Pearson outlines TestNav device, network and support requirements for Utah assessment delivery

Pearson technical staff on a Utah State Board of Education webinar reviewed device, operating-system and network requirements for delivering secure student assessments using the TestNav application and tools such as AppCheck.

The guidance focused on what districts must prepare on student devices and firewalls to avoid interruptions during test delivery. "Today's focus is going to be the technical delivery side. So we're talking about student devices, network preparation, and the TestNav application," said Michael Reynolds, a member of Pearson's field services engineering team.

Pearson told attendees the company supports TestNav on Windows 10 and 11, Mac OS X 13–15 and Linux desktops, Chromebooks on stable channel 124 and later (long-term support 120 and later), and iPads running iOS 16 or iOS 17.3 and higher. The presenter emphasized memory and performance concerns for older machines, recommending at least 4 GB of RAM and advising districts to replace or avoid relying on devices that take several seconds or minutes to boot or launch software.

Districts were warned to avoid locking down the local home directories TestNav requires for runtime logs and updates. "Students on their accounts will need read write access," Reynolds said, adding that Windows Store deployments can be used to work around some directory restrictions when device policies otherwise block access.

For Chromebooks, Pearson said TestNav must be launched in kiosk mode on devices enrolled in a management console; unmanaged Chromebooks cannot be used for secure testing. The company also advised disabling automatic updates during testing windows and noted that Chromebooks several versions out of date may still function but could show degraded performance.

On iPads, Pearson said TestNav uses automatic assessment mode and may prompt for self-lock and microphone permissions; districts should not deploy iPads with single-app mode enabled because that can prevent TestNav from launching correctly.

A large portion of the briefing addressed content filters and firewalls. Pearson asked districts to create explicit allow lists for several categories of URLs: test delivery domains (for example, testnav.com and pearsontestcontent.com on ports 80 and 443), certificate-authority URLs used to sign content, and third-party tool/assistive-technology domains (for media files, text-to-speech, and similar accommodations). Reynolds warned that SSL inspection, gateway antivirus or advanced media filtering that intercepts or inspects encrypted traffic can corrupt test content and cause TestNav to stop tests. "If anything tries to look inside, it's going to break that encryption," he said.

Pearson recommended exempting its certificate authority URLs from SSL inspection where possible and reviewing newly added firewall or content-filter features before testing. The presenter also cautioned districts that maintaining static IP-based block lists can inadvertently block Pearson traffic hosted on changing Amazon Web Services addresses.

Pearson demonstrated the built-in AppCheck and network-check tools in TestNav and suggested using AppCheck to verify kiosk-mode functionality, supported operating-system versions and basic connectivity. AppCheck runs a device-level check and a simple speed test; Reynolds noted the network check is limited to a single device's network card and is not a substitute for whole-network load testing.

For support, Pearson asked districts to use its standard support phone line for enrollment and configuration questions and reserve field-services "office hours" for higher-level technical preparation and supplier three-way calls. For live testing incidents, Pearson advised calling the support phone line and providing three details: the caller's technical role (for example, "IT director"), the TestNav error code if available, and whether students are actively testing; those details will escalate cases more quickly.

The presenter said Pearson posts technical bulletins to its support site (support.assessment.pearson.com) for major operating-system or compatibility issues and that districts should monitor that site for updates. The webinar recording and slides will be shared with participants and posted for later reference.

The Utah State Board of Education host closed the session and reminded participants that a separate test-administration training is scheduled for the 29th; the month was not specified on the call. The presentation was recorded for later posting.