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Secure Testing

We have had a lot of questions from students lately on secure testing. Secure testing is the ability, in emstesting, to make students use the secure testing browser when they begin a test. There are some issues that can arise when students try to use secure testing. First, we’ll go through what secure testing is, and how to enable it on a test (on the instructor side). Then in the lower section of this article will be some troubleshooting steps the students can take if they are having issues.

Secure Testing Article

There are a lot of options for our test settings in emstesting. One of which is the ability to enable secure testing. It is important to know what is involved and its limitations before enabling this for your students.

When secure testing is enabled it has the students install a secure testing browser. When installed, when a student clicks begin test, it then opens the test in secure testing browser. When it is open it does not let the students navigate to other sites or applications. This is obviously a great way to lessen cheating or looking up answers.

Secure testing can only be used on Windows 8/10, Mac OS, or iPad. This will not work on phones/mobile devices besides the iPad. It will also not operate/install on Chromebooks at this time. The links for downloading and installing a secure testing browser is right in your student’s test instructions before they begin. They just download the file, then run the file from its downloaded location to run through the installer. Now when they go to ‘begin test’ on a normal browser, it will open the test in the secure testing browser.

Secure testing option is a setting per-test. This can be enabled by being logged in as an instructor, clicking a class then click ‘edit class. From here go to the tests tab. If you ‘edit’ a test that has been added (or add a new test), it will let you change the test settings. The ‘Require Platinum Secure Testing’ is the checkbox that you can check/uncheck to enable/disable this function.

Student Troubleshooting

If a student is having problems launching a secure testing test, first, they need to make sure they are on a compatible device. Must be an operating system running windows 8/10 or Mac OS (including up-to-date iPads).

If the students are clicking begin test and agreeing to secure testing yet it doesn’t open, there may be software that isn’t allowing secure testing to open. Most often these are particular antivirus programs. Most antivirus programs have a ‘temporary disable’ feature. Temporarily disabling the antivirus can often allow secure testing to now open. Also just making sure no other software is running on the computer except for the browser that is going to initially launch the test, can help a lot too. Secure testing’s function makes it so other software running, or switching to other windows besides secure testing, is blocked. So if there is something else running, it may interfere with the initial startup of secure testing.

Often students only have trouble on the first test before they’ve installed secure testing. They’ll run through the steps, but secure testing isn’t launching at all. Often in this case the software was downloaded through the link on the test page but wasn’t actually installed. In this case, the student must run the file/installer that was downloaded. The software must be installed like any other software. Just having the student re-download the file, and run through the full installer, fixes their secure testing issue.

As always if your students have any issues, have them start a chat with our support team from the ‘help’ icon on the lower right of our website.

If you or your students ever have any questions, they can always feel free to reach out to our support team.