Case Study: University of Bradford secures e-assessment and cuts desktop prep time by 75% with AppSense Environment Manager

University of Bradford secures e-assessment environment with AppSense

The University of Bradford, selected as a JISC ITS 4 SEA exemplar, faced a rapid increase in e-assessments (from 7 in 2003/4 to 31,882 by 2007/8) and needed a secure, easily managed thin‑client environment to prevent students from accessing external storage, the internet or other applications and to simplify publishing of assessment desktops. The challenge was to lock down virtual desktops while retaining flexibility to turn applications and functionality on or off and to rapidly provision tailored images for different exams.

Bradford deployed AppSense Environment Manager across a new 100‑seat Sun Ray thin‑client lab backed by a VMware ESX server, giving centralized control of OS and application settings, fine‑grained lockdown (blocking save‑as, printing, external storage, internet access) and safety nets for file recovery. Using a single virtual desktop template reduced license and server costs, cut room turnaround from four hours to 30 minutes (a 75% time saving), ensured exam compliance for hundreds of students per exam period, and made the program scalable for future uses.

University of Bradford

Alastair Wills

Technical services