While taking a quiz some students could connect to the internet to get information that would assist them during the exam. This affects the academic integrity. The Safe Exam Browser (SEB) can help avoid this problem as it can control the Internet and access to specific application through the browser action control. Instructors can configure Safe Exam Browser to behave differently for each exam. 

Safe Exam Browser is a customized web browser, available for Windows (7, 8.1, 10), macOS (starting 10.7, recommended 10.11 or newer) and iOS (9.3.5 or newer). This is currently not available on Android. The browser application must be downloaded and installed on the device that the student uses to attempt the quiz. The restrictions placed on students are similar to those in the quiz Extra restrictions on attempts > Browser security "Full screen pop-up with some JavaScript security" option, but it can do a much more effective job of restricting their abilities to access applications beyond the quiz attempt window when taking a quiz.

If you have set up your Quiz to use Safe Exam Browser, students must download and install the Safe Exam Browser in order to attempt the quiz. 

When the student enters their quiz session:

• The browser window won't have a URL or search field and back/forward navigation and reload can be disabled.
• The Safe Exam Browser instance cannot be closed until the test is submitted.
• Shortcut keys such as Win+Tab, Alt+Tab, Ctrl+Alt+Del, Alt+F4, Print Screen, Cmd+Tab are disabled or cannot be used to close Safe Exam Browser or to switch to other user accounts on the computer. 
• The possibility of taking screen shots is disabled.
• The clipboard is cleared when starting and quitting Safe Exam Browser.
• The browser context menu is disabled.
• Specific web sites/pages/resources can be configured to be accessible during an exam, using a URL filter.
• Spell checking and dictionary lookup is disabled, but can optionally be allowed.
• Switching to other applications is disabled by default, it is possible to allow access to applications by creating a customized configuration file using the Safe Exam Browser configuration tool. (Note: if you want to allow students to use applications such as Word or Excel that will require the creation of a customized configuration file created through the SEB configuration tool as detailed here for Windows and Mac. Please be in touch for more assistance with this at ltshelp@yorku.ca).

How do I enable Safe Exam Browser?

1. When setting up a Quiz, locate the setting heading Safe Exam Browser and select Yes - Configure manually.
   
   
   
2. It is recommended to have the Show Safe Exam Browser download button set to Yes so that students will be able to download the browser if they haven’t done this ahead of time.
   
   
3. For the Show Exit Safe Exam Browser button, configured with this quit link any URL you enter here will be linked to from an Exit Safe Exam Browser button on the page that appears after the exam is submitted. If the field is left empty, then the button will not appear.
   Note: This option is not applicable when using manual configuration in eClass
   
   
4. Ask user to confirm quitting - If enabled, users have to confirm quitting of Safe Exam Browser when a quit link is detected. Note this setting does just affect quitting with the quit link and doesn't affect quitting with the "Quit" button, Ctrl-Q or the close button in the main browser window.
   
   
5. Enable quitting of SEB allows you to set whether users can quit Safe Exam Browser with the Quit button in the Safe Exam Browser task bar or by pressing the keys Ctrl-Q or by clicking the main browser window close button.
   
   
6. Quit password makes it possible to provide a password that students will need to enter when they try to quit Safe Exam Browser with the Quit button, Ctrl-Q or the close button in the main browser window. If no quit password is set, then Safe Exam Browser will prompt Are you sure you want to quit Safe Exam Browser?.
   
   
7. Enable reload in exam set to Yes will allow page reloads during a quiz (reload button in Safe Exam Browser task bar, browser tool bar, iOS side slider menu, keyboard shortcut F5/cmd+R). Offline caching might break when the user tries to reload a page without an internet connection.
   
   
8. Show SEB task bar allows you to set whether users are shown the Safe Exam Browser task bar.
   
   
9. Show reload button allows you to set whether users are shown the reload user interface element in the task bar bottom right corner.
   
   
10. Show time allows you to show users the current time in the task bar. This is not the time remaining for the quiz.
    
    
11. Show keyboard layout allows you to set whether users are shown an element in the task bar to choose the keyboard layout. This feature is available only in Windows operating system.
    
    
12. Show Wi-Fi control allows you to set whether users are shown an element in the task bar to choose Wi-Fi connections they may have previously connected to. This feature is available only in Windows operating system.
    
    
13. Enable audio controls allows you to set whether users are shown an element in the task bar to change the audio volume. This works only in Windows operating system.
    
    
14. Mute on startup - Set whether the audio volume is initially mute when Safe Exam Browser launches. This feature is available only in Windows operating system.
    
    
15. Enable spell checking - Set whether spell checking is enabled in Safe Exam Browser. Enabling this feature will correct spelling automatically.
    
    
16. Enable URL filtering - Set whether URL filtering is enabled in Safe Exam Browser. URL filtering allow access to specific webpages, documents or sections of websites.
    
    
17. Filter also embedded content - Set whether URL filtering applies to embedded content, too, in Safe Exam Browser. If selected, all embedded resources will be filtered using the filter set. Note that there can be hundreds of resources such as images and other media, so filtering all content may slow down page loading.
    
    
18. Expressions allowed - Insert a set of simple expressions URL are tested against and allowed for accessing during an exam. Following are a few examples of filter expression:
    
    
    • 'example.com' matches 'example.com', 'www.example.com' and 'www.mail.example.com' (internally processed as a host name search for 'example.com' and a search for '*.example.com')
    • '.www.example.com' matches exactly '*://www.example.com' (no other subdomains)
    • 'mail.*' matches all hosts having a subdomain or domain 'mail', like 'mail.ethz.ch', 'www.mail.gov.to', 'mail.com'
    • '*:8088' matches all requests to port 8088
    • 'example.com/stuff/*' matches all requests to any subdomain of 'example.com' that have 'stuff' as the first segment of the path
    • 'example.com/images/*.png' matches all requests to any subdomain of 'example.com' that have '/images/' as the first segment of the path and '.png' as the path extension of an file URL (means it matches all PNG images in the '/images/' directory or its subdirectories)
    • '*.net' matches all host with any kind of subdomains in the .net top level domain like 'example.net', 'www.example.net', 'www.mail.example.net'
    • '*/*.net' matches all files with a '.net' file extension on any host
      
      You should consider using a regular expression if performing complex filtering (when a simple filter doesn't cover all possible cases how that complex URL could be formatted) or split the expression into several filter rules. The order of filter rules is not relevant.
      
      
19. Regex allowed - Insert a set of regular expressions URL are tested against and allowed for accessing during an exam.  Can only be set if Require the use of Safe Exam Browser is set to Yes – Configure manually and Enable URL filtering is set to Yes. If the URL matches the expression, then it is accepted and processing of the remaining rules is stopped. If the URL filter reaches the last rule (means there was no matching block or allow expression found), then the URL is discarded. If you want the URL to be accepted if no matching block (or allow) expression was found, then add an 'allow *' expression.
    
    
20. Expressions blocked - Insert a set of simple expressions URL are tested against and blocked for accessing during an exam.
    
    
21. Regex blocked - Insert a set of regular expressions URL are tested against and blocked for accessing during an exam.
    
    
22. Allowed browser exam keys - Not applicable when using manual configuration in eClass.