Australian schools are moving swiftly to adopt digital-first education models. In May, the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) will start to transition from paper-based tests to online tests, which automatically adapt to students’ performance and provide teachers with more targeted, detailed, and timely information on students’ results.

The shift requires schools to deploy the NAPLAN Online client, which is a locked-down browser that lets students take the test in a consistent and secure environment. Teachers and e-learning coordinators need not fear: NAPLAN Online is extremely straightforward to deploy on a Windows PC, with four simple Installation options to help cover your school’s situation:

1. Installing on a single PC

This is by far the easiest method for smaller institutions and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) schools. Simply head to the ACARA website, scroll down to the available installation options and choose your operating system, be it Windows 7, 8 or 10. Check and see if your school is using Web Proxy Auto-Discovery (WPAD), if you aren’t sure, in most cases you won’t be running WPAD, as this solution is typically used only in larger departments. Download the NAPLAN client to your desktop and install it. An icon will appear at your desktop and on the Start Menu, and you’ll be able to launch the browser from there.

2. Installing via Group Policy

The Group Policy option can only be used for machines that are joined to an Active Directory domain. Again, go to the ACARA website and download the relevant install version for your operating system. Go to your Group Policy Management console, and locate the organisational unit (OU) that your computers reside in. You can use an existing Group Policy Object (GPO) or you can create a new one if required. To do this, right-click on the target OU and create a new Group Policy Object. Select the GPO, then edit the policy to enable pushing the NAPLAN Online client to multiple computers. Under Policies, select Software Settings and Software Installation. Right-click to create a new package, and select the NAP Locked Down Browser, then click Assign. The NAPLAN Client is now set up and ready to be deployed to all computers within the target OU. This will occur when each machine is restarted.

 3. Installing via System Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM)

SCCM will allow your school to deploy the NAPLAN Online client to any machine on the network that has the SCCM client installed. In most instances, this will only support devices that are owned by a school and normally joined to the school Active Directory domain. If SCCM is deployed in the school network, it can be used to target the correct installation based on the known Windows version. Head to the ACARA website and download the correct installation version for your operating system. Then, make sure that you set up a collection that contains all of the machines that require the NAPLAN Online client. Once you have the required collection, you need to create an Application using the install file that you downloaded, configure the silent installation options, set your required distribution options and then setup the deployment to push the installation of the client to the target machines. Once the machines receive their updated policy, the NAPLAN Online client will install.

4. Installing via Microsoft Intune

Microsoft Intune provides Mobile Device Management (MDM) capabilities for managing school owned and BYO devices. Intune is a cloud hosted service that doesn’t require any on-premises infrastructure, which means its quick to deploy and easy to configure. This platform will provide support for deployment of the NAPLAN client to Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 systems. First, download the relevant install files from the ACARA website. To configure the deployment, go to the Intune console, add a New Desktop App, set the silent installation options and then save the app creation. The final step is to select the target group of devices to deploy the app to. Once the target group is selected, the app will deploy to the target devices when they next collect their MDM policy.

For more information on how to install NAPLAN Online for Windows PC, regardless of the device your students and teachers are using, watch the tutorial video here:

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