chriscas
Community Coach
Community Coach

Hi @ian10,

I honestly don't think there is a technically viable way to do this outside of proctoring/monitoring tools like Respondus.  The reason I say that is because for this to happen in Canvas itself, web browsers would have to be sharing all kinds of data that they currently don't, and doing so could really be a security nightmare.  A browser will let a page know if it's lost "focus", which usually means the user went to another app or tab, but no details beyond that.  Canvas does generally include this in the quiz log, but I understand it's not especially helpful when you don't know exactly where the student went.  A browser could technically know where the user went if it was another tab, but I'm not sure I'd want chrome to start reporting to every website I had open in a tab where else I was visiting at that moment, which is what this would require.  Likewise, if the user opened another app, the operating system would have to start reporting that back to the browser, and I just don't ever see that happening.  That's why these proctoring/monitoring programs all run generally as system apps so they can try to monitor all this as well as grab screenshots.  I suppose someone could make some sort of free/open-source software to do this, but I haven't encountered anything like that myself yet.

I hope this info is helpful, even if it's not what you were hoping to hear.

-Chris

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