[New Quizzes] Fail to Include Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor Settings When Copied
JamesSekcienski
on
06-10-2024
09:26 AM
When configuring quizzes to use Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor, it requires setting whether or not Respondus LockDown Browser is required, whether or not Respondus Monitor is required, and various other settings under each of those. This can require a significant amount of work to set-up and is a repetitive and tedious task to need to configure this repeatedly. We configure these settings when we build our blueprint courses. This way we ensure all the settings are configured properly for each quiz and instructors do not need to manually configure the settings for every quiz that needs it in all their courses. Instead the only step teachers would need to take is to click the LockDown Browser course navigation link to activate the course and all the quizzes will be properly set-up. In addition, if an instructor configured settings in their own course and it was copied to another course, then those same settings would copy over as well without needing to repeat the full setting configuration for each quiz. This process worked effectively for Classic Quizzes and all the quizzes in the synced courses and/or copied courses would have the same Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor settings as the original/source course. However, with New Quizzes, after configuring all the settings, when these are copied to courses, none of the settings are copied and all of the settings have to be set again for each quiz. We can see from the quiz names which ones should require Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor, but these need to be reset as a requirement for each quiz and any other settings that were customized need to be set. This becomes especially tedious in courses with numerous quizzes that require Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor. To ensure they are properly configured still, our tech team has to manually activate and configure the settings for each New Quiz that uses Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor in our blueprint courses and it has becoming time consuming. We still have some blueprint courses using Classic Quizzes and do not plan to migrate them to New Quizzes until this problem is fixed as it will only create more manual work that shouldn't be required. There is no indication in the Canvas Community from Instructure that this bug exists with New Quizzes and Respondus. When it was announced it was reported that is is supported in New Quizzes, but did not provide any warning nor note that settings would not copy. https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Releases/Canvas-Release-Notes-2020-07-18/ta-p/263083#toc-h... I have also made posts in the Community to help warn other users about this issue and they are also experiencing this same struggle of additional manual work being required now since the settings aren't copying with New Quizzes. https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/New-Quizzes-Discussion/Respondus-LockDown-Browser-Settings-Not-Co... https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/New-Quizzes-Discussion/New-Quizzes-Using-Respondus-LockDown-Brows... I submitted this as a support ticket in February 2023 when we confirmed this bug after we started our migration to New Quizzes for that Spring semester. It was acknowledged as a bug and reported as being investigated by Instructure in partnership with Respondus to resolve this issue. After over a year of waiting, I received an update that this is now considered a "feature" instead of a bug and needs to be submitted an Idea since it "would take a whole new rewrite of the code within the feature to get it to work."
When New Quizzes are copied ensure the Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor settings are copied too. The Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor settings are stored in an encoded format in the property "lockdown_browser_monitor_data". This value is properly copied when Classic Quizzes are copied and needs to be copied when New Quizzes are copied. This value is known to exist for both Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes to use Repsondus LockDown Browser and Monitor based on testing with the All Quizzes API endpoint (/api/v1/courses/:course_id/all_quizzes). The additional properties for Respondus LockDown Browser may also need to be copied for it to work properly ("require_lockdown_browser", "require_lockdown_browser_for_results" and "require_lockdown_browser_monitor").
admin,instructor
