Which tool does what

These are two separate products that are often used together. LockDown Browser secures the testing environment; Respondus Monitor watches the student.

Open the instructor dashboard

Everything — settings, student instructions, and proctoring results — lives in one place inside your Canvas course.

1. In your Canvas course, look in the Course Navigation menu for LockDown Browser. This link is visible to instructors only; students never see it.
2. Click it. The dashboard lists every quiz in the course and whether each one currently requires LockDown Browser or Respondus Monitor.

Start with the Getting Started tab

Before you set up your first exam, work through the tabs across the top of the dashboard. The Getting Started tab walks you through the recommended order: watch the intro video, hand out the student instructions, then build a practice quiz. Guides and video tutorials sit on the neighboring tabs.

Require LockDown Browser for a quiz

The quiz has to exist in Canvas first. You turn on LockDown Browser from the dashboard, not from the quiz settings page.

1. Make sure the quiz has been deployed in the Canvas course.
2. From Course Navigation, select LockDown Browser to open the dashboard.
3. Find your quiz in the list. Quizzes marked Required already force students to use LockDown Browser; quizzes marked Not Required do not.
4. Open the context menu to the left of the quiz title, choose Settings, and select Require LockDown Browser for this exam.
5. Save.

Advanced settings worth knowing

Expand Advanced Settings for four optional controls. Each has an [explain] link with more detail.

• Lock students into the browser until the exam is completed. Used mainly in testing centers, where a proctor can enter a password to release a student early.
• Allow access to specific external web domains. Lets you whitelist the sites students may visit during the test.
• Enable Calculator on the toolbar.
• Enable Printing from the toolbar.

Add Respondus Monitor

Monitor is an add-on to LockDown Browser, so it appears in the same settings panel — below the LockDown Browser options.

When you first select Require Respondus Monitor, an informational message appears reminding you about the student fee. You can dismiss it permanently with the Don’t show this message again checkbox.

Choose what gets recorded

Pick one of three recording modes: Webcam Only, Webcam + Screen, or Screen Only. This determines what you’ll see in the post-exam results.

Build the startup sequence

The startup sequence is the set of steps a student completes before the exam begins. Most items are optional and you can preview or edit the text for each one. Two are always required and cannot be turned off:

• Webcam Check
• Face Detection

The optional steps are Additional Instructions, Guidelines + Tips, Student Photo, Show ID, and Environment Check.

Face detection and the remaining options

• Face Detection Options. Prevent a student from starting if their face isn’t clearly visible, and warn them during the exam if it stops being visible.
• Allow use of an iPad.
• Allow switching to another application — this is the Excel or Word setting covered in the next section.
• Allow this exam to also be delivered in a proctored lab with no webcam recording.
• Enable “Show Your Work” so students photograph handwritten work at the end.
• Enter a demo student username so you can test the experience yourself.
• Second Camera. Requires a phone or tablet in addition to the webcam. The second device must be able to scan a QR code.

Allow Excel or Word during an exam

Respondus Monitor can let students step out of the locked browser into Excel or Word, with everything they do there recorded.

1. On the dashboard, choose Webcam + Screen or Screen Only for Respondus Monitor.
2. Under Advanced Settings, check Allow switching to another application during the assessment.
3. Select either Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Word.

Giving students a starter file

Upload the pre-populated Excel or Word file to an appropriate place in the course and include a link to it inside the exam question. The application opens automatically when the student starts the download. Students can also reach Excel or Word from an icon on the LockDown Browser toolbar, and return to the exam by minimizing the app or clicking the LockDown Browser icon in the Windows taskbar or Mac dock.

Having students upload their file

To collect the finished file, use a question type that accepts an upload. In Canvas New Quizzes, that’s the File Upload or Essay question type. Put the upload instructions inside the question itself. A useful starting point:

“Be sure to save your work in Excel/Word. The default location for that file is your Documents folder. When you’re ready to upload the file, [your instructions here].”

In the proctoring results, each switch from LockDown Browser to the external program appears as a milestone, and a screen recording shows what the student did while outside the browser.

What students experience

Walk through this yourself before the first exam — it’s the fastest way to answer the questions you’ll be asked.

