Disconnected by Proctorio during OCP exam

[Dolima Sow]

Hello everyone! This morning, I was taking the OCP 1Z0-829 exam. Everything was going well during the exam, and I had answered around 20 questions when suddenly I got disconnected with the following message on the screen: "Le test a pris fin et vous avez été déconnecté" (oh yeah i live in France) but it means 'The test has ended, you have been disconnected.' Panicked, I sat in front of the screen for a few minutes, thinking something might happen, but nothing did! During the exam, I was in an empty room with no noise. I then did a quick search on Google to get more information about the Proctorio system, and apparently, it relies on eye movement to detect potential cheating. During the exam, I had a piece of paper and a pen to my right, which I was using for debugging "complexe" code. Do you think that might be the reason I got disconnected ? One hour later, I received an email from Oracle stating that I had failed the exam with a score of 30% (understandably, since I had only answered 20 questions). I’ve sent an email to Oracle's customer service, hoping I can get a refund. Has anyone here experienced a similar issue?
NB: Sorry for any potential mistakes, but I mostly speak French.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Dolima Sow wrote:Hello everyone! This morning, I was taking the OCP 1Z0-829 exam. Everything was going well during the exam, and I had answered around 20 questions when suddenly I got disconnected with the following message on the screen: "Le test a pris fin et vous avez été déconnecté" (oh yeah i live in France) but it means 'The test has ended, you have been disconnected.' Panicked, I sat in front of the screen for a few minutes, thinking something might happen, but nothing did! During the exam, I was in an empty room with no noise. I then did a quick search on Google to get more information about the Proctorio system, and apparently, it relies on eye movement to detect potential cheating. During the exam, I had a piece of paper and a pen to my right, which I was using for debugging "complexe" code. Do you think that might be the reason I got disconnected ? One hour later, I received an email from Oracle stating that I had failed the exam with a score of 30% (understandably, since I had only answered 20 questions). I’ve sent an email to Oracle's customer service, hoping I can get a refund. Has anyone here experienced a similar issue?
NB: Sorry for any potential mistakes, but I mostly speak French.

I hope you've asked Oracle about why you got disconnected. I don't think it was the eye movement though. I used paper a lot during my exam. (I write down which question numbers I'm unsure of, what facts I'm hoping I'll find the answer to in another question, and variable tracing). I also look away from the computer a lot to rest my eyes. (Not looking at anything in particular.)

When I took the Terraform exam, this was a problem. I didn't need paper there, but just the looking away I kept getting called out on. Oddly, they didn't like it when I closed my eyes either. Eventually I started to yawn so I could 'reset" my eyes. None of that came up for me on the Oracle exam.

[Jean-Christophe Puja]

Hi everyone! I had the same frustrating experience this morning when taking the OCP 1Z0-830 exam.

I first got two warnings not to look away when I was writing on my scratch paper. Then I switched to using the in-app whiteboard and kept my attention completely on my screen for a good while.

Then, without any further warning, the exam ended with a white-on-black "The exam has ended and you have been logged out" from Proctorio.

Now my exam status is "Pending" and I have not found a way to get back into the exam room. I expect it will be "failed" as soon as the exam time is up.

@Dolima Sow did you ever hear back from Oracle on this? Did they at least explain why you got disconnected?

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Jean-Christophe Puja wrote:Hi everyone! I had the same frustrating experience this morning when taking the OCP 1Z0-830 exam.

I first got two warnings not to look away when I was writing on my scratch paper. Then I switched to using the in-app whiteboard and kept my attention completely on my screen for a good while.

Then, without any further warning, the exam ended with a white-on-black "The exam has ended and you have been logged out" from Proctorio.

Now my exam status is "Pending" and I have not found a way to get back into the exam room. I expect it will be "failed" as soon as the exam time is up.

@Dolima Sow did you ever hear back from Oracle on this? Did they at least explain why you got disconnected?

Oracle added an in app whiteboard? Can you describe it? (That didn't exist when I took the exam)

[Jean-Christophe Puja]

When in the exam viewing questions, I had a little floating toolbar with a few tools available. On this toolbar I remember seeing:

- A chat bubble, to open the chat with a proctoring team member (where I got my warnings)
- A button to open a calculator tool
- A button to open a whiteboard app

The whiteboard app is a little blank square floating overlay with 4-5 tools like freeform drawing and text input, and a button to clear the canvas. I didn't use much beyond the text tool to jot down some notes. It is unfortunately not as fast or practical for me as physical paper, to draw things like class diagrams or object graphs.

I had seen this tool before when doing the system readiness check mock exam.

When I was going through the support pages to file a ticket, I also found an FAQ (number 12 on this page) mentioning that paper is actually not allowed. So, that's probably the reason why I was failed on this attempt.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Thanks. That didn't exist when I took it!

[An Trần Thị Thúy]

@Jean-Christophe Puja did you receive any notification or email from Oracle regarding your exam result? I’m going through a similar situation and would really appreciate any updates you can share.

[Jean-Christophe Puja]

Hi,

Yes Oracle actually replied to my support request. While they maintained that there was no error on their side, they graciously credited me a new exam attempt.

I'm fairly sure I got kicked because of the scratch paper, this is no longer allowed. I tried again a few weeks later, kept absolutely still and stared at my screen for two hours, and it went well.

Hope you have the same luck with Oracle support!

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

I took another exam (not the Java 21 one) and got to see the new exam engine. Your description of the interface is very good.