New frontiers in automation- Computers to set board exam papers – Economic Times

BENGALURU: Automation of setting question papers and making public students' marks cards are two major reforms that technology will drive at the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) and Pre University (PU) boards.

That the government will deploy technology to reform the two boards which conduct Class 10 and Class 12 exams for lakhs of students every year was a promise Chief Minister Siddaramaiah made in his 2017-18 budget. The board exam system came under severe attack last year when the II PU Chemistry question paper leaked twice in a span of ten days, forcing the government to rework the exam schedule leaving lakhs of students traumatised.

For a start, computers will replace teachers in setting question papers.A virtual bank of 40,000 questions will be created to generate question papers. For any subject, there's no reason why a question paper should be set by human beings, Additional Chief Secretary (primary and secondary education) Ajay Seth told ET.

Also, marks gained by students in the two exams will be made public.We are doing this because many fake SSLC and PUC marks cards are created with the idea of getting jobs.Employers can key in the name and date of birth of candidates to verify their marks, he said.

The government has students' marks data in an electronic format 2003 onward. There are no privacy issues here since they are public exams. The facility will be ready in about four months and the govern ment is in talks with the National Informatics Centre and Infosys Foundation-funded ICT Infracon for development. Seth ruled out using technology in transporting question papers to exam centres.

I'm more worried about the distribution stage because that's where leaks can happen, Vasavi Vidyanikethan Trust chief executive K Sheshamurthy said. He cited the example of the online question paper delivery system that Visvesvaraya Technological University adopted four years ago. There passwords are issued to exam centres to access a secure server and print question papers just 30 minutes before the exam.

The same can be piloted for smaller exams as a proof of concept, according to Nagendran Sundararajan, executive vice president at MeritTrac, a testing and assessments company .Another area where there's clearly a big room for technology to come in is evaluation. The likes of on-screen marking technology are being used globally. It cuts down totalling errors and ensures consistency, he said.

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New frontiers in automation- Computers to set board exam papers - Economic Times