Using Respondus LockDown Browser with Multiple LMS
Some institutions have more than one learning management system running on campus. This may consist of two instances of the same LMS (such as when a medical school wants to run their own LMS server), or it may be different LMSs altogether, such as one from Blackboard and another based on Moodle.
In situations like these, two questions are often asked regarding Respondus LockDown Browser. First, can one installation of Respondus LockDown Browser be used with all of the learning systems? That is, if a student has classes that use both LMSs, will they have to install two copies of Respondus LockDown Browser? And, second, does the institution need to purchase two licenses for Respondus LockDown Browser, one for each learning system?
The second question is easiest to answer, so let’s start there. No, it’s not necessary to purchase a separate license for Respondus LockDown Browser, even if your institution runs multiple learning systems or servers. From our standpoint, it’s one institution, so there’s only one license.
As to whether students need to install multiple copies of Respondus LockDown Browser, the answer is also no. But a few things must happen to make this work.
To begin, the administrator of the Respondus LockDown Browser license must login to the administrator area of Respondus.com and create “server profiles” for each learning system. This process is explained in the Administrator Guide, but the key part to consider here is that a unique name and login page (URL) is entered for each server.
When a copy of Respondus LockDown Browser is started, the first thing it does (behind the scenes) is to look up these settings. If it detects that the institution has more than one LMS server profile, a list of the server names is displayed and the user must choose one to continue. (This means that students should be made aware of which server to select.)
Upon selecting a server, the user is sent to the login page for that server. That’s pretty much it.
One final note. If a change is made to an LMS at the institution, it simply requires that the LockDown Browser server profiles be updated in the administrator area of the Respondus website. For example, if the institution adds another LMS, changes the location of the login page, switches from http to https, etc., it’s just a matter of making a few edits to the server profiles. The new settings will take effect immediately, and there is no need to update the browsers themselves.
