Exams delivered through CarmenCanvas Quizzes are now a standard part of instruction for both in-person and online courses. Because students typically use their own computers in varied testing environments, instructors must make intentional choices about exam design, quiz settings, proctoring strategies, and how to review exam details after the exam.
This guide aims to help instructors maintain exam integrity by helping you:
- Select appropriate CarmenCanvas quiz settings.
- Select appropriate online proctoring strategies, including when no technology proctoring aids are necessary.
- Understand the limitations of and your responsibilities associated with technology proctoring aids.
Assessment Design and Carmen Settings
Proctoring is only one component of exam integrity. No technical solution can replace thoughtful exam design and active instructor involvement.
Before determining if a technology proctoring aid is even necessary, consider instructional strategies that make academic misconduct less appealing or more difficult. Strong assessment design often reduces misconduct more effectively than technical controls.
Whether administered remotely or in-person, the following types of assessments may not need the use of technological proctoring aids:
- Low-stakes quizzes
- Knowledge checks
- Open-book or third-party assessments
- Assignments focused on reflection, analysis, or iteration
In these cases, academic integrity is often better supported through assessment design or quiz settings rather than through monitoring and surveillance.
Carmen Settings to Promote Academic Integrity
Whether you administer a quiz in-person or remotely, you can use CarmenCanvas Quizzes settings to promote academic integrity. Settings adjustments are often sufficient for academic integrity protections for low- to moderate-stakes assessments.
Whether you use Classic or New Quizzes, you can:
- Create questions that measure application or reasoning, not recall alone.
- Avoid reusing the same exam across semesters as many of your questions will end up shared on the internet.
- Use question banks (Classic Quizzes) or item banks (New Quizzes) and randomize questions to ensure students within the same class don’t get the same set of questions in the same order.
- Shuffle your answer choices, to make sure the answers are not in the same order for all your students.
- Set appropriate time limits to give students enough time to complete the test, but not so much extra time that they can look up (all) answers in the textbook or online.
- Show one question at a time—this makes AI tools less efficient by requiring students to scan each question one at a time, rather than scanning the entire quiz at once.
- Require an Access Code to ensure students only take the exam during the time you define; provide the code to the students in the classroom when you are ready for them to start.
- If using Honorlock, the Access Code will be generated automatically for the quiz once Honorlock has been enabled. Honorlock Access Codes should not be shared or students will be able to take the exam outside of Honorlock.
In New Quizzes, you can also:
- Disable document uploads, which prevents students from using the Upload a Document option to access documents on their computer, which could contain notes or other information.
- Detect multiple sessions, which determines if students are on two different devices at the same time during the same quiz.
- Note: Instructors will not see the warning, but it is available to the Learning Systems support team. If you submit a COAM case, COAM can reach out to Learning Systems teams for additional information that may help them investigate the situation.
In addition, you can use Honorlock’s Search & Destroy tool to remove questions that are commonly found online or that might be compromised on specific sites. This feature can be used even if you do not plan to enable Honorlock on the exam.
Proctoring Strategies
When assessment design and Carmen settings aren’t enough to ensure the academic integrity of an exam, proctoring strategies and technology aids may be useful. Remember that proctoring is not simply enabling a tool that records student behavior or restricts access to online applications; it involves active participation from you or other human proctors.
Your role as proctor includes:
- Providing clear expectations on what is and is not allowed on the exam.
- Carefully monitoring student behavior, which may include walking around the classroom or actively reviewing video recordings, flags, and reports.
- Documenting suspicious behavior.
- Making informed academic judgments based on the evidence you've gathered.
For any in-person exam, consider using additional environmental strategies to ensure the integrity of the exam. For example:
- Assign seating so you are aware of where specific students are seated for the exam, especially in large classes.
- Increase spacing between exam takers.
- Restrict personal belongings that students may have with them (or have visible) during the exam.
