Proctoring the exams is a relatively painless process, but the process may vary based on your own school/district/testing center policies. This is a general guideline for teachers to make the process as smooth as possible for the students.




1. Sign up before testing day.


We STRONGLY recommend having students sign up for their Certiport account well in advance of testing day. We also STRONGLY recommend that you use a consistent username/password convention for all students. If they are assigned computer logins by the school, use those. No matter what, be sure you have a record of student username/passwords in case they forget. If they sign up on their own, have them write the username and password on an index card and collect from them to use as a last resort. The LAST thing you want on testing day is a student getting anxious because they lose time waiting for a password reset!


Suggestion if you have to do this manually: 

USERNAME: Use their student number preceded with S. (Example: S123456789)

PASSWORD: FI, LI, MMDDYY (Example: RS040177 for Rob Schwartz born April 01, 1977)


2. Proctor username on board, temp password for the period.


Shout out to Brian Carlton at Ft. Lauderdale High for this awesome tip!


  1. On testing day, write your username on the board and have kids enter that when they’re getting ready to test.
  2. TEMPORARILY change your PROCTOR password to something quick and easy at the beginning of the testing period (Examples: 123, jkl, 111, ppp).
  3. Be sure to change it back after logging all the kids in!


This will save time as you can log a student in in about a second this way. I had up to 44 students in a class, and this saved me about a half-hour on testing days! Use a different password every testing session to make sure you keep your account secure and ALWAYS change it back to a complex, secure password after each exam session.


3. Use Exam Groups. 


Exam groups really help in a couple of ways, but here are the main things:


– It ensures students select the right exam

– It allows you to keep records of pass/fail forever (they fall off your reports after a year or two without them)


To set up exam groups, you need to have an elevated account in Certiport for your testing center, so this option may not be available to you, but I always used them and loved being able to print out a sheet for all students who passed an exam (or per teacher or period, depending how you set them up).


4. Jess’s Super Organized Tip


“Give the kids a custom ‘Certiport Login’ sheet. I keep a spreadsheet of all their usernames and passwords, then mailmerge it into another Word Doc that walks them through item by item how to log in to the test. The process of logging in can be confusing, especially for younger kids. So when each kid walks through the door, I hand them a customized sheet with their own information on it. I put my proctor username on that instruction sheet, so they can see it all more easily.”


Grab Jess’s Goodie Bag!


There MUST be more than this out there -- these are just the basic tips I always used. Different locations have different policies, so you really need to be sure you have a handle on what’s required in your testing center (Florida schools have exceptionally strict policies beyond the Certiport policies, for example.) Be sure to check with your location for any specific policies or procedures for your students and do what you can to alleviate the stress for the kids on testing day!


If we can, we’ll expand on this section… but for now, this should get you started and if you have another tip, please leave it below!


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