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CBTF General Information for Instructors

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Instructor FAQ

The CBTF is not a generalized proctoring service. It is a facility and service enabling students to take computer-administered exams in a controlled proctored environment, under specific constraints and circumstances designed to enable operation at scale. You may find that these constraints do not fit your needs, though we’ll be happy to talk to you about it! This information is for instructors considering using the CBTF. If you’re already committed to using the CBTF, please read the more detailed Course Staff Guide for CBTF Usage. Ready to request CBTF service for your course? After you have read the FAQ below and perused the staff guide, email Armando Fox (Faculty Advisor to the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Professor in EECS, and faculty lead for the CBTF) to get started!

The basics

  • Does my exam have to be machine-graded? No. Your assessment must be 100% administered online (see below for policies about turning in scratch paper) but does not have to be machine-graded. Various tools can be used to deliver it, though we have found PrairieLearn exceptionally useful. Gradescope and bCourses (Canvas) Quizzes may also be possible. We can help you convert paper exams, and students can even do part of the exam on paper and scan it into the system for manual grading if you prefer.
  • Do all students take the exam at once?  No. You’ll designate a window of 2-3 days (longer for a double-length exam or very large courses) over which several sessions will be available for student self-scheduling at fixed times to take the assessment. The assessment must be designed so that its integrity is not compromised by this fact. Talk to us about your situation and we’ll happily advise you!
  • What about DSP accommodations?  Common DSP accommodations, including extra-time and reduced-distraction, are handled automatically with no action needed from you, once the accommodation information has been provided at the start of the semester. Accommodations that cannot be met will still require you to make separate arrangements as has always been the case.
  • What is the capacity of the CBTF? We have several permanent and part-time spaces on campus with about 85 seats available 40 hours a week in Sutardja Dai Hall and Soda Hall, and we will be adding both more hours and more seats in Fall 2026.

Creating & delivering the exam

  • How do we author/deliver exams?
    • We’re currently using PrairieLearn, but Gradescope and bCourses Quizzes will soon be possible. During Spring 2026, as part of a special onboarding initiative, we’ll hand-hold you through converting your existing paper or online exams if needed.
  • I want everyone to take the exam at the same time, to avoid cheating.
    • Everyone taking it at the same time is unfortunately not feasible, even for smaller classes, due to the way the CBTF is scheduled. Instead, we recommend randomization, or trying to schedule sessions “back to back” so that there is less time for information dissemination.
  • Aren’t randomized questions worse because some questions might be accidentally harder than others?
    • Testing is already highly imperfect even without randomization–for example, if you happen to choose more questions in a particular area of the covered material more than others, and a person happens to not have studied or is weaker in that area, they will be impacted. Randomization may actually help with this problem, because PrairieLearn (the exam-delivery system) has statistics where you can determine whether score ranges on particular questions or question types are lower than others, which lets you adjust accordingly after the fact.
  • Can I have my final exam in the CBTF?
    • Yes, provided that the baseline exam length is no more than 110 minutes (see below under “Scheduling”). We are working with the Registrar’s office on how this interacts with the “official” final exam windows and rooms designated at the start of the semester.
  • What restrictions are there on software/network access on the CBTF computers?
    • We do not have “lockdown browsers” such as Respondus, but the firewalls limit Internet access only to the exam server itself.
  • Is there training and/or funding available to create computer-based assessments for my course going forward?
  • Can I provide my own proctors, e.g. from my course staff, to staff a CBTF session dedicated to my course?
    • No. Our proctors on onboarded in the use of the software and are centrally hired, paid, scheduled, monitored, and trained on incident-reporting procedures. There are many advantages to proctors who are explicitly not course staff. You cannot in general have a session dedicated to your course—the space may be shared with other course(s) whose exam windows overlap yours.
  • Can your staff proctor my exams in my classroom, on Zoom, or somewhere other than the CBTF?
    • No. They work exclusively in the CBTF.

Scheduling your exams

  • Can I “reserve” one or more CBTF sessions solely for my course or specify which room will be available for my exam?
    • No. Multiple courses share the CBTFs and students will self-schedule on a first-come basis, so you should assume your students will be mixed in with students from other courses. When students self-schedule, they can choose slots in any available center.
  • Given the modest room capacities, does this mean my students may not all take the exam at the same time?
    • Correct. You must design your exam so that its integrity is not compromised by being asynchronous. There are various ways to do this, including the use of randomization  for short-item exams, having different versions of the exam, or others. Reach out to us to discuss your situation.
  • How long can my exam be?
    • All reservations begin at the top of the hour, with a 10-minute check-in period. So a 50-minute quiz can be completed within a single 1-hour slot; a longer quiz requires booking the same seat for 2 consecutive slots, which may impair availability for students. (3-slot exams are not supported at all.) A 2-slot exam can be at most 110 minutes (2 hours less 10-minute check-in), with the understanding that if there are students taking other exams that are 1-slot, there will be a “shift change” happening during your students’ exam—quietly, but it may still be distracting. In addition, the scheduling software also adjusts for DSP-related double-time and time-and-a-half, which means that for DSP students the slot usage is more irregular. We strongly recommend designing your exam to take 50 minutes or 110 minutes at baseline to maximize the flexibility of your students scheduling themselves, as the following table suggests:
      Exam length No accommodation DSP 1.5x time DSP 2x time
      50 min exam 1 slot (50/50 min) 2 slots (75/110 min) 2 slots (100/110 min)
      85 min exam 2 slots (85/110 min) 3 slots (128/170 min) 3 slots (170/170 min)
      110 min exam 2 slots (110/110 min) 3 slots (165/170 min) 4 slots (220/240 min)

DSP-related considerations

  • What if I have students requiring extra-time accommodations and/or reduced-distraction accommodations?
    • Your TA staff will identify these needs at the beginning of the semester; the CBTFs are configured to support these accommodations automatically after one-time setup on your part.
  • What if I have students requiring special accommodations the CBTF cannot meet, such as a scribe, special assistive hardware or software, etc.?
    • Our goal is to eventually handle as many types of accommodations as possible so your staff doesn’t have to, but as has always been the case, your staff is ultimately responsible for proctoring those students’ exams outside the CBTF.

