Removing the "No Printing" Option from the Quiz Generator
Academic integrity is paramount for all assessments. The Quiz Generator in CoursePlus has a number of features which help to maintain academic integrity while taking quizzes or exams. One of the oldest of these features is the ability to prevent students from printing a quiz or exam page.
The CoursePlus team recently learned of changes to both Safari and Chrome which bypass the code we have in place to prevent printing of quizzes/exams. While the code we have continues to work if you select “File” > “Print” in a web browser, both Safari and Chrome changed their “Export to PDF” and “Save as PDF” commands to use a different rendering process that ignores any in-page code to block, hide, or otherwise disable the printing of page content. Additionally, Chrome added a new right-click menu that prints any content that is selected, regardless of any in-page code to prevent doing so.
Given that we no longer have an effective way of preventing students from printing quizzes or exams, the CoursePlus team will remove this option from the Quiz Generator. It simply does not work at this point.
The only real option still available for preventing printing is to use a “lockdown” browser like Respondus. The problem with these tools is threefold:
- First, they are considered malware by many organizations because of the deep access they require to the computer operating system and are banned on some federal and corporate networks.
- Second, they have a regular failure rate of around 2%. This means that for every 100 people who take an exam using these tools, the browser or entire operating system crashes for two of those people.
- Third, the manufacturers of these tools only work with large learning management system vendors like Canvas or Blackboard. They do not work with bespoke systems like CoursePlus.
An alternative option is to use proctoring software. Proctoring systems have a cost that is invariably passed on to students, and these systems are not without their issues, including legal questions around FERPA and student privacy.
BSPH academic leadership and the CoursePlus team take academic integrity very seriously. We continue to explore options that enforce academic integrity while also allowing flexibility for faculty, students, and staff. The instructional design team at the Center for Teaching and Learning is happy to work with you to consider alternative forms of assessment if printable quizzes or exams no longer work for you. The instructional design team can offer techniques to improve both exam question randomization as well as question design to make cheating more difficult. Faculty are encouraged to change the content of their exams every year, and the CTL instructional design team can give you many options to explore.
As always, if you have questions about this new change, please reach out to the CTL Help team, and we will be happy to answer any questions you might have.