Safe Exam Browser (SEB) is a web browser environment to carry out online exams safely by locking the computer into a kiosk mode. It provides integration with the open source learning management systems ILIAS and Moodle, but can be used with most other web based quizzes or e-assessment systems.
SEB disables the OS X Dock, the process switcher (cmd+Tab/cmd+Shift+Tab), menu bar, the Force Quit window (cmd+opt+esc), normal reboot (ctrl+cmd+eject), normal shutdown (ctrl+opt+cmd+eject), hiding the application, printing and Exposé. Display and system idle sleep are also prevented while SEB is running. It can be set whether users can quit SEB and if it is required to enter a quit password to do so.
In the browser window there is no right mouse (or ctrl-) click popup window available, it can be set whether links requesting to be opened in a separate window should be blocked generally, opened in the same browser window or in a new SEB window. Besides that, the browser is supporting Quicktime, Java and Flash content (as long as the required Flash plugin is installed on the system). Hyperlinks embedded in Javascript, in Flash and other plugins are ignored when they link to another host than the one of the current page.
SEB detects when it was started in a virtual instead of a native environment and refuses to run. This virtual machine detector hinders manipulating SEB when used in unmanaged environments.
In a separate user account managed by OS X parental controls you can run additional (third party) applications during an exam together with SEB. You can download and open files linked in your online exam, edit it in a third party application and then upload the results to your online quiz/LMS again.
Thanks to its safe kiosk mode SEB can also be used in all kind of public presentation situations, where web based content is presented and users should not be able to manipulate the Mac that it is running on.
