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How to Configure Microsoft 365 for Exams?

Running online exams in Microsoft Teams is a task of a great challenge for any university. For licenses below A3 this problem is difficult to solve reliable. It is standard in this case to use a separate learning platform Moodle 3.8, which can be integrated into Microsoft Teams by mConnect developed by Skooler. I hope to discuss this option later.

I observe that the price for proctoring provided by commercial companies is higher than the price for an A3 licence. Moreover, if A3 licences are paid only for teachers, then proctoring licenses are paid for each student. The method I present below may save a lot of money for any university.

As to Microsoft 365 Education A3, it includes Intune, which can be used to restrict properly access of student's devices to Azure AD. To protect the system from an non-authorizes access, the Global Administrate must enable the double authentication for every member of this system, including all teachers and students. Therefore, to study in Microsoft 365 Education any student must have a PC and a smart phone. Then a student logs on his account in Microsoft 365. He or she is prompted to enable the double authentication. During this process, students install Microsoft Authenticator to his or her smart phone. The number of the Sim card used for this is stored in Microsoft 365. From time to time, the system asks students to confirm their identity by pressing "Confirm" in the Microsoft Authenticator.

It is not at all a good idea to leave the default number 5 of allowed devices for every student. If a student has a possibility to enter his account from two PCs, then she, or he may share her, or his credentials with another person.  This person enters the sysytem from any place  with conformation issued from the student's smartphone and takes the exam. To prevent this the number of enrolled devices must be restricted to two per student. The Intune Administrator creates an Intune group of all students and decreases the default number from five to two. 
This can be done in two steps. First, it is necessary to activate the Conditional Access. It will make it impossible to open any product of Office 365, including Microsoft Teams, without the MFA (=Multi Factor Authentication). In turn, the MFA moves any device used under the control of Intune. Therefore, the next step is to create the group of all students and decriese the number of devices used in the system from default five to two.

Now any student can enter the system only with two devices simultaneously. The simplest protection measure is to demand that students install Microsoft Teams on smart phones used for the authentication. The teacher creates two meetings for the class. One is for video observation using the PC camera  and another one for observation using the smart phone camera. Students fix the camera behind their desktop so that proctors can see student's faces as well as the space around them.

It is also necessary to turn on and off students microphones one by one. This prevents possible recommendations of an invisible tutor to a student. The recordings of both meetings are required as a proof in case of conflict situations. Recordings in Teams do not work. Their playbacks show only four students. Therefore, I recommend using the screen recording in Power Point. It will record all students in the meetings' windows as well as the sounds from the rooms of students. Sometimes screen recording with Power Point overloads notebooks. There is another free screen recorder ShareX. It records to mp4 files of smaller size and can also record the screen unlimited. One can download this recorder form Microsoft Store here. When the exam is finished students copy their recordings to OneDrive and share them with the teacher or proctor.

Theoretically, these measures may be enough. However, it is better to identify students automatically,  especially for big classes. It is also important to identify the smart phones used for video observation. Two programs can help to do this. The first is Jibble, which I described on a separate page. It must be installed on this very smart phone. Students enter the Jibble app and take selfies. They are compared with the base photo of the student. In case of any mismatch, Jibble informs the teacher by email.  To apply Jibble it must be obligatory for class attendance and must be on from the very beginning of a semester. This solves the problem of students' identification. Besides, Jibble fixes the geo location and shows it with the student's photo. Kaizala Pro is the messenger which should be used for communications in class. In contrast to other messengers, this one has the so-called actions. One of them is called the attendance. Students press this card and their adresses and phone numbers are automatically sent to Kaizala's site. In addition to this, in case the exam is distributed through OneNote, the teacher can see what students write in the examination papers!  The suggested system is even more reliable than in the usual exam.

The final extra measure is to turn "Take a Test" on! There are two possibilities for devices of members in Azure AD - to be either registered or joint. Registered users are under the minimal control of the system, whereas devices joint to Azure AD are under much greater control and defense.  A student's PC enters thi state automatic, if during a clean windows installation the choice of the corporative work is made. Then this operating system will be upgraded automatically to Windows 10 Enterprise and the activation of the kiosk mode application "Take a Test" becomes available.

ShareX vs PowerPoint

The following page of my site 
https://sergeykhrushchev.com/sharex
provides the detailed information on this free program for screen recording. This program is available only for Windows 10.  The advantage of this program is that two hours of recording produce an mp4 file of size much less than 1Gb, whereas Microsoft PowerPoint recording results in a file, which is greater than 1 Gb. It is a very important advantage, since Microsoft Forms currently accept attached files with the size 1 Gb at most. Therefore, with ShareX a teacher can completely automate the collection of recorded files in one place of the SharePoint of the class.