How Honorlock Monitors Secondary Devices

The most common incidents of exam dishonesty today involve test takers using a secondary device such as a phone, tablet, or laptop to search for test questions and answers. Honorlock can detect and discourage the use of secondary devices in multiple ways. 

Search & Destroy^TM prevents answers from being leaked

• Prevent cheating before it happens with Honorlock’s Search & Destroy^TM feature.
• This feature will automatically run on every exam to ensure questions are unique and not leaked onto cheating sites like Chegg and Quizlet.

Multi-Device Detection was developed to detect secondary devices. 

Here’s what happens when a test taker does a search for a test question on a secondary device:

• Honorlock will send an audible sound (we call it an audio watermark) through the secondary device, which will be picked up through a proximity sensor on the test taker’s microphone on the exam computer. This indicates that the test taker is on a website they shouldn’t be on.
• When this happens in production Honorlock will know what device the test taker is using, what browser they are on, and what website they are attempting to obtain information from.
• Honorlock captures a screen recording of the secondary device and the incident is available for review on the Honorlock dashboard.
• We flag when Test Takers access cheating sites with their phones.
• Comments generated by an Honorlock proctor during a Live Pop-In incident are also available in real-time. Videos are time-stamped to match the exam session. When a proctor observes suspected violations, they add a “violation” to prioritize the session for exam administrator review. 

Voice Detection

Honorlock creates a written transcript whenever a voice is detected. With our voice-detection technology, Honorlock creates a high-priority flag whenever words such as “Siri,” “Alexa,” “Cortana,” or “Google” are heard as well as any word from a dynamic list of words or phrases such as “help me,” “what’s the answer,” “cheat,” “question,” “answer,” and “copy.”

Apple Hand-Off Detection

• Our AI detects the presence of the Apple Handoff Icon & proctors observe the session without intervening to determine if a phone is present and being used inappropriately
• If the proctor determines that the test taker is using Apple Handoff, they prompt the test taker to disable handoff to prevent further flags, and/or request a Roomscan if they see a phone being used 
• Visit this article for more information on Apple Hand-Off Detection

Handheld Device Detection

When handheld devices such as phones, calculators, and others are visible during an exam, a Handheld Device flag will be triggered. For Live Pop-in customers, these flags will also be sent to our proctors for review and intervention as necessary.