Adopting online exams for schools
Adopting online exams for schools

Introduction

Schools and examinations are like best friends. They come as a package and you do not have the option of choosing one over other. You cannot separate them even if you try to.

Schools and examinations both are an integral part of a person’s educational journey. Schools are important to acquire knowledge and examinations are important to test the acquired knowledge.

Examinationsare crucial part of the education system as they help to measure the progress of the student. They help to understand the amount of knowledge acquired by the students.

We have all suffered the circumstances created due to the Covid-19 outbreak. We have experienced the difficulties in carrying out day to day tasks which were not automated. Thus, by now, we all would agree that the technology and its innovation are one hundred percent necessary o carry out every activity – be it at home or outside.

As per UNESCO, one billion learners in 123 countries have been impacted due to Covid-19 pandemic. The total percentage is as massive as 62.3%. Due to the pandemic scenario, education system has realised the significance of technology. Technology is being used for education purposes increasingly. This has given rise to the concept of Education Technology or EduTech.

As a part of EduTech, the examinations are conducted in online mode. These online examinations are given by the students using internet based devices and can be conducted with the help of online examination platforms or tools.

These platforms are used to conduct online examinations for all the students beginning from K12 to post graduation level. Such platforms provide many ways to carry out every activity related to online exams in a much simple and hassle free way. These ways are innovated with the help of many features and techniques developed with the help of Technology.

Need for online examinations at school level

Need of online examination at school level

Online exams have become a necessity and not just a luxury. Online examinations are crucial for school students as this will help to minimize the chances of children coming in contact with each other which in turn will help to maintain social distancing.

As per the survey conducted by BYJU’s, 75% of Indian parents would like their children to continue with their education in an online mode even after the lockdown end. Hence, there is just no chance that the need for online examinations would subside anytime soon.

The educational stakeholders have started understanding the importance and urgency of adopting technology in education. 

A large chunk, approximately 82% of these educational stakeholders have already switched to online modes for conducting classes and examination while some are planning to make the shift soon.

Types of online exams conducted for Schools

Types of online exams conducted at school

Thus, here is a list of exams which can be conducted in an online mode for students belonging to any age group or class.

A. Admission Tests

Certain schools prefer taking a test before admitting the student in the school. These tests are similar to the entrance exams tests which are conducted by colleges before giving admission in the college.

Admission tests are conducted before admitting a student in the school along with interview or any other admission process activity.

These entry-level tests are designed to test if the student satisfies all the criteria set for admission.

It helps to test if the student possesses the potential and is eligible to be admitted in that particular school.

B. Scholarship Tests

Scholarship tests are similar to aptitude tests. They are designed to gauge the eligibility of the students for acquiring a scholarship. These tests can be little difficult than usual examinations.

The students need to prepare well for these exams as these exams do have cut off marks based on which the students receive the scholarship.

C. Practice Tests


Practice tests are conducted before the actual exam so that the students who are going to appear for the exam will not face any difficulties. The pattern, time and marks of these exams are similar to that of the actual exams.

Such practice tests help resolve students’ queries beforehand, boost their confidence and help save time during the actual exam.

D. Academic tests


These tests are based on the syllabus taught during the classes. These exams help to understand what the student’s learnt during the classes, how much they could grasp, retain and recall during the exams.

These exams are used as metric to evaluate the progress of the candidate. These exams help the teachers to understand which student is weak or strong in which subject.

E. Oral or viva tests

Oral or viva tests are a part of academic tests which are conducted to gauge the students’ communication skills. These tests help the teachers to understand the way in which students are pronouncing words and if they understand the meaning of the words.

The viva tests also help the teachers to understand the student’s memory skills and their confidence to speak in public.

F. Practical Tests 


Practical tests are based on the theory lessons learnt by the students throughout the course. These tests are conducted to gauge the practical knowledge acquired by the students.

These tests are used to check if the students can apply the knowledge learnt through the lessons in a practical ways.

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The online examinations provide an added benefit. There are four different ways in which the above tests can be conducted in an online mode. These four ways are as below:

A. Objective type exams

In such types of exams, multiple options are provided as part of answers. The students need to select only one option which is right according to them.

Only the exact right answer can give you full marks.

Most of the times, scholarship tests and Admission tests are of objective type.

