We were only able to get so far with the free trial, but I'm interested in exploring further — looking for some on-the-ground info / highlights / thoughts / feelings. Feel free to respond here or reach out directly. Thank you!
We've been using it since it became available to us last school year. Our early adopters have been happy with it and are helping to spread the news, so now many who gave up on the online assessments are trying them out again. There is a BIG learning curve. I've told my teachers to not use the Lockdown Browser without first meeting with me so I can show them the entire process and then we make sure at least one member of our Tech Department is there the first time the teacher uses with their students to help with troubleshooting. After the first time students use it, the issues drop off significantly but the first time can be ROUGH.
The types of issues students run into will depend a lot on their computer configuration. There are specific settings in both their OS and their internet browser that can cause problems. (We're on Macs mostly using Chrome and the Lockdown Browser application is pushed through our management software, Jamf.) When we go into a class, we have all the students restart their computers first. We tell them, "When you begin the assessment, you will most likely get a number of pop up notifications. We need you to read the notification carefully and do what it says." We then walk around helping students, most of which just didn't read the pop up…. There are usually still a handful of students in each class that need additional help. Some issues are resolved by just closing the application and running it again. If you have additional content management/web filtering, it can cause problems. Our middle school has GoGuardian Admin installed on their laptops and we have yet to have a successful assessment. Our Tech Department is working with GoGuardian to get to the bottom of it.
We're glad Blackbaud went with the Lockdown Browser integration because that is also what the College Board uses with AP Classroom.
