PTC Has two distinct online proctoring services in addition to offering in-person proctoring at any county campus testing center: Honorlock & Respondus Lockdown Browser

Each proctoring service is unique in which class modalities they should be used for and should never be used on the same exam at the same time.

Honorlock is to be used in Online-only courses for the purpose of fulfilling the federal requirements for PTC to properly identify our distance education students – the ability to help flag cheating is just a welcome bonus!
Edit, August 13th, 2025: Starting Fall 2025 it will also be a requirement that our fully online courses proctor their Syllabus quiz to identify our online students before add-drop periods end!

On the other hand, Respondus Lockdown Browser is to be used for in-person synchronous testing at a PTC computer lab, and it’s main focus is to “lockdown” the student browser to prevent cheating.

The dashboards for both programs are in a different area but both serve the same purpose – making enabling/disabling exams fast and easy. For Honorlock you will need to select “More” on your course’s navigation bar and then “Honorlock” which will pull up a dashboard of all exams in your course. From there, you may select “Enable” next to any exam you’d like to require Honorlock, or check results & settings for exams already enabled.

For Respondus Lockdown Browser you can access the “Lockdown Browser” tab on the “Quizzes” area in D2L. It will also populate with a list of tests you can freely activate/deactivate. Please note that this area contains an option for “Require Respondus Monitor” which should not be used – Respondus Monitor is a separate product that PTC does not have.

These services can be enabled at any time before the test! Best practice is to do a sweep of your courses and enable/disable the tests in your needed service at the start of the semester – you’ll never need to touch them for the rest of that course! Keep an eye out for our “Start of Semester” checklists, there will be a reminder in them to do just that!

Privacy is very important to us and we will never require a student to consent to recording if they are not comfortable with it. If a student does not want to be remotely proctored, they may be sent to the testing center at any county campus. Staff onsite will input a code for the student that will then disable Honorlock, trading the online proctoring for an in-person proctoring session there.

You can allow students to enter a respondus test without respondus using Special Access in D2L.  Simply check the “Not Required to Take this Quiz” under “Lockdown Browser” in the special access menu. Remember to give the testing center your test password, they will need it!

NO! The passwords that have “HL_NO_EDIT_####” Schema are set by Honorlock automatically. Students should never be asked for a password for an exam that is set up and taken properly, changing the password or giving it out can make the test completely inaccessible to students or allow them to bypass proctoring all together! Honorlock will automatically insert the password for the student without them even knowing!

Firstly, check to ensure that Honorlock has been enabled on your exam. Honorlock uses the password it generates to associate with the quiz it is connected to, if it is not enabled then Honorlock doesn’t know which password to use!

If your quiz is enabled in Honorlock, it is very likely a student-side issue with not having the required extension installed. If a student starts an exam without Honorlock installed – it will prompt them to install it and provide them with a password box. Once installed, the student may begin the exam!

Honorlock provides 24/7/365 US-Based customer service for both students and instructors alike! Your student may click the “Chat Bubble” at the bottom of the screen during their exam at any time, enter their information, and be connected with a support agent within minutes to receive real-time support for any technical issues once an exam starts.

Honorlock supports most any modern device but older Chromebooks may restrict access to updating Google Chrome to a supported version. In that case, the student will need to take the exam at any county campus testing center. Please note that cellphones, even ones using Google Chrome, cannot be used for Honorlock exams.

You can get additional D2L training by clicking Morris the Moose on your D2L homescreen! This will take you to our guided online instructor training which includes online proctoring and many more topics regarding D2L! Complete it and submit the wufoo form at the end to be entered to win D2L-Branded prizes!

If you have not done so already, please feel free to access our D2L guided instructor training course by clicking the link with the D2L moose on your homepage. At first this training looks barren with only a few items, but as you complete each module a new one will open up! This training goes through the basics of D2L all the way through more advanced tools and is available to all instructors of the college. You will also be entered to win some D2L branded prizes such as a Morris the Moose plushie, travel pillows, and tumbler cups!

A warning now appears when a user attempts to add an object (such as a link or image) in Brightspace Editor that has a path outside of the current course. The warning tooltip explains that if the item is copied to another course, the incorrect path would also be copied, potentially preventing learners from accessing the object. This new warning alerts the content creator to ensure a consistent experience for learners. 

With this release, the Final Grade Audit Log page, found in Admin Tools, is no longer available. This page displays the results of a recurring task that recalculates final grades and compares them to the initial calculations to ensure accuracy.

Over the past ten years, no valid issues have been identified. Currently, the recalculation process consumes significant database resources and is no longer effective or required.

Please note that this does not make any changes to the way final grades are calculated or to the edit history seen in the gradebook itself.