- Require students to show you the exam has been submitted before exiting the exam room, to ensure they aren’t going into the hall to finish.
- Actively walk around the room, looking at students’ monitors.
- Ask students not to dim their screens, as this could be a tactic used to hide the use of unauthorized tools.
- Ask students to remove smart watches or smart Glasses before starting the exam (having them turn these devices off can also help with any internet bandwidth issues the classroom might have).
Remember that, as the instructor, you are the proctor for all your exams, even if you determine that your efforts alone aren’t enough, and you add one of Ohio State’s technology proctoring aids. No technology proctoring aids can replace the instructor’s role.
Determine appropriate proctoring strategies
Depending on your class size, type of assessment, the stakes involved and your time as instructor, you may need technology proctoring aids to assist with proctoring your exam.
When determining the level of aid required, consider these questions first:
- Would redesigning the assessment reduce risk more effectively? As you look for ways to improve academic integrity, strongly consider if a redesign would be helpful. Sometimes redesigning an exam to be more process-oriented rather than knowledge focused may be enough to reduce the need for online monitoring.
- Will the exam be administered in-person or remotely?
- If in-person, you will need to have active proctors monitoring the exam environment. If this is not enough, consider enabling Respondus LockDown Browser to help you manage what students can access on their devices.
- If remotely, you have two options:
- Make the exam open-note and open-book, and rely on time limits or other exam design strategies to ensure students are engaging the assessment appropriately—without any monitoring service.
- Enable Honorlock to record student behavior during the exam so you can review the recordings and any AI flags after the exam.
- Is this a high‑stakes assessment? High-stakes often means the exam is worth ~20% or more of the final grade, or is a placement exam or licensure‑related exam. If it is a high-stakes exam, some technical proctoring aid will be helpful. If your exam is not high-stakes, strongly consider whether a proctoring aid is necessary or if it should be made open notes/book.
- Do you have a large number of students? Is the ratio of students to faculty and staff high? If it’s not reasonable for you and your support staff to monitor the entire class, looking for a technical proctoring aid might be useful.
- Do you have time to review every student’s exam? Online proctoring and monitoring tools, such as Honorlock, require individual review of recordings and reports. You may find it more time effective to proctor a one hour in-person exam than to review one-hour recordings for 40 students, even if you are watching them at 10x the speed.
Select a proctoring option
You have three options for how to proctor exams, Expand the dropdowns below to consider which approach is best for your assessment context.
Proctor without technology aids
In many cases, your best option might be to not use technology proctoring aids and to rely on live proctoring and managing the testing environment.
When to use this method/tool
If an exam is in‑person, low stakes, and the proctor-to-student ratio is manageable, then in-person proctoring with the appropriate strategies of controlling the testing environment may be enough.
What it does well
Decreases the layers of technology used for an exam, allowing students to more quickly access the assessment. It doesn’t require downloading extra tools. It allows students to use any device, including the student app on mobile devices.
Known limitations
Not using technology opens up the exam to whatever apps or technology the student has available on their devices, including access to grammar assistant tools, browser extensions that can assist in completing quizzes, AI tools and more. Be sure you can monitor student screens throughout the exam process.
Best practices
- Combine with strong exam design (randomized questions, time limits).
- Communicate expectations clearly to students before the exam.
- Have a practice exam.
Instructor responsibilities
- Actively proctor the room.
- Have assigned seating.
- Increase spacing between exam takers.
- Restrict personal belongings that students may have with them or have visible.
- Require that the students show you the exam has been submitted before exiting the exam room.
- Actively walk around the room looking at the monitors.
- Ask students to not dim their screens.
- Ask students to remove smart watches or smart Glasses.
- Document observations carefully.
- Be prepared with paper copies if suspicious behavior occurs.
Use Respondus Lockdown Browser
Respondus LockDown Browser is a tool that can be enabled on CarmenCanvas quizzes that blocks students from accessing anything outside of the quiz on that device. It does not monitor student behavior.
