Perarson POP document is at best confusing. As a technical document is in my opinion one of the worst I have ever encountered. However, it does contain this useful YouTube clip which, thankfully is pretty easy to follow.

[speckytecky]

Started this install now. However, on the Readme that pops up after installing the main package it says:

 

IMPORTANT: Make sure to activate GUEST account, needed for Network Sharing of msi packages

Surely that can't be right?

[6Foot2]

...IMPORTANT: Make sure to activate GUEST account, needed for Network Sharing of msi packages...

 

The Guest account is disabled at all stations including the room where we used this software earlier this year.

[Boredguy]

Depends how you want to deploy the software out to stations. We didn't get that popup and our guest accounts are disabled.

[Disease]

We installed it here, but we can only get the invigilator software running using the local admin account otherwise it throws an error, the pupil portion works fine on pupil locked down machines. #

 

We contacted Pearsons asking for help with getting it working on a normal teacher account, but they were no real help to be honest. Local admin, software runs, teacher account program crashes before launch. We even sent them the error logs and a screen shot of the crash but they were not interested in them. All they kept saying was its your permissions but were then unable to tell us which ones it might be.

[6Foot2]

Depends how you want to deploy the software out to stations. We didn't get that popup and our guest accounts are disabled.

 

On that point, and to clarify, we used SCCM rather than deploying the MSI through AD?Group Policy.

[Disease]

I resolved my problem, created an account that uses a roaming profile instead of a mandatory and voila.

[speckytecky]

Any way of easily changing the Invigilator setting in the Test Window, or is it a case of uninstall and reinstall?

[Zourous]

If you mean the test player, yes, press Shift + Alt + F12, type the password and you should get a number of options which include configure. They don't really highlight this that well.

[speckytecky]

Sadly this seemingly useful tool no longer works with the 'updated' Pearsons system. Tried it today, threw up loads of errors which I reported to their support - and they told me the tool was no longer useful.

 

The tool is supposedly integrated with the latest version. I installed the previous one first and downloaded the tool for that. Then I ran the upgrade.

 

However I attach the tool I originally downloaded