Respondus has recently released their beta of the Live Proctoring feature. This feature allows faculty to use video conferencing tools like Google Meet to monitor students while taking their exam. 

Set Up Live Proctoring

To enable this feature, navigate to the Respondus Dashboard as shown in our Respondus Basics documentation, and enable the requirement for students to use the Respondus Lockdown Browser. 

It should not be necessary to enable either the password or advanced settings for the Respondus Lockdown Browser. However, the Browser requirement needs to be enabled for the option to enable proctoring tools to appear. When they appear, select the option labeled "Allow instructor live proctoring for this exam."

A menu will appear allowing you to select the video conferencing tool of your choice. Our recommendation is to select Other to use Blackboard Collaborate, as this is the primary platform provided by Christopher Newport University. However, Google Meet is also usable. 

You will also be asked to provide something known as a Start Code. This Start Code is not applied to the Video Conferencing platform you have selected. Rather, it is a sort of password being used to prevent the student from accessing the exam in the Respondus Lockdown Browser without it. This code is used by the instructor to ensure that students are first logging in and joining the needed video conferencing tool, where that code will then be provided to the students. Do not post this code anywhere on your Scholar course. 

You can also edit the instructions at the beginning of the exam, to give students extra context on how to begin the exam. 

Once you have set the proctoring settings, click "Save and Close". 

The exam has now been set to use Live Proctoring. Do not alter the test settings after this point.

Using Live Proctoring

To use live proctoring, students must first use a normal web browser to log into the video conferencing tool of their choice. Please note that this is with a normal web browser, not the Respondus Lockdown Browser. Once all students are present in the video conferencing tool to your satisfaction, you can then provide them with the Start Code you added to the test. 



Once students have obtained the start code, they can then open the Lockdown Browser and navigate to the test. Please note that they should not close the normal browser to do so; while the Lockdown Browser will block their ability to access the normal browser, the normal browser (and thus the video conferencing tool) will still be running in the background on their computer. The Lockdown Browser will also continue to block them from accessing the exam unless they have the Start Code you have provided. 

The faculty member can then use the video conferencing tool to monitor students during their exam. 


After submitting the exam, students can then exit the exam, close the Lockdown Browser, and close the browser containing their video conferencing tool.