Exam environment and facilities

  • Can students bring their own computers (e.g. with special courseware on them) into the CBTF? Or can special software be installed on the CBTF computers?
    • No, all students in the CBTF use CBTF-configured computers, meaning your exam must be available via a Web browser.
  • Are tablets available for students to hand-draw/hand-enter responses that are too awkward to do with keyboard and mouse?
    • Not at this time; we’re working on it. But a lot of symbolic notation can be achieved with a keyboard and mouse. Talk to us about your assessment goals and we’ll help you brainstorm a solution that doesn’t require specialized hardware.
  • Can students bring cheatsheets or other study aids to the exam with them?
    • No. Outside paper, devices, books, notes, etc. are never allowed on the exam desk, since proctors can’t keep track of different rules for every course. Students can use the built-in Windows Calculator app if they wish. It is easy to embed a PDF or HTML cheatsheet within the exam that all students can access while taking the exam. You can also (with more work on your part) approve individual students’ PDF cheatsheets available only to that student during their exam.
  • What about scratch paper?
    • Proctors have a supply of scratch paper for student use that is color-coded to each exam room and session. Students may not bring their own. Absolutely no scratch paper leaves the room.
  • Can students turn in their scratch paper for possible partial-credit or manual grading later?
    • There is a way for students to scan their handwritten work into the exam, using scratch paper provided by the proctors. Your course staff can then view these (using a UI similar to bCourses SpeedGrader) or download them for manual grading. No paper leaves the room.

Why we need a CBTF

These days, it’s not uncommon for students taking large standardized exams (e.g. the SAT) to bring their own laptops to a large facility such as a conference center or high school auditorium…so why do we need dedicated CBTF spaces at Berkeley outfitted with desktop computers connected via a wired network? There are many reasons…
  • Dedicated conference centers and similar facilities have their own wifi and can firewall the world. We can’t do that with Airbears/Eduroam. Wired computers in the CBTF are institutionally managed, appropriately firewalled and locked down. (And try getting a wired connection to “just work” with a student device that lacks an ethernet port, as is the case for most personal devices these days.)
  • Student-owned equipment generally can’t be trusted not to contain unauthorized resources (old problem set/exam solutions, notes that shouldn’t be allowed on closed-book test, etc). institutionally-managed computers avoid this problem, which doesn’t arise for standardized exams like the SAT where topic-specific “cheat sheets” and similar materials don’t really help.
  • Student-owned equipment may or may not have a consistent browser version, JavasScript runtime, operating system, …, to ensure the test works right. it would be a nightmare to deal with student complaints about the inconsistency of an exam due to software stack differences. (Many faculty have dealt with this in smaller form in their own courses that have specific software needs. It’s a time and effort sink for course staff.)
  • Exams such as the SAT are limited to selected-response (multiple choice, dropdowns, checkboxes) and limited fill-in response (numerical answer with tolerance) questions. Many of the questions we can (and do) ask with PrairieLearn are considerably more sophisticated, making the dependence on the software stack somewhat greater. Again, institutionally-managed computers that are uniformly configured solve this problem, since the exam only has to be tested/curated on one software stack.
  • Students would have to bring in chargers (what if laptop battery runs out during exam?), plug them in, futz with wires, etc. when starting the exam, which takes time away from the effective utilization of the testing station for the exam itself. For a 45-50 minute quiz—the most common CBTF use case—it can suck significant time from the exam window. So even if there are no *computers* on the tables/desks in the CBTF, there needs to be the same power infrastructure to support all those laptops, and enough Wifi bandwidth for all the students at once. As many of you know from experience, this is far from assured in many campus rooms. Wired connections don’t have this problem.
  • Exams available only via wired connections also prevent students tethering their phone [eg] to get access to outside resources supposedly blocked in the CBTF. (Your phone doesn’t have to be next to you in order to do this.) If the exam can only be accessed from the fixed wired computers, students can’t get around the firewall.
  • Finally, computers aren’t very expensive: less than $600 each for the simple needs of a CBTF. It is true that having computers fixed in the room does limit the way the room may be used. But in steady state we expect 80%+ utilization of these rooms in CBTF mode. If we open up a “CBTF-specific” space, it will not have enough spare capacity to multiplex it to other uses where you don’t want a computer on the desk.

Who pays for this?

The CBTF began as part of a larger research project on Mastery Learning funded by the College of Engineering; the College of Computing, Data Science & Society; and the California Education Learning Lab. As of Fall 2025, it is a permanent, centrally funded,  RTL-supported service, and more CBTF spaces are coming online in the months ahead. Other questions? Email Armando Fox (ACELab PI) and we’ll add the answers here.