Using Brightspace to administer classroom quizzes

Checklist For All Quizzes

Before Quiz Day

1. No more than five questions per quiz page. The system office recommends configuring your Brightspace test such that no more than five questions are listed per page.
2. Activate the quiz and set the start/end dates as needed. All quizzes are set to Inactive by default. You must activate them manually. You can also set a start date and end date to control the window during which students can start the quiz.
3. Remind students to charge their laptop batteries. Remind your students to bring fully charged laptops to class on test day.
4. Have a backup plan. This technology is very reliable, but stuff happens. A backhoe in Minneapolis could cut a fiber cable and all your students could lose their connection to the Internet during your test. Always have a backup plan.

On Quiz Day

1. Tell students to restart their laptops. All students should restart their laptops in the classroom just prior to taking the test. It is not enough to just wake the laptop up from a hibernation state. It should be restarted in the room in which the student will be taking the test. It only takes a minute.
2. Tell students to disconnect their other devices from Wi-Fi. Ask students to power down their other mobile devices (e.g., phones, tablets), put them in airplane mode, or disable Wi-Fi.
3. Tell students to start the quiz. Ask students to go to Assessments...Quizzes and select the quiz. They start the quiz by selecting the Start Quiz or the Launch Lockdown Browser button.

Additional Checklist Items When Using Lockdown Browser

Respondus Lockdown Browser (LDB) is a third-party tool that is integrated with our Brightspace system and that you can use to prevent students from using their laptops for nefarious purposes (e.g., email, other web browsers, chat, printing) while taking a Brightspace quiz. It essentially locks students out of their laptops for the duration of the test and is designed for use during proctored classroom testing sessions.

Before Quiz Day

1. Enable LDB on new and copied quizzes. If you have copied Brightspace quizzes from a previous semester that were configured to use Lockdown Browser, do not assume that everything is all set. You need to check those quizzes to make sure LDB is configured properly. Select Assessments…Quizzes, select the Lockdown Browser tab, select Continue to Lockdown Browser, and let your list of quizzes load into this tab page. It may take a minute to load this page. If it fails to load, try again. You should see Required next to each quiz that is configured to use Lockdown Browser.
2. Conduct a quick practice quiz. Set up a single-item quiz configured to use LDB and ask students to take it either in class or at a distance. This would require students to install or update LDB if needed and would identify any technical issues ahead of the real test.
3. Remind students to install/update LDB and configure your quiz accordingly. If you have not conducted a practice quiz, remind students to install/update Lockdown Browser before they come to class for the test. If you activate your quiz and set a start date in the future, your students will be able to open the quiz start page where they will find a link to download LDB if they have never installed it before or launch LDB, which will trigger any auto-updates.

On Quiz Day

1. Tell students to restart their laptops. All students should restart their laptops in the classroom just prior to taking the test. It is not enough to just wake the laptop up from a hibernation state. It should be restarted in the room in which the student will be taking the test. It only takes a minute.
2. Tell students to disconnect their other devices from Wi-Fi. Ask students to power down their other mobile devices (e.g., phones, tablets), put them in airplane mode, or disable Wi-Fi.
3. Remind students to save their answers. Students should save their answers as they go. This will create an quiz attempt that you can recover if needed.
4. Reveal the quiz password. If you have applied a quiz password, reveal it to the students.
5. Tell students to start the quiz. Ask students to go to Assessments...Quizzes and select the quiz. They start the quiz by selecting the Start Quiz button. If you are using Lockdown Browser, students should select the Launch Lockdown Browser button.

Security Tips

1. Reveal the quiz password. If you have applied a quiz password, reveal it to the students.
2. Change the quiz password. If you have applied a quiz password, change it once you are sure everyone has started the quiz. This keeps your test more secure.

Potential Problems and How to Handle Them

Thousands of WSU students take Brightspace quizzes in class each semester and technical problems are rare. Proper planning resolves 99% of them, but it's good to know what can happen during a live test session and how to handle it.

• Student did not install/update Lockdown Browser ahead of time. This can be updated/installed in a couple of minutes prior to starting the quiz. Tell the student to go to Assessments...Quizzes and open the quiz. At the bottom of the page is a link to download the latest version of Lockdown Browser. Once they have it installed, have them quit the browser session, restart the browser, go to Brightspace, and start the quiz.
• All students are being asked to update Lockdown Browser. This problem is rare. Typically, auto-update is not enforced when Respondus releases a new version. Students can update at their leisure and as long as they install it ahead of time, they should all be good to go on test day. However, sometimes Respondus enforces an auto-update on important releases. If that happens between when all of your students installed/updated Lockdown Browser and when you administer your real test, you could find yourself in a situation where all students need to apply the update before they can start the test. If this happens, students should follow the instructions to apply the update, shut down their browsers, reopen their browsers, log back into Brightspace, and start the quiz.
• Student loses Wifi connection during the quiz. A student usually detects this when quiz answers are no longer being saved. Have the student turn Wi-Fi on their laptop off and then back on again. It should reconnect to warrior automatically. Once it does, have them refresh their browser page and resume the quiz.
• Student's quiz page freezes and/or the quiz cannot be submitted. If the student can't scroll up or down on a quiz page or cannot submit a quiz, have them close their browser, restart it, log back into Brightspace, and resume the quiz. This assumes the student has been saving answers. If the student is using Lockdown Browser, tell the student to do a hard restart of the laptop, log back into Brightspace, and resume the quiz.
• Student's quiz page freezes and/or the quiz cannot be submitted and quiz answers have not been saved. This is a big problem because the student is going to need to restart the browser or the laptop and will lose all the unsaved answers. One solution is to have the student write down the answers and then transfer them into the quiz once it resumes.
• Student cannot re-enter the quiz after a restart. This usually means that the quiz end time or timer has elapsed. You can extend these for the entire class or just for this student using a special access condition. It may also be the case that the student does not know the new password.
• Web browser issues. If a student cannot get into a quiz and nothing seems to work, ask the student to use a different web browser. There may be some problem with the student's preferred browser that needs technical attention. Brightspace is approved for use on Chrome and Firefox, both of which are pre-installed on all WSU laptops, as is Microsoft Edge. Apple Safari is not recommended for use with Brightspace.
• All hell breaks loose. Before you throw in the towel, call TLT (tlt@winona.edu). We will run over to your class and help you.