Article Contents
Introduction
The twenty-first century is the century of technology. All the fields have adopted the technology and have increased their productivity with accuracy, the industries are undergoing major transformation in all the processes, may those be human resource management or manufacturing management. This article discusses the advanced edtech tools that are making their impact on how the students learn and get assessed.
The industry 4.0 is automation centric, the automation comes with technology adoption, this makes the technology a focus center of future, the same applies to the education field, the technology adoption in technology was relatively slow as compared to the corporations in late 90s and initial 21st century, but the onset of pandemic turned out to be a trigger for technology adoption in the education field.
The adoption of technology has enabled the schools and colleges to manage the academic activities in significantly better way, the student data management, leave management is done using ERPs, the staff of the academic institutes is managed using the human resource management system (HRMS), the academic content delivery is managed through the LMS, apart from this, there are many more such tools that can help you to leverage the technology for streamlining academic and human resource related activities
Here are the top technological tools to better manage your academic organization
Advanced Edtech tool #1: Examination Management System
Online examinations make their name in the list of advanced edtech tool as examinations are one of the most crucial parts of academics, exams not only assess the student’s knowledge but help students decide their interest and capabilities, the exams need to be conducted with sanctity to maintain their reliability. This makes examinations one of the most planned and valued academic activities.
The examination management is done at various levels, right from scheduling the examinations, arranging the classrooms for examinations to printing the question papers. These activities are tedious and hold high chances of errors, to prevent errors, multiple levels of management review each and every part of the examination process.
When we analyze the current examination process, we can surely draw below conclusions-
- Examination schedule management is a tough task
- Cost of conducting examinations is significantly high, A lot of cost goes in papers, printing, classrooms and exam center rents and logistics to bring question paper at exam center and then delivering those to the evaluators
- Manual operations carry risk of mistakes, review and rework is needed in most of the cases
- Result declaration gets delayed because of the associated hurdle, for example delay in delivery of answer sheets to evaluator, slow data entry and delay from the printing offset
What if I tell you that the automation of the exam process can reduce the time and cost of the examination process and improve the accuracy with convenience?
Yes, It is possible to minimize the manual processes and automating them by using the technology,
Here are certain examples of exam process automation
Question Bank Management and Question Paper Creation
The question bank can be efficiently managed using technology, the questions get stored on the secure cloud with the access only to those who have login credentials, the question can be easily sorted as per your requirement using the Question Bank Analytics feature of the examination management system
The questions can be labeled and sorted subject, topic, difficulty level wise, it is also possible to filter the questions according to their marks weightage. Once the questions are imported into the system, those can be used multiple times for multiple exam sessions, the shuffling and randomization of question can make it possible to use same set of questions multiple times
The randomization of questions allows you to create multiple sets of question papers from a given set of question papers. For example, imagine a scenario where I need 50 questions in an examination, I can import 250 questions (more number of questions than the number of questions required in exam), using these 250 questions, the system will create a large number of question sets.
This way, is it possible to create multiple question papers with the same difficulty level and subject and topic wise question distribution for multiple exam sessions without any need to re-import the questions.
Answer Sheet Evaluation Process
In the conventional way of examination, the answer sheets are sent to the respective subject expert (evaluator) for evaluation, coordination is needed with these evaluators for completing the evaluation activity, the large volume of answer sheets needs to be handled, this coordination and answer sheets handling activity can certainly delay the evaluation process.
With OnScreen Marking System, the evaluators can correct the answer sheets totally in online mode, the marks awarded by the evaluators get saved in the system, the administrator (the one who is entitled to manage the evaluation process) can define the evaluation end date, the communication regarding allocation of these answer sheets for evaluation occurs automatically through email, this minimizes the delay caused due to inefficient coordination. Furthermore, the transportation cost and time of answer sheets can be significantly reduced.
Result Processing
The result management can be completely digitized, once the evaluation is done in the OnScreen Marking System, the results can be produced with a single click, the results can be generated and exported in the printable excel or PDF format as per the requirement.
The results can be downloaded exam wise and student wise as per the one’s convenience, the leadership board can help to analyze subject and topic wise marks distribution among the students
Furthermore the results can be stored on the cloud securely as long as the retention of those records are needed, there is absolutely no need of printing the results, thus, the technology can help you to reduce the printing and thus pay your contribution to save the trees
Rechecking of the answer sheets
After the results are declared, the students may come up with the concerns and grievances about their marks, to keep the sanctity of the process and keep the result process transparent, the institutes are ethically and morally obliged to recheck the answer sheets if any such concerns are received.
