eSAM - Allowing apps in an exam

By default a student can open nothing but the exam. The Apps tab is where you allow the exceptions a calculator, a screen reader, Word for a document.

Allowing an app

1. Open the exam's eSAM page and go to Apps.
2. Tick the apps this exam needs.
3. Save.

Each app says what it can reach, in plain words: messaging or calls, files on the PC, the internet, through addresses it names. Read that line before ticking. An app that can reach the internet is a route out of your exam, whatever else it does.

Allowed apps appear under Exam menu → Apps on the student's screen. Everything else stays blocked, and an attempt to open something else is recorded and shown to the invigilator, naming the program.

Apps marked as blocked

Some apps collide with the software eSAM blocks during exams other web browsers, remote-access tools, and so on. Those are shown with a note naming the entry they collide with.

• Most staff will see the tick frozen, with a note that a manager can allow it.
• Someone who may approve apps can tick it, for this exam only, and the decision is recorded.

This is deliberate. Allowing a second browser into an exam is a decision that should have a name attached to it.

When the app you need is not listed

Use Manage the app catalogue at the bottom of the tab. The catalogue holds the apps eSAM ships with, plus anything your site or your course has added.

Adding an app

You do not type a program name. eSAM matches apps by their publisher's signature, or by their package if they came from the Microsoft Store, and a name typed by hand will not match the student would see an app that silently refuses to open, in the exam, with the clock running.

Instead:

1. On a PC that has the app installed, open the app, then open Add an app to eSAM from the Start menu.
2. Pick the program from the list. It shows How eSAM will recognise it the publisher's signature for a desktop app, or the package name for a Store app.
3. Give it the name tutors should see, and answer the three risk questions.
4. Choose Save to a file….
5. On the catalogue page, choose Add an app and upload that file.
6. If anything is wrong with it, the page says what, before anything is saved.

If the program you want is not in the list, open it and choose Look again. The helper only shows what is running.

Apps eSAM cannot recognise safely

The helper tells you when a program carries no signature it can read. eSAM cannot tell such a program apart from anything else with the same file name, which means allowing it would allow anything a student renamed to match. Find a signed version, or choose a different app.

Store apps are the easiest case: Windows guarantees the package name, and nothing else can claim it.

Adding an app to the catalogue does not allow it anywhere. You still tick it on the exam's Apps tab.

Course apps and site apps

• An app you add on a course is available to that course's exams only.
• Someone who may approve apps can promote it, which offers it to every course on the site.
• Disable takes an app out of the catalogue without disturbing exams that already allow it; they drop it the next time they are saved.

Every one of those changes is recorded, with who made it.

Practical notes

• Test it. Allow the app, then open the exam yourself on a PC that has it installed, and check the icon appears and the app opens.
• Calculators: allow the Windows calculator rather than telling students to bring their own device.
• Word is needed only if you are giving out a document set to open read-only in Word. A PDF does not need it.
• Screen readers are usually better handled as a student adjustment than as an exam-wide app, so only the student who needs one gets it.