When administering a test within Edfinity, you may want to "tunnel" the student within the test session and restrict access to other areas of Edfinity. For example, you may not want the student to be able to look at their previous assignment work. This is accomplished in Edfinity using a "locked session." For the duration of the session, navigation within Edfinity is limited to items within the designated assignment. The basic flow is as follows:
- Instructor indicates that an assignment uses a locked session.
- Before starting the assignment, the student is informed that the session will be locked.
- After starting, the student can answer items and navigate between items, but can no longer access other assignment within the course until the session is completed. Note: If the student in enrolled in multiple courses, they will still be able to access other unlocked courses.
While a locked session does not by itself prevent the student from opening up additional browser tabs or taking other prohibited actions, you can combine Edfinity locked sessions with online proctoring solutions like Honorlock in order to fully protect academic integrity.
Enabling locked sessions within an assignment
In order to enable locked sessions within an assignment, perform the following steps:
- Go to your assignment, and select the Settings tab.
- Under Environment Settings, open the Restrictions group, and select Lock down the student session.
- Select the Publish button to publish the change.
Using locked sessions in conjunction with password protection
Normally, when you require an activation code in order to start an assignment, the use of an activation code is only required once to start the assignment and then access to the assignment is unrestricted for the duration of the assignment. For example, a student uses an activation code and then reloads the page, or navigates away, and comes back to the assignment later.
If, however, you desire a more restrictive environment, you can enable both locked sessions and the requiring of an activation code. In this case, access will be permitted to the assignment for only as long as the activation code is valid. Activation codes by default expire after 30 minutes from time of first use (this can be changed). After the code has expired, if the student leaves their session and then returns, they will be asked to enter a new activation code in order to continue.