5 Ways To Simplify Offline Exam Management

5 Ways to simplify offline exam management
Digitization of offline examinations

Introduction

Technology has revolutionized the way we do things, from booking cabs to making payments, everything is now digitized. Digitization offers speed, accuracy, and convenience, which has resulted in its widespread adoption in all industries, including education.

Academic institutions have embraced technological tools to manage critical academic processes, from admission to alumni registration, resulting in faster processing and automatic documentation. However, some academic processes are yet to be digitized.

Due to the pandemic, online examinations have become the norm, and most academic institutions are continuing to conduct them. If you’re among them, it’s essential to secure your online examination process.

Offline examinations are often believed to be superior to online examinations. If you’re one of those who prefer classroom-based examinations, here are some tips to digitize the offline examination process.

Why digitization is needed?

Advantages of digitization

Most corporations believe in the continuous improvement of processes, and for continuous improvement, they implement “lean principles”; these principles believe in “cutting off the unnecessary processes” and making the overall process simpler and less time-consuming.

How can we apply lean principles to academic operations?

lean operations in academic processes

Let us understand this with an example of the “Offline exam process”.

Here is exactly “how you can implement the lean principles for the “offline exam process”

The present offline exam process contains a lot of manual work, The manual work is often time-consuming, less accurate, requires a lot of human effort and is not cost-effective

Example of such manual work in the “Offline exam process” includes-

  1. Question paper creation by the paper setters (Scope of improvement- The papers can get leaked, and the questions need to be handled manually)
  1. Transportation of answer sheets (Scope of improvement- Cut off the logistic cost for transportation of these answer sheets from the exam centre to the examiner, storage of a such large number of answersheet is hard, moreover, accessing the old record is a tough task)
  1. Result generation process (Scope of improvement- The result generation process can be automated, this will save cost and time)

Yes, we understood where we can improve! above mentioned are the exact points for process improvement and applying the kaizen principles of continuous improvement in academic processes.

The next step is to improve and implement the process.

Steps to improve Offline Exam Process

1. Digital question bank creation

Digital Question Bank

A digital question bank is a question bank which is created on the cloud, these question banks can serve as a great alternative to paper-printed question banks.

Here are certain advantages of creating the digital question bank-

  1. The question bank becomes omnipresent, meaning that it can be accessed anytime using the device with the internet.
  2. There are no chances of question bank leakage, only designated people with valid usernames and passwords can access these question banks
  3. The questions in digital question banks are reusable, once imported into the online question bank, the same questions can be repurposed for multiple other examinations.
  4. With digital question banks, it is easy to coordinate between the question editors (subject teachers). For example, there are two teachers who teach English subjects for a class, and with an online system, it is easy to coordinate between these two teachers. When the first teacher makes any edit to the question, the updated question will be visible to the second teacher in the question bank, this makes sure that the coordination among the teachers is proper
  5. It is possible to store the thousands of questions in the system, these questions can be exported in PDF format on local computers as well.
  6. It is easier to manage the questions in online question bank management systems, the sorting of questions can be done on the basis of question type, subject, topic, and marks

2. Automatic question paper generation

Create exportable question papers to be used in offline examinations

The question paper generation can be totally automated, and the question bank in digital format can be used for creating the question paper. The questions imported into the system can be reused for creating the question papers. It is possible to create multiple sets of question papers using the online question paper generation module

Let us understand this with an example

Say, I want to create a question paper for the subject “Physics”.

For creating the question paper, I will import the questions under defined subjects and topics, Next, I will define the question paper parameters-

For example-

I want 50 questions in the exam, 25 questions from the topic “Gravity” and another 25 from the topic “Elasticity”. I want the difficulty pattern to be, 25 Easy questions, 15 moderate questions, and 10 difficult questions. Passing marks, 20.

Once all these parameters are fed, you get a question paper generated, this process can be repeated multiple times to get multiple sets of question papers.

3. Digital answer sheet checking

Faster answer sheet evaluation

In conventional examinations, the answer sheets are transported from the examination centre to the place of the examiner, this consumes time and takes cost. By eliminating this process, we can significantly save cost and time.

The digital answer sheet evaluation process is much simpler and faster, the answer sheets are scanned with lightning-fast speed and are saved in the system, and the login credentials are shared with the examiner, these examiners can use their login credentials and start checking the answer sheets.

Want to know more about digital answer sheet evaluation? The below video gives insights into the OnScreen Evaluation System-

4. ERP integrated result publication

Faster result generation for offline exam

Managing the results of examinations is yet another time taking the task, a lot of manual intervention is required to collect and compile the result data from all the different teachers making the process tedious.

Technology can help to generate the results automatically, once the answer sheets of students are checked by all the examiners, it is a matter of a single click to retrieve student-wise and exam-wise results. These results can be exported into an excel sheet, the printable scorecards also get available in the system.

ERPs (Enterprise resource planning) tools are digital interfaces between the organization users, these ERPs are widely implemented in schools, and these tools can be used for various communications between the school and students. With ERP integration, it is possible to directly roll out the results to students without any manual intervention.

5. Faster Re-revaluation

Faster answer sheet evaluation

It is very common to receive feedback from students about the marks that they got in exams, this makes re-evaluation an inevitable process. The re-evaluation process makes students believe more in the exam process considering the transparency that re-evaluation brings to the examination process.

No doubt that re-evaluation increases the reliability of results, but for administration, it comes up as a challenge to manage a large number of answer sheets. Staff finds it to be tedious to collect a single answer sheet from such a large number of answer sheets.

Also, the process of re-evaluation has to be time-bound considering the academic requirements of students, if the re-evaluation process gets delayed, the students may end up losing a year.

Thus, time is a crucial factor in the re-evaluation process,

What if I tell you that you can reduce the time of re-evaluation to 1/10 of the existing time requirement?

Yes, with the help of technology, the re-evaluation process can be made fast, you don’t need to find a few answer sheets from the big pile, it is as simple as searching a file in your PC, just enter the student roll number and get the answer sheet!

Isn’t it fascinating? Technology can enable you to do more with limited resources, and with great accuracy, you can manage things better in less time.

Reach out to us to know more about each of mentioned tools-

Eklavvya Question Bank Management

Eklavvya Question Paper Generation

OnScreen Marking Solution

Learning Management System

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