When to use this tool:
- In-person exams that are being monitored by live proctoring
- High-stakes assessments
- Situations where you want to block all unauthorized applications
What it does well
- Restricts access to other websites, apps, and screen tools.
- Stronger at blocking known cheating applications than browser-based tools.
When students take your Carmen quizzes and exams with LockDown Browser, they will be unable to:
- Print or copy.
- Take screenshots of questions.
- Type in another URL (web address).
- Access other applications (such as chat tools or another browser).
Known limitations
Respondus LockDown Browser does not monitor or record student behavior. Its effectiveness is limited when used for remote exams since students can use resources on devices other than the one they are using to take the exam.
Best practices
- Combine with strong exam design (randomized questions, time limits).
- Communicate expectations clearly to students before the exam.
- Have a practice exam.
Instructor responsibilities
- Actively proctor the room.
- Have assigned seating.
- Increase spacing between exam takers.
- Restrict personal belongings that students may have with them or have visible.
- Require that the students show you the exam has been submitted before exiting the exam room.
- Actively walk around the room looking at the monitors.
- Ask students to not dim their screens.
- Ask students to remove smart watches or smart Glasses.
- Document observations carefully.
- Be prepared with paper copies if suspicious behavior occurs.
- Review early exit reports after the exam is over to see if a student left the exam early or was blocked or banned.
Use Honorlock
Honorlock is an online proctoring solution that is fully integrated into CarmenCanvas. Like other automated remote proctoring tools, it works by recording a student's screen, webcam, and audio and flagging possible breaches of exam integrity.
When to use this tool
- Fully online, remote exams.
- Situations where in-person proctoring is not possible.
What it does well
- Records students via webcam and microphone.
- Flags unusual behaviors for instructor review.
- Supports exam monitoring when students are geographically dispersed.
Honorlock allows you to:
- Verify the identity of students taking an exam based on scans of approved identification.
- Record students’ webcam, audio, and computer screen for review after an exam has been submitted.
- Establish specific exam parameters to determine what the tool will flag or ignore. Settings may be adjusted for a variety of scenarios, such as an open-book exam.
Known limitations
- Requires significant instructor time to review recordings and reports.
- Requires that students take a photo of their environment to verify that no unauthorized resources are being used.
Best practices
- Enable the Honorlock App (now available) for added application-level protection.
- Combine with strong exam design (randomized questions, time limits).
- Communicate expectations clearly to students before the exam.
- Have a practice exam.
Instructor responsibilities
- Instructors establish the settings for Honorlock exams, deciding which features and restrictions to implement.
- Instructors are required to view all student recordings. While the system does use AI to detect infractions, it does not review the recordings. If you decide to use Honorlock, you must ensure you have time to review every submission.
Honorlock works best when instructors understand that its value is in post‑exam review, not real‑time prevention.
Summary Comparison
OPTION | BEST WHEN USED FOR | WHAT IT DOES WELL | KEY LIMITATIONS | INSTRUCTOR EFFORT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
No Proctoring Aids | Low‑stakes or authentic assessments | Scalable; fewer privacy concerns | Relies on exam design rather than enforcement | Low |
Respondus LockDown Browser | In‑person, high‑stakes exams | Strong application blocking | Requires active live proctoring; internet connectivity | Moderate–High |
Honorlock | Online, remote exams | Records behavior; flags activity | Video review required by instructor | High |
Key Takeaways for Instructors
- Exam integrity is broader than which proctoring tool you should use. Focus on assessment design and exam integrity first, proctoring tools second. When possible, redesign assessments to reduce risk rather than escalating surveillance.
- Use proctoring only when the stakes justify the effort and review time. If an exam is truly high-stakes, plan for:
- Thoughtful exam design.
- Clear communication with students.
- Adequate time to review results.
- No tool prevents misconduct without active instructor involvement. Expect to actively engage with any proctoring results.