External Proctoring

This page is for students who need to take an exam away from campus, with an official university-approved proctor. This is usually because of a conflict with a university-approved athletic competition. If this doesn’t apply to you, please disregard this page.

For university-level guidelines, including a list of approved proctors, please see the university’s page on Traveling & Exam Proctoring.

For Students: Requesting External Proctoring

Before each exam, we will release an exam logistics form. (You will receive an email announcement through Ed when this form is released).

To officially request external proctoring, you must fill out the exam logistics form before the deadline. Other requests (e.g. emailing individual instructors, posting on Ed) will get lost and won’t be considered. Late requests submitted after the form closes won’t be considered.

In the form, indicate that you cannot take the exam at the scheduled time or the alternate time.

There should be a box asking you to elaborate on the reason. In this box, indicate that you’ll be proctored externally by athletics staff, and include the email and phone number of your proctor.

If your request is approved, we will send a confirmation email to you and your proctor (usually 2-3 days before the exam). Your request is not officially approved until you receive this confirmation email.

For Proctors: Proctoring Instructions

Students may use:

  • Unlimited scratch paper. These must be fully-blank sheets.
  • A printed copy of a reference sheet. This will be emailed to you along with the exam.
  • Double-sided, handwritten cheat sheet(s) - one for Midterm 1, two for Midterm 2, and three for the final exam. No typed materials on the cheat sheet. No printed tablet notes allowed.

Students may not use any other materials, including but not limited to: calculators, phones, computers, smart watches, collaboration with other students, etc.

Students have 110 minutes to complete a midterm, and 170 minutes to complete a final exam. Adjust accordingly if the student has DSP accommodations.

A few hours before the exam:

Exam start:

  • Give the student several sheets of fully-blank scratch paper.
  • Check that the student has the correct number of cheat sheet(s). Check that nothing on the cheat sheet is printed. If any part of the cheat sheet is printed, you should confiscate it, and the student cannot use it during the exam.
  • At the official exam start time, you will receive an email from cs61b@berkeley.edu, with a PDF of the exam and a PDF of the reference card.
  • Print out the exam and the reference card, and give them to the student.
  • Give the student a minute or two to write their name and sign the honor code on the front of the exam. The student should not open the exam during this time.
  • When the student is ready, start a timer, and they can open the exam.

Note: The official exam start time is on the course homepage. For exam security reasons, we cannot send you the exam PDF before the official exam start time.

During the exam:

  • If the student needs to use the bathroom, collect their phone and their exam and hold on to them while the student is using the bathroom.

Exam end:

  • Scan the student’s exam. The scanned PDF should be formatted exactly the same (e.g. exactly the same number of pages) as the original PDF we sent to you.
  • Email the scanned exam and the signed integrity agreement to cs61b@berkeley.edu. This should be done within 12 hours of the student finishing the exam (ideally, immediately afterwards).
  • You do not need to scan the student’s cheat sheet or scratch paper.
  • Please keep a copy of the student’s exam for at least one week after the exam, in case we need to you to take clearer pictures of any specific page.

For Students: Clarifications

If you are taking the exam with an external proctor, we can’t offer clarifications.