Learn more about full exam support.
Make a proctoring request
We ask that you enter all proctored exam requests into the Proctored Exams Portal prior to the start of the semester whenever possible. We will accommodate late requests as best as we can, but timely communication from you is necessary, and you may need to adjust your expectations and schedule.
If this is not your first semester using full exam support, then you can expect an email reminder with a request for exam details. Remember that the exam details include things like exam title, exam duration, materials allowed, etc. It is not required to provide exam content when you receive the reminder email. If the course had full exam support in the past, the Proctored Exams Portal will be loaded with exam details from the previous like semester. Review those details and make any edits if needed.
As you update your exam details in the portal, please keep in mind that Midterms and Final Exam week are the busiest weeks of the year at the on-campus test centers. We recommend allowing your students a longer exam window so that your student is able to schedule an appointment. However, your students will not be able to start scheduling exam appointments for your exams until exam dates are entered and approved. Because many students prefer to schedule early in order to get their preferred testing time, it is imperative that exam dates be provided as early as possible in the semester.
Final Exams
Flexible final exam dates
Instructors of Distance and Online Education (DOE) courses have a unique relationship with the Office of the Registrar. You are not required to request a final exam date, start time, or location from the Registrar's Office. You may choose your own date(s) and students may choose their own start time during Finals Week. You will not need to wait for an assigned final exam date or time from your department. This is because a physical classroom will not be needed for your students to complete the final. Your students will complete the final exam at an on-campus test center or with the virtual proctor (exam delivery method is determined by you).
DOE instructors can offer their students more flexibility in scheduling. It is recommended that you allow a two-day window for the final exam and no less than a 24 hour window. With an extended exam window, students can more easily find an available seat at a test center. Our test centers are typically open 9 AM - 9 PM. Students who work full-time or have small children may find the longer exam window suits their schedule better. In addition, an extended exam window should reduce the number of make-up exam requests during Finals Week.
In Fall and Spring semester, Finals Week is the week after classes are complete. For Winter and Summer sessions, there are one or two days dedicated to final exams instead of an entire week. Check the Office of the Registrar's Academic Calendar for more details and to help you determine the best dates for your final exam.
Flexible final exam duration
In addition to having flexibility in scheduling, DOE courses are not tied to a two-hour final exam window. The Office of the Registrar does not require instructors to use the full two-hour period even for in-person courses. Students should, however, be notified well in advance of the exam if the exam period will be shortened. If your final exam is not cumulative, we encourage you to consider that a two-hour final exam becomes a four hour final exam for a student with extended time. The longer the exam duration, the longer a student needs to occupy a seat at a test center and the harder it becomes for students to schedule.
Departmental policy
Instructors should know the final exam policies for their department. Please schedule any final exams following the policies of your department.
Exam delivery methods
Exam delivery methods refers to the type of proctoring your students will have while the exam. Proctored exams in online or hybrid courses can be completed in more than one setting depending on the exam medium (online or paper) and your preference. In order to choose an Exam Delivery Method, you should have a basic understanding of what proctoring at a test center versus virtual proctoring means for your students. Proctored exams for in-person courses can only use the delivery method Iowa City Test Center Only. Learn more about available exam delivery methods by visiting the following page in the PEP User Guide: Exam Delivery Methods
Updates to ICON
Once you have indicated your course needs full exam support, you will find two new modules in your ICON site:
- Exams - Fall 2024 [Faculty Only] (please leave it unpublished and invisible to students) and
- Exams - Fall 2024 [For Students] (which is published for students).
The Exams - Fall 2024 [For Students] module also includes the Practice Exam for students in a course with proctored online exams. The Practice Exam provides the guidelines for using the virtual proctor, Honorlock, while at the same time checking the student’s computer for compatibility with the virtual proctoring platform. We encourage students to take the Practice Exam prior to each proctored online exam to check for updates to the Chrome browser and to the virtual proctor, Honorlock.
You may also notice updates to the Gradebook which include categories for each exam. For courses where students are allowed to choose between testing at a test center or testing with the virtual proctor, there are two corresponding versions of the exam with identical content. To prevent the two exam copies from counting twice towards student grades, we place both exam copies into a gradebook category and then program the category to drop the lowest score. Please reach out if you have any questions about this.
