FocalPointK12 Safe Exam Browser is a web browser-environment to carry out online assessments safely. The software changes any computer into a secure workstation. It regulates access to resources like system functions, other websites and applications and prevents unauthorized resources being used during an Assessment.

Safe Exam Browser runs on a local computer and it is connected via the Internet to a FocalPoint Personalized Learning Management System.

Components

The Safe Exam Browser can be deployed as a kiosk application and a browser solution.

The kiosk application locks down the computer and starts the Safe Exam Browser plus optional third party applications. Since this application has to control miscellaneous OS functions, it is designed very system specific.

The Safe Exam Browser browser connects with the preset URL of the LMS assessment page and doesn't show any navigation elements like address bar, search engine field etc. The Windows version of Safe Exam Browser uses the Mozilla Gecko browser engine, either in the form of Portable Firefox or XULRunner. Safe Exam Browser for Mac OS X uses the WebKit browser engine.

Safe Exam Browser - Windows

Safe Exam Browser for Windows consists of the SEB kiosk application, which opens an own Windows desktop and catches system commands like keyboard shortcuts (for example ALT+F4) and right mouse-button clicks. The second part is XULRunner a runtime package from the Mozilla Foundation (Firefox version 3 and above is also based on XULRunner). The SEB browser part running on XULRunner connects to the FocalPointK12 PLMS and it doesn't contain navigation and status bars.

Safe Exam Browser – Mac OS

Safe Exam Browser for Mac OS X is a monolithic application using a web browser framework instead of a browser runtime. It's using the WebKit engine, on which Safari and some new open source browsers like Google Chrome are based. SEB for Mac OS connects to the FocalPointK12 PLMS in the same way as the Windows version.