Manage Users for Exams

[icecube]

How do you manage users for exams?

Server 2016 AD

Just add a new group with users used for exams specifically?

User needs to login with an "empty" desktop - almost like clean install except with all needed software.

Can this done with AD or GP?

[fiza]

We have user accounts specifically used for exams. We allocate a specific account to a particular student for the duration of the exam season. When it's all over we clear the home drive and it's ready for the next user.

[6Foot2]

We have exam users, and exam laptops. The exam laptops are managed (issued to specific students at exam time based upon need) by our Learning Support Department.

 

Exam users have restricted desktops and Start Menus, and no Internet access. Most of the users have no access to Office applications. Instead, they are offered Notepad, Wordpad, or ExamWritePad.

 

Link: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/educational-software/193723-examwritepad-50.html [Thanks, @ass17]

 

There are a few exams our students take that require Internet access, and they use a 'locked in' environment where if the student tries to break out it alerts the invigilator and (potentially) invalidates their exam session [eg: Pearson On Screen Tests]

 

Controlled assessments are sat over a number of sessions. On these occasions I agree with the teacher whose students are sitting the controlled assessment that I will create a number of student users who can only logon at a specific station, or stations, and only at specific times. Once the assessment is over the controlled assessment users are locked out of the network, their saved work collected and forwarded to our Exams Officer for sending to the exam board.

[jthompson]

Separate exam accounts here. We have batches of numbered accounts for different subjects (exam.sci0001 ... exam.sci0100, exam.ict0001 ...etc.). When a teacher needs some, we refresh the required number and send over a list of student names, exam usernames and passwords for them to hand out. If there aren't any going spare for that subject, I'll just add some more. A student might therefore be assigned several exam accounts across a number of subjects. It means that the work they produce doesn't get mixed up, we can provide Internet access for one exam but not the rest and their accounts can be disabled either side of exams as much as possible.

The logon hours in AD are also limited to something like 8am-4pm Mon-Fri, with no remote access available using those accounts.

We've found that some subjects like to preserve the exam accounts and associated data until the end of the course, so being able to arbitrarily add more accounts is useful to meet demand when accounts aren't ready to be recycled yet.

[noelmm]

We have exam laptops and exam users. Each user is a member of an AD group where internet is blocked and access to any drives are blocked except for their user area and local D drive, we also block the calculator. When anyone logs in to the laptops Exam WritePad is set to run on start-up so the students don't have to do anything other than focus on the exam.

[jthompson]

Discuss the exam conditions with your exams officer, because preventing access to things like calculator and anything with spell checking might be crucial for a lot of exams.

[icecube]

Thanks, have some ideas to play around with now.