Question: How to secure an exam administered on student laptops

3 pointsby niels_olson17 anni fa3 comments

Our school, all medical schools, are moving to digital exams. The only way I can think of ensuring they would be secure is to boot every laptop from a live CD or over the network.

The National Board of Medical Examiners, meanwhile, is pushing QuestionMark, which only runs its "secure" browser on Windows. I'm just a student helping the faculty; I don't have a copy of Windows. Would anyone be willing to run the "QuestionMark Secure" in a Windows VM and see if it protests?

Feeling awkward here, but would greatly appreciate the assist.

3 comments

timbowen17 anni fa

I think forcing them to boot over the network to access the test is your best bet. While QuestionMark may run in a windows VM on some machine the vast variety of different Linux/BSD distributions will make setting up that VM a nightmare.

jws17 anni fa

I think having a room full of med students network boot their random vendor laptops will take about as long, and succeed about as well, as asking a room full of computer nerds to draw a pint of blood from themselves.

tptacek17 anni fa

Yes. My contact info is here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tptacek