B. Subjective/Descriptive exam

These exams include questions which demand descriptive long answers. The students are supposed to write the answers in their own words by elaborating or explaining them well.

The right answers can give you full marks but somewhat right answers can also help you get half or quarter marks. Thus the students rarely get a zero in case of subjective exams.

The Academic tests, Practice tests and Practical tests are mostly subjective type.

C. Video based exams

Such exams includes a video clip which the students are supposed to see carefully before answering the question. The question is based on this clip and thus the students can find the answer of the question by watching the clip.

Any type of tests can incorporate video-based questions to gauge the capability of the students to see, focus and learn.

D. Audio based exams

In such exams, an audio clip is attached in the question. These audio clips contain the answer to the question in which they are attached. Thus the students need to listen to the clip carefully and then answer the question.

Admission, Practice, Academic or Viva tests can include audio-based questions so as to understand the student’s ability to hear, understand and analyse things.

Thus we can see that many different types of exams can be conducted in online mode for school purposes. Thus, switching over to online examination platforms will only prove beneficial to the school management.

Let us now check the feature and advantages offered by these technological platforms used to conduct online exams.

Features of online tests System

The online examination platforms for school comes with a variety of features. These features are nothing but mechanisms developed using highly advanced technology. These features can prove extremely useful while conducting online exams.


Let us have a look at these features.


The online exams can be conducted on any device which supports internet such as mobile phones, personal computers, laptops, tablets, etc.

Thus, students can appear for these exams from any remote location as per their convenience.


The procedure of launching or conducting online exams is extremely simple. These platforms are quiet user-friendly as well.


The online examination platforms can help you to create the exam schedule as also notify the students as well as their parents about the schedule through email, text messages, etc.


The techniques of remote proctoring (remote invigilation) help to monitor the students from any location and prevent the students from carrying out any form of malpractice or cheating.


The subjective exams offer many options to students such as preferred language selection, speech to text conversion to avoid typing, uploading of documents or hand-written answer sheets, attaching diagrams or graphs, etc.

Many features are also provided to make evaluation of subjective answers super manageable.


The results are generated quickly and the performance of the students can also be analysed.


The online school examination platform can be integrated with any existing system to generate results, student information, etc.


Training videos are also provided which would help the students become familiar with online examination process.


The online examination platforms are extremely scalable which helps to conduct examinations for a large number of students at a time.

Thus, we can see that the online examination platforms can prove very advantageous for conducting exams at school level. Each and every feature will make the entire process of conducting and giving the online exams extremely uncomplicated for both the teachers and students as well.

 

About Eklavvya Solution

Eklavvya Platform for Online Exams

Splashgain has come up with an innovative platform called as Eklavvya which is carefully developed to address every issue faced while conducting online exams. 

It also offers many innovative features which can increase the ease of conducting examinations in online mode.

Over 63% of students face the issues related to accessibility and connectivity in remote areas. But Eklavvya offers solutions due to which online exams can be conducted even in the remote areas without any disruptions.

As the online exams are conducted from remote locations, it poses huge chances of cheating or malpractices carried out by students. 

About 38% of the education institutions have stated an anti-cheating technology as their first criteria while selecting and a platform for conducting online exams.

Eklavvya is developed using techniques such as remote proctoring, facial recognition, secure browser, chatbots, etc. which are powered with highly advanced technology such as Artificial Intelligence. Thus, the chances of cheating and malpractices are totally banished.

Due to the use of technologically advanced algorithms, Eklavvya is able to generate results and analytical reports quickly and accurately. These results and reports can be customised by providing the required filters. Eklavvya can also generate feedback based on the analysis.

Eklavvya also provides scalable solutions due to which the restriction on the student count appearing for online examinations is completely eliminated. Eklavvya can also be easily integrated with your current system.

Eklavvya has made the process of conducting online exams as simple as students can login and appear for the exam from their location and the examiners can login and evaluate the answer sheets from their location.

Thus adopting an online examination platform like Eklavvya is going to prove abundantly advantageous to the schools and all other education institutions. 

It is going to prove as a better alternative for traditional classroom based exams for schools. It is certainly going to improve the ways in which learning activities were happening till now and in return boost the engagement of children in these learning activities.

 

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