Proctoring tools for online exams
Honorlock - virtual proctoring
Honorlock uses artificial intelligence (AI) to proctor student exams on their personal computers. It is able to proctor students without human assistance. Honorlock can only proctor ICON exams; it is unable to proctor other types of assignments in ICON.
You and your students must use the browser Chrome and install the Honorlock extension for Chrome. Honorlock sets similar proctoring parameters as you would in the classroom. It also records the student while testing and the student's computer screen, it provides you with lockdown options, flags suspicious behavior, and blocks access to ChatGPT and other similar AI (artificial intelligence) extensions/plugins/tools.
An Exam Integrity Review will be provided by DOE Exam Services after your exam window has ended. This review will give you information about student activity during the exam. You will be able to examine the recording yourself and make decisions about any academic integrity violations.
Honorlock is available by request for courses with full exam support. Visit this page for more information on Honorlock:
https://teachonline.uiowa.edu/services/exams/honorlock-instructors
Respondus Lockdown Browser - test center proctoring
Respondus Lockdown Browser, available free of charge for any University of Iowa course, is a browser that locks your students' computers into a single window of ICON until they press submit or the time expires. No other windows, tabs, or programs are accessible while using Lockdown Browser. This includes ChatGPT and other similar AI browser extensions/plugins/tools.
Students taking online proctored exams at the test center will use this browser as the preferred method to secure the computer during the exam. Students will still be monitored by the proctors at the test center via camera.
Visit this page for more details on Lockdown Browser:
Available test centers
Students taking exams in a course with full exam support will either test at the North Campus test center or at the Student Disability Services (SDS) test center. Both test centers are closed on designated University of Iowa holidays and have slightly different operating hours.
Location assignments are based on whether the student has exam accommodations and the type of accommodation. The location will be automatically assigned to the student after all exam details are submitted to the Proctored Exams Portal.
Click here to view Campus Test Center rules and expectations for students.
Online exams
Benefits of proctored online exams
Instructors of online courses are choosing online exams over paper exams for many of the following reasons:
- Scalable. It takes the same amount of time to set up an exam for 1000 students as it does for 30 students.
- Minimizes cheating. When using features like question banks and randomization, no two exams are the same.
- Blocks ChatGPT. Deter access to ChatGPT and other AI browser extensions/plugins/tools.
- Worldwide reach. Students can test from almost anywhere around the globe, including their own homes.
- Flexible. Exam windows can be flexible for students testing early in the morning or late at night.
- Saves money. Valuable classroom space is freed up.
- Instant results. Automatic grading allows you and your students immediate results.
- Highly customizable. It is easier to adapt content for your students who need accommodations.
When using proctored online exams, it is important to prepare yourself and your students for online testing. We encourage you to review and apply the ideas in the list below to help make the experience a positive one.
Clear Expectations. Write clear directions with examples that are easy to follow in a high-stress environment. Read your directions out loud or have someone else review them to ensure they make sense. We also recommend that you let students know what will be considered cheating and what your policy is for academic misconduct.
Practice Exam. When using technology to complete a high stakes assessment, it is wise to provide a way for students to practice with that technology first. Use a practice quiz or practice test to acquaint your students with online exams. This can reduce stress and reduce technical problems on the day of the exam.
Technical support. Communicate to your students who they should contact in the event of problem during their online exam and your criteria for make-up exams. Many problems can be prevented if students complete a practice quiz or exam in advance.
Showing work. It is not easy for students to write formulas or share steps in solving a mathematical equation in the Quizzes tool of ICON. Because each symbol requires multiple clicks within menus, the focus becomes more about finding the correct symbol needed. We do not recommend using the text box in a quiz/exam to show work. There is not a perfect solution, but it is possible to have students submit their scratch paper by taking a photo and then uploading that photo.
You may have students who struggle to complete a proctored online exam.
Common scenarios include:
- Students with a lack of working equipment
- Students with a faulty internet connection
- Students on active military duty
- Students living overseas
Students with a lack of working equipment or a faulty internet connection should plan to complete their exams at one of the Iowa City test centers. If those students live far from the Iowa City test centers, encourage them to borrow a computer from a friend or family member. You can also encourage the student to try taking the exam in a different location like a local library or a friend's house. If none of the above is possible, please contact Exam Services.
