Banning USB sticks and exam season

[benward1]

We’re exploring banning USB sticks and although can easily allow these for our exam accounts, I wonder how others handle completed work. Do you have them save it to the account, and move/print it after? Should you allow USBs for exam accounts?

[thimon]

Our exam laptops print to copiers via PaperCut. Student’s work is saved to the desktop, which they then drop and drag onto a shortcut on the desktop at the end of the exam, which points to a shared folder. The folder permissions is setup so the exam user cannot access / browse the folder contents but can write files to it. This allowed us to do away with USB sticks for exams.

[benward1]

Thanks. PaperCut we use for printing so I am questioning the importance of USBs aside from using to send to exam boards (rarely).

[6Foot2]

Typically, we had dedicated exam users. The user allocation was managed by one of our Learning Support Coordinators (for all exam takers, not only statemented students where computer/laptop use was mandated for the exam)

 

The LS Support Coordinator had read access to the home folders of the exam users. She would print the work and get the student to countersign as their work (where appropriate)

 

When exam season was over I would archive the work of the exam users, incase of appeal, empty the home folders ready for re-use during the next set of exams.

 

I said "typically" at the start because there were a small number of exams where students had to logon as their own users to access a portfolio of work they had been working on for two years. On those occasions, Internet access for those students was blocked whenever they were under exam conditions. Sounds wierd, I know, but that is what I had to do.

[kennysarmy]

We’re exploring banning USB sticks and although can easily allow these for our exam accounts, I wonder how others handle completed work. Do you have them save it to the account, and move/print it after? Should you allow USBs for exam accounts?

 

Saved (ExamWritePad) - then printed before they leave the room ideally.

 

Student's don't know Exam account password, at start of next session invigilator logs account in, clears out old files and backups from previous exam and cycle begins again.

 

Recovery would still be possible from shadow copies and backups if necessary.

 

Don't trust USB's, work is saved to the network or cached locally if WiFi or network connection lost.

[Olliedawg]

Saved (ExamWritePad) - then printed before they leave the room ideally.

 

Student's don't know Exam account password, at start of next session invigilator logs account in, clears out old files and backups from previous exam and cycle begins again.

 

Recovery would still be possible from shadow copies and backups if necessary.

 

Don't trust USB's, work is saved to the network or cached locally if WiFi or network connection lost.

 

Similar to what we do here.

 

Students are all assigned an exam user account (which they do not get given the password for)

 

Invigilator/Myself logs them in before the session.

 

ExamWritePad is used - Exam is saved locally on the C: drive. Robocopy script runs every 5 minutes, copying the exam to the home folder of the exam user, so we always have a copy in two places incase of a disaster.

 

Exams are printed by myself at the end of the session.

 

I have thought about exploring other methods, but what we have works well, and the Exams Officer is perfectly happy with it

[jthompson]

ExamWritePad here mainly, with dedicated exam accounts with user areas. Exams are saved to the user areas, with EWP configured to save the regular automatic backups locally. Exam officers have privileges over the user areas. When stuff needs to be printed, that's printed at the end of the exam so that candidates can sign the hard copy before leaving the room.

 

I wouldn't want to have USB sticks in the mix. That seems really messy to me.

[Jawloms]

We recently banned USB drives. There were a few staff who "couldn't work without one", but since we've banned them weirdly they seem to have been able to work after all! Resistance coming up to it, but then have heard no complaints since we did it. We have a machine in our office for transferring things to/from USB so we know what is going in and out.

[DGardiner]

We've had them banned for years via eset.

 

ive got a handfull that are whitelisted for it use - for anyone else its just not an option

[PotNoodleTech]

Banned for pupil pcs here which is 80% of equipment but doing staff now too - do have staff that need it such as for transferring work to 3d printers or photography cameras, etc - in the long term need to find ways around all that.

 

Done it by GPO for now - is there a way to actually whitelist USB devices in GPO or do you need to use 3rd party programs as mentioned above?

 

Cheers