Currently, in such a scenario, the evaluator needs to find the answer sheets from the bunches of answer sheets for each such query, this is a process that consumes a lot of time and efforts, the result process needs to be time bound considering the admission processes followed by the result.
With the technology, the rechecking process can be simplified, the answer sheets of the students can be found with a single click, furthermore, the answer sheets of students can be made available to all the students right after the result is declared. This makes the evaluation and result process even more transparent and reliable
Advanced Edtech Tool #2: Admission and Registration Services
The second major advanced edtech tool is the system that enables you to conduct the online admissions for your institute
The admission process can also be digitized, in fact, currently for most of the reputed colleges, the admission process is streamlined totally in an online way.
When we consider about the admission process, there are three vital factors to emphasize on-
- Candidate Registration
- Candidate Screening
- Online fee payment
- Merit list generation
Candidate registration
The candidate registration process can be simplified, the admission administrator makes a registration form with mandatory details and links are sent to aspiring students, a special portal can also be developed as and when required, the admin can mark certain fields as mandatory fields, thus, only those students who fulfill the eligibility criteria can proceed further with their application
Candidate Screening
Candidate screening can be done directly on the basis of the marks of the candidate or an entrance exam can be conducted, these entrance exams can be conducted in online as well as offline mode.
The online entrance examinations have multiple advantages over the offline center based examinations, here are the 5 reasons to conduct the entrance exam in online mode
Once the screening criteria is defined, the administrator can proceed for merit list generation
Online fee payment
Most of the institutes require a nominal registration fee to be paid in order to get the application be considered for merit list generation, this fee payment can be streamlined in an online way using the secure payment gateway, the students do not need to visit the bank for fee payment, furthermore, for the admin, it is easier than ever to keep track on the fee payment details
Advanced Edtech Tool #3: Learning Management System
LMS is one of the most advanced edtech tool mainly intended for academic content delivery through a digital interface, by definition, A learning management system is a technology interface that lets the academicians deliver the content to students in controlled and phase wise manner. The essential features of LMS include
Hybrid classroom
The Advanced Edtech Tool to host live classroom lectures broadcast and storage,that allows content delivery to students, this gives flexibility to students to attend the classes either in online or offline mode, furthermore, even if the students miss the class, they can watch the recording of the lecture.
Interactive learning
Various researchers claim that interactive learning can help students to grasp the concept more effectively. An advanced LMS relies on live video interaction and chat communication between the student and teacher.
Attendance management
The attendance process takes at least 5 minutes in each lecture, that stands at 1/10th of the time of a 45 minutes lecture. The attendance management can be streamlined digitally, the teacher does not need to take the attendance manually, which saves a lot of time and makes lectures more productive
Control over content access
The academician can define who can access the content and who cannot, the lectures and academic content gets stored on the secure cloud, only those students with valid login credentials can access the content. Moreover, the content can be rolled out in phase wise manner, for example, the content of the second lecture will be rolled out only when the student completes the first lecture.
Advanced Edtech Tool #4: Institute Parent Communication tools
These communication tools make their position in the list of Advanced Edtech Tool owing the importance of parent-teacher communication, these tools can be described as simple yet effective tools
The coordination between parent and teacher can be carried out using a technology interface, using this technology, the parents can post the queries, teachers can give feedback about students to their parents, some common notices can be rolled out.
Apart from this, students can submit applications to teachers and other academic offices via this digital interface. This interface can help you to make the communication between parent and teacher more effective.
Advanced Edtech Tool #5: Viva Conducting Tools
The fifth most prominent Advanced Edtech Tool is the one that enables you to conduct the online viva process
The viva process can be conducted in a totally digital mode, the questions to be asked to students can be fed in the system, the students can choose the time slot for their viva as per their convenience, the responses given by students are recorded, and subsequently analyzed by the evaluator.
The digital viva process is more reliable and holds a better transparency, the records of responses given by the students can be maintained for the period.
Summary
Thus, technology is enabling the education sector to streamline the crucial academic processes, few of the technologies have already become the inevitable part of the academics, the scope of technology in education is huge, right from the candidate data management to examination management, process digitization is surely going to be streamlined in digital way across the institutes in near future.
