What Does a Successful Online Examination Model Look Like?
ExamOnline
To implement a successful online examination model in India, institutions need to start testing students on their critical thinking abilities. Due to the time duration flexibility, examiners can evaluate students on concepts rather than on rote learning.
Furthermore, exams can include multiple-choice questions to assess student’s knowledge. These questions can be attempted even from a mobile phone. Examiners can also conduct viva-voce over WhatsApp video calls, making it convenient for students who do not have a computer or laptop.
Take-home exams are another option for institutions looking to conduct online examinations. Students can be given a few hours or a few days to solve a question, which can then be submitted online. For such exams, universities can provide the option to give the exam from home or at an examination center. Students who have a stable internet connection and a desktop can attempt the exam at home, while those who don’t can go to an examination center.
To reduce cheating among students, assessments can include questions that are not direct. In other words, exams should ask questions whose answers require thinking rather than just copying from books or the internet.
Additionally, universities can impose penalties to minimize the chances of cheating. For instance, they can request students sign a declaration of originality before accessing the question paper or submitting their answers. If the university finds that students have discussed the questions during the exam or copied answers, a lower grading could be awarded to them.
Online assessments existed before the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to do so even in the future. ExamOnline has successfully conducted online examinations for Universities such as Madan Mohan Malviya University of Technology since 2009 – a technology that was still developing at that time. The SBI Promotion Exam was conducted by ExamOnline in 2011 in 14 Countries simultaneously in a seamless and structured manner. A market leader in the domain of conducting online examinations, investing in a platform such as ExamOnline is a sureshot way to conduct virtual assessments objectively.
Conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a disruption in our education system. Traditional teaching and assessment methods need to be re-evaluated as the world rapidly moves towards digitization.
Online examination software is being developed to make it easy for schools and universities to conduct online examinations. It provides cloud-based solutions where corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies can create and assign tests, distribute instructional materials, and generate custom reports. Most modern solutions such as ExamOnline even provide tools to identify and prevent potential cheating.
While universities such as the University of Calcutta and the University of Delhi have given students the option to either give in-person or online exams, the benefits of the latter far outweigh its costs. And it won’t be long till more universities adopt online examinations in the future.