Students on active military duty may be in a secure location. Taking a computer proctored exam that records student activity and location information may not be allowed. In these cases, Exam Services will help you create and send a paper copy of your proctored online exam. The paper exam can be proctored by a military officer and returned to you via email.
Students living overseas may be in a country where access to certain platforms on the internet is often blocked. This happens frequently in China where access to the virtual proctor, Honorlock is blocked. Those students will need to be proctored individually with Zoom. Contact Exam Services for more information.
Building the online exam
Keep in mind that AI is exceptionally good at helping students answer multiple-choice, true-false, fill in the blank, and essay questions. Consider rewriting your questions to take advantage of the many different question types found in ICON, including fill in multiple blanks, multiple answers, numerical answer, formula, file upload, or multiple dropdowns. If you do use multiple-choice or true-false questions, write some new, or revise some existing questions each semester to be more effective. Consider the following:
Number of answer choices. Not all multiple-choice questions are created equal. There is no rule which says that all multiple-choice questions must have four answer choices.
Avoid selecting a missing word. Do not write questions as an incomplete sentence with a missing word. All it takes is a little guesswork to recall a single vocabulary item.
Avoid direct quotations. Avoid using direct quotations from a text. This becomes a simple recall question.
Avoid extremes. Students know that an extreme (always/never), nonsensical, or unreasonable answer is usually not correct. Distractors should be incorrect but still plausible.
Keep choices similar in style. Answer choices in a question should be similar in style, length, or grammatical structure. It is striking when one answer choice is very dense, and the others are short. It is an unnecessary clue about the right answer.
Avoid giving clues. When possible, avoid giving clues to questions within other exam questions. Students are looking though the quiz or exam and not necessarily working in the order you intended.
Avoid using “none of the above” or “all of the above” or “A and B,” etc. Students only need partial knowledge to answer these questions. By selecting none of the above, students do not demonstrate that they know the correct answer. By selecting all of the above, students only need to recognize that two of the answer choices are correct.
Ask students to recall principles or apply rules to get the correct answer. Put application of knowledge into the multiple-choice question. Write scenarios that must be analyzed and not simply recognized.
Question Types
There are many question types available in ICON Quizzes. You will need to manually grade some question types while others are automatically graded by ICON. For questions that are auto graded, be sure to provide ICON with the correct answer(s). We encourage you to label your questions as you build them in ICON. These labels are not visible to students but will help you identify question content for future revisions.
Here are the question types that are auto graded:
- Matching
- True/False
- Multiple Choice
- Fill in the Blank
- Formula Question
- Multiple Answers
- Numerical Answer
- Multiple Dropdowns
- Fill in Multiple Blanks
Here are the question types that you must manually grade:
It is important to carefully consider what your students will need access to during the online exam. During a virtually proctored exam, you may find that the camera can't quite see everything that is happening or that students may have something in the environment that they shouldn't. You will want to weigh the pros and cons of what materials could potentially be misused and what students need to have for an online exam. Below you will find a list of the most frequently used materials allowed.
- Calculators. Both the virtual proctor, Honorlock, and the tool used at the on-campus test center, Respondus Lockdown Browser, have built calculators. Those calculators can be set to either four function mode or scientific mode. The built-in calculators do not have a graphing option or a financial option. If you decide to let students bring their own, we recommend having students show their calculator to the proctor at the test center or to the camera when virtually proctored.
- Scratch paper. Scratch paper can be helpful for exams which require students to perform calculations in order to arrive at an answer. Scratch paper at a test center is highly controlled, but there is very little control when the student is testing with the virtual proctor. Therefore, it is important to weigh whether the need for scratch paper outweighs the potential for misconduct. Students have been know to come to virtual exams with scratch paper that already has information on it. It is very hard to monitor scratch paper through the webcam on a computer; it is not always possible to see what students are looking at if they look away.
Request support
Once you are ready to request proctored exam support for your student or students, you will need to add the Proctored Exams Portal to your ICON site and then, add your exam details (exam window, duration, etc.) to the portal.
To learn how to add the Proctored Exams Portal to the navigation menu in your ICON site, click on the first link below. To learn more about the features of the Proctored Exams Portal and how they work, click the link to the user guide below.
NOTE: The portal does not work on mobile devices and operates best when using the Chrome browser.