Installing and launching

1. The student logs into Canvas in a normal browser, opens the course, and navigates to the quiz.
2. If LockDown Browser isn’t installed yet, they’re prompted to download it. The download page detects which version they need.
3. After installing, they return to the quiz and open it again to launch LockDown Browser.

LockDown Browser must be installed on each Windows or Mac computer used for a test. Mercer students can self-enroll in the Student Canvas course for step-by-step instructions, and there’s a one-page handout plus a video tutorial on the Respondus resources page you can share.

Inside the locked browser

LockDown Browser looks like a normal browser with pieces removed: no menu bar, no address field, no system tray. The right mouse button is disabled, along with function keys and task-switching keystrokes.

Once the test begins, students cannot exit until it’s submitted for grading. They’re blocked from other websites and applications, and also from other areas of the Canvas course.

The startup sequence, as students see it

If you’ve required Respondus Monitor, students step through the sequence you configured. The webcam check has an Automatic webcam check option that records a short test video so they can confirm everything works.

Review the proctoring results

Results are usually ready 5 to 10 minutes after a student submits.

1. Return to the LockDown Browser dashboard.
2. Open the drop-down menu to the left of the exam title and select Class Results.

Reading the class roster

The roster lists everyone in the course with the date, time, duration, review priority, and score for the exam. Click the [ + ] beside a name to expand that student’s session.

Adjusting sensitivity after the fact

The sensitivity setting changes how aggressively sessions are flagged and ranked. You can change it after the exam and the rankings recalculate. The default is Standard.

• Strict — detects when part of the face moves outside the frame or both eyes aren’t visible. Appropriate when students shouldn’t be using books, calculators, or scrap paper.
• Relaxed — reduces the sensitivity of “missing” flags. Useful for open-book exams or when scrap paper and calculators are allowed.

If students are allowed calculators

A separate flag alerts you when a handheld device appears in the video. It’s on by default. For something like a math exam where a calculator is permitted, uncheck Handheld devices to exclude that flag from the results — you can do this after the assessment.

Watching a session

You can play a video, skip around it, or watch at faster speed. The timeline below the video lets you jump to any moment; red segments mark flagged events, which are also listed on the right. Thumbnails below the timeline show the whole session at a glance and act as another way to jump around.

Screen recording

You can record the student’s screen as well as their webcam. Flags, milestones, and thumbnails stay synchronized across both.

Show Your Work

This optional step prompts students to photograph their written work at the end of the assessment — up to 20 photos. The images appear with the proctoring results so you can view and evaluate the work.

Fewer accidental flags

Recent updates cut down on flags a student didn’t mean to trigger. Rather than logging a flag you’d have to review, Monitor now warns the student before and during the exam when their face isn’t clearly visible, so they can adjust their camera or position. A similar alert warns them about poor lighting.

Ways faculty use it

The same technology covers remote, hybrid, and in-person testing — asynchronous or synchronous, classroom or testing center.

LockDown Browser alone, in a classroom

• Quizzes and tests you’re supervising in person — it removes the need to watch every student’s screen.
• Writing assignments delivered as essay questions, to prevent the use of AI tools.
• Multi-day formats that allow revision.

LockDown Browser with Monitor

• Quizzes with a lower level of supervision.
• Skills demonstrations.
• Assessments that use Show Your Work, screen recording (with or without webcam), or Excel and Word to show evidence of learning.

Best practices

• A flag is not proof of cheating. Flags are signals to look at, not verdicts. Watch the segment before drawing a conclusion.
• Try it yourself with a student account. Use the demo student username setting so you experience exactly what your class will.
• Hand out the instructions. Ready-made student instructions are on the Getting Started tab of the dashboard — one version for LockDown Browser alone, one for LockDown Browser with Monitor.
• Run a practice quiz. Ungraded, with the same settings and ideally on the same computers and network students will use for the real thing. A syllabus quiz, a homework quiz, a zero-point quiz, or an extra-credit quiz all work well. This is where equipment problems and missing downloads surface — not on exam day.

Accessibility

LockDown Browser meets web content accessibility guidelines and works with most assistive technology.

Most assistive technology applications need to be started or enabled before launching LockDown Browser.

Respondus maintains the full list of accessibility details here: Accessibility with LockDown Browser.

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