ONLINE EXAMINATION SYSTEM By Dolly Gujarathi Priyanka Gosai

MPSTME-NMIMS University Btech I.T.

Introduction

Online examinations are conducted through the internet or in an intranet (if within the Organization) to test a remote candidate .

Candidate is given a limited time to answer the questions and after the time expiry the answer paper is disabled automatically and answers is sent to the examiner.

The examiner will evaluate answers, either through automated process or manually and the results will be sent to the candidate through email or made available in the web site.

Advantages

it can be conducted for remote candidates and evaluation of answers can be fully automated for MCQ questions and other essay type questions can be evaluated manually or through automated system.

online examinations can be conducted at any time and does not incur higher cost as traditional exam scenario as there is no paper work involved

Need

There are three major components of effort required to administer an examination:

1. Create the examination, and keep the contents secure until the examination starts.

2. Supervise the examination3. Mark the examinations.

Using computer technology, it should be possible to streamline these three phases, and also disconnect them from each other.

examination system offers the following features1. Reliability2. User Details

Proposed System

The Online Examination System is a web based application.

The system suits the need of Educational Institutions, Primary and Secondary Schools, Colleges, Professional and Vocational Institutes, Universities or Training Academies

The product (system) aims at reducing costs associated with conducting exams over a period of time and achieving total automation of examination system-related tasks like registration, publication of results, which leads to a very high degree of system efficiency.

Features

Type of Questions- multiple choice, true/false, fill in the blanks and essay.

Exams can be timed or untimed- set the date and time when the specific test has to be available.

Can include pictures, graphics and flash (.swf) files in the questions of the Online examinations.

The Student and Faculty details are stored in the database.

The Online examination system has a password based authentication system for students as well as System Administrator.

Trends Graphs Included for analysis-system is capable of generating statistical data for examiner.

Communities and Groups can be formed for specific organizations

Practice Tests- providing a large bank of practice test questions that students can practice with.

Exam Simulators-practice taking exams in a real exam environment.

Exams and questions can be edited, deleted, and re-used anytime

Discussion Blog- to discuss the problems/doubts students have regarding a test.

Results: Students and instructors get instant results via e-mail. Results can also be printed as soon as the test finishes.

Colour Code for Question Status: Orange : Question seen but no any action (Review & Confirm) Gray : Not seen questions Green : Confirmed Answer• Alerts: Reminders are set to alert examinee 10 minutes before

time expiry.

Advanced Features

The examiner who uploads the questions gets an option of specifying whether the questions can be used for practice tests or not.

Communities or groups can be formed for specific organizations.

A variety of analysis options based on different parameters or combinations of different parameters for faculty/examiners conducting the test.

Testing and Management of the system are important advanced features that are offered by the proposed system. They are discussed as follows.

Testing:

The interactive online testing interface greatly expands the capabilities of the assessment offering, and gives candidates the benefits of:

Multimedia and Interