Dear Students in PHY 184B and 234B,

This is the last message preparing you for our first exam next week.
It is about starting and taking your exam online, and the proctoring
process by Examity.

By this time you have created your Examity profile and you scheduled
the first exam with Examity. You can still do these by going from
LON-CAPA to Examity by clicking on the folder (the item right after
the syllabus) called "Go to Examity Dashboard here" and then on the
only item inside the folder called "Let's go to Examity Dashboard"
and then the link called "Access Examity Dashboard".

Before you start the exam, you need to do the following: find a quiet
room where you will be alone for the duration of the exam. Eliminate
all possible distractions. No TV, no background music, no cell phones,
no head phones are allowed while taking the exam. If you are going to
use a laptop, plug it in to an AC outlet, don't run it on battery. If
you have a choice between wired and wireless network, go with the
wired network: it will provide a higher speed and a more reliable
connection than wireless. Avoid wireless keyboards and mice. Examity
currently doesn't allow the use of tablets, due to technical issues
with tablet cameras. Make sure your handheld calculator has fresh
batteries and it works. Have several pens, pencils, erasers and scrap
paper ready. You can have a drink on your desk. You will be allowed to
use a one-page, one-sided help sheet on the first exam. Close all
applications on your computer to maximize your computer's power and
minimize your distraction. Start a fresh browser session with only one
single tab. No youtube, no ebay, no google, no amazon, no facebook,
no email are allowed while taking the exam. The proctor will warn you,
if you start to browse the internet while taking the exam.

You are now ready to start.

Log in to LON-CAPA. In course content, click on the item called "Start
Exam #1 with Examity here" in front of the folder "Exam #1 (...)".
Then click on the only item inside that folder and then on the link.
With these three clicks you will be taken to the Examity site in a
second browser tab. (The exam #1 folder is locked, only the proctor
can unlock it for you. Clicking on the exam folder will not take you
anywhere.) When you arrive to Examity, you might be asked to wait a
minute or two depending on the traffic at Examity. Your patience is
greatly appreciated! Do not worry, do not panic. Breathe in, breathe out.
As a first step some necessary video conferencing software is going
to be installed on your computer. The installation process is automatic,
you don't need to do anything, just watch the process. The software is
free, it will not cost you anything. We will use this same software for
the later exams, so please, don't remove it. (It will be safe to remove
this software at the end of August after you are completely done with
this class.) When the software is ready to run, you will be connected to
an exam proctor by audio first. The proctor will ask you to share your
web camera. After you do that, the proctor will see you. You will not
see the proctor, but that is not necessary.

You will identify yourself saying your name, showing your picture ID to
the camera, and answering some of the security questions you created in
your Examity Dashboard Profile. Please, memorize the answers to your
security questions. The proctor will not allow you to start the exam, if
you cannot give the correct answer(s) to your own security question(s).
You will also be asked to type your name in as a biometric security
measure. Then the proctor will read the rules of the exam, and you will
have to say "OK" or "YES" to each of them. You will then click on a set
of "Agree" buttons. You will be asked to show your room, your working
area, calculator, cheat-sheet and scrap paper through the web camera.

For trouble shooting purposes the proctor might occasionally ask you to
"release control" of your computer. Please, lift your hands from the
keyboard and the mouse, and the proctor will take over your computer.

When everything is ready, the proctor will ask to take control of
your computer once more, and he/she will type in the proctor username
("examity.proctor") and the password to unlock the exam folder for
you inside LON-CAPA. This screen will be called "Proctor Validation".
After this you will get the control back. You can click on the exam
folder now. LON-CAPA will say that 'The resources in "Exam #1" folder
are open for a limited time.'. You click on the "Show resources"
button, and LON-CAPA will show you the first question of the exam.
The timer starts to count down from 60 minutes to zero on the top
right area of the window. You can also use a wrist watch, a wall clock,
a kitchen timer or the clock on the taskbar of your computer.

All these steps above might take several minutes. You can start logging
in 10-15 minutes before your scheduled start time. If the whole process
falls a couple minutes behind schedule, just do not panic. The proctor
will let you in a couple of minutes late, and once you start the exam,
you will always have the full 60 minutes to work on your exam.

The video from your camera and all the activities on your desktop are
monitored and recorded. You will stay in your chair for the duration
of the exam. You can use the green LON-CAPA arrows to move forward and
backward between the questions of the exam. You cannot leave the exam
folder, because the folders in front of it and after it will be closed.
You are not allowed to open any other computer applications or browser
tabs during the exam. When the timer goes down to zero, the contents
of the exam folder will become hidden. If you wish to finish your exam
early, you can click on the "Done" button in the upper right area of
the LON-CAPA window. LON-CAPA will ask for your confirmation. At this
point you can still return to your exam if you change your mind, or you
can confirm that you are done. You tell the proctor you are done and
you say bye to each other. You log out of LON-CAPA and Examity by
clicking on the "Logout" links in both systems. You close your browser,
you are done! You did it, you can relax now!

When you take an exam online in LON-CAPA, the questions are going to be
in the so called "exam mode" instead of the "homework mode". You are
familiar only with the homework mode of the questions so far. In the exam
mode LON-CAPA will give you multiple choices just like on a traditional
paper exam. Numerical questions will have eight choices, conceptual
questions will usually have less. If a unit is expected, it will be
displayed for you, you will not have to worry about that in exam mode.
Once you pick your answer, you will need to click on the "Submit" button,
just like in homework mode. In exam mode however LON-CAPA will not give
you immediate correct or incorrect feedback in green or red color. Instead
it will just simply say "Answer submitted..." in yellow color. Most of the
questions will have 12 tries, but some of the simple conceptual questions
will only have 2 or 3 tries. You are allowed to change your answer and
resubmit it, but please, don't use up your tries too quickly. All your
submissions are recorded for each question, but only the last submissions
are graded. A large "Stop!" sign will indicate the end of the exam. You
can go forward and backward between the cover page and the end of the
exam using the green LON-CAPA forward and backward buttons. The cover
page will have some important physics constants on it.

If you lose your internet connection, or your computer is misbehaving, or
you have any other technical problems, just don't panic. Try to reconnect
to the internet, log back to LON-CAPA and from there to Examity, and they
will let you back to your exam. After you are done with the exam you send
me a message with a short description of the technical problem you have
experienced. With your description, the exam video, the proctor report and
your submissions, we will come up with a solution. In the past Summers we
had storms, floods, internet and electric outages, and some other problems
as well, but we always came up with some good solutions.

Thank you very much for reading it! This was a very long message.

Tibor Nagy (nagytibo@msu.edu, web.pa.msu.edu/people/nagy_t/)