With technology changing every sphere of life, the education and learning space is no longer away from it. The examinations, way to judge a person’s education and learning capability, are now being replaced by the automated and online internet-based examination system with earlier paper-based examination system. Aamir H Kaki of Elets News Network (ENN) shares an insight on the examination management system and how it is changing the education landscape
Education and learning of any kind is necessary to develop socially and intellectually. Education mainly involves three aspects, teaching, learning and testing, which are indispensable and linked to each other. Everyday people learn something new. Everyone has a social and learning personality different from others. The learning personality is the combination of natural talent, personal interest, social environment, character, motivation and how the brain processes content and information.
The schools, colleges, universities and other educational institutes are being set up to impart the education a vital part of life. Earlier, the education and learning was limited to the classrooms but now the technology is changing the way we teach and learn.
As Aakash Chaudhry, Director, Aakash Education Service Pvt Ltd (AESPL), puts in, “Technology plays a key role in increasing the reach of the content which is earlier limited to learning centers and classrooms only. Nowadays, with the help of technology you can take the conent to the students anywhere in the country.”
Director, Aakash Education Service Pvt Ltd
However, the technology is still needed to make deep impact in the education sector in India. Students still believe that classrooms are the only place for 57 digital LEARNING / November 2015 digitallearning.eletsonline.com learning. “Online education is still at the nascent stage, we have to change this. Students think that for learning they have to go to classrooms, they don’t think to go online,” says Chaudhry.
He adds, “Future looks very promising. We have seen e-learning and online learning since our inception and now mobile apps are coming. So, technology will totally change the learning experience in future.”
India is a country of learners and people here seek learning. If someone is a good teacher, students come to him by themselves and there is no need of publicity. However, high quality of content is required to create a good demand of technology driven learning. Aditi Avasthi, Founder and CEO, Embibe.com says, “When you come to the learning space you have to look from learner’s perspective. Unlike e-commerce, which is trans – action driven, education is about consumption. Until and unless, we focus on quality in delivering distance learning, it might not be impactful, students will come and fathom for an hour and leave.”
To make the education technology impactful, there is a need of personalised approach to every student. “We, at Embibe, focus on using data science and right level of content to actually help every student in learning process in a personalised manner. Our goal is, whatever be the academic level or background of students, to ensure that they are able to consume content and get feedback, which is tailored to help them improve and make them become a better learner,” adds Avasthi.
Future looks very promising. We have seen e-learning and online learning since our inception and now mobile apps are coming. So, technology will totally change the learning experience in future.
EMS: Need of the Hour
Founder and CEO Embibe.com
In today’s world, education and learning capability is judged by means of examinations. Examinations are vital in judging one’s personality. Thus, the need of exams in universities, schools, colleges and even companies is required for recruitment purposes. The general paper-based tests/exams are now slowly being replaced by the automated and online internet-based examination system.
Recently, there was news all over the media about leakage of examination paper before the actual examination due to which entire examination was cancelled at one of the universities. This has led the other examination conducting bodies and universities to look for ways to ensure a secure and error free system to conduct exams. With increasing number of students appearing for various exams – be it competitive or regular curriculum based – in universities, educational institutes and coaching institutes, there is need of a scalable approach in terms of managing examination system in an efficient way. In this digital era, technology comes as a solution to change the way examinations are conducted with the traditional paper-based examinations.
However, as an examination conducting body you are: worried that the question papers can be leaked before exams. It is a tiresome job for you to prepare a 2-3 sets of questionnaires to avoid any leakage of question papers. You have concerns about verification of answers and result processing as these are huge and prone to errors. It is complicated for you to manage examination including classroom infrastructure, question paper, answer sheets, etc. and, you have to take a decision on the supervisors for every set of papers.
If you are facing the given challenges, this means you are following the traditional form of paper-based examination process. In new-age educa – tion delivery systems, conducting and managing the examination process in a secure environment is an onerous task. There is a need for absolute accuracy in conducting exams and the pressure of highly compressed deadlines. To deal with this, a robust and effective information technology solution Examination Management System (EMS) comes into existence. EMS provides a comprehensive, integrated and secure examination solution that supports conventional as well as online processes. It can effectively manage the full range of examinations and qualifications processes from Pre-Examination, Examination phase to the Post- Examination phase.
The EMS, developed to cater to the examination administrative and conduct needs of educational institutes and universities, allows an easily managed interface to be used by the institution to ensure smooth transfer of existing hardcopies and files on to the electronic database. The system allows integration of all activities involved in conducting an exam such as roll number allocation, exam paper uploads, syllabus management, registration, admin card generation, answer for mat design, automatic result generation and report card generation.
Designed to suit the needs of educational institutions, the EMS provides a simple and easy-to-use webbased centralised user interface and a well- defined database centric model for storing, managing, retrieving and aggregating examination objects. The system also of fers a powerful but easy to use question bank authoring system with different question types, which can be managed online and contain multime – dia contents. These question papers are deli vered in a highly secured manner with encryption technology. These systems are robust enough to handle large amount of data.
Why EMS?
By means of an automated EMS, most of the universities, polytechnics and other professional educational institutions with a growing number of students, can effectively manage the whole examination process and simultaneously save time and money spent on designing, scoring and printing of tests. The EMS enables the institutions to conduct examination online, semi- online and offline with utmost security and sophistication. The system offers a variety of benefits:
Accuracy: The EMS is a smart system that ensures high levels of accuracy in conducting exams. The provisions to transfer sensitive data holding examination question papers, results, fees structure, student/teacher personnel information and other important information managed through the system ensure compliance.
Remote Access: The system works on a unified network where in the students can log in to access the portal to check the course details, exam information, syllabus and results. The core feature of the system is to facilitate automated examinations to replace the standard paper based exams which ensure easy management, immediate corrections facilities, removal of illegible answer sheets.
High Level Security: The online exam system is secure and ensures that all information is retained as confidential. Also, the online examination conducted ensures there is avoidance in possibility of exam cheating practices and plagiarism. The software has been designed with multilevel security to ensure a practical choice over traditional methodology.
Archiving: One of the key benefits of using an online system is to replace the bulky filing cabinets and paper archives of school exam administration process. All information can be stored on electronic for mat to ensure long lasting backup and easy access to the data. This leads to effective cost saving opportunities for re – cord management.
Simplification and Accuracy in Result Processing: With usage of assessment engines overall examination process becomes smooth and result publishing becomes simple task and errors associated with result processing gets reduced.
The Way Forward
For schools, colleges and universities, managing the examination have never been easy. Now, with Examination Management System, school teachers and college/university professors can manage the whole exam process from question papers to final results, very easily.
In addition, the system can also be a powerful tool for e-learning and online education. It can be helpful in creating quiz, question bank, certification examination questions in any language, etc. Besides schools, colleges and universities, recruiting agencies and companies can use it for candidates skills evaluation by conducting online test. It can also be very useful for parents in the academic development of kids to improve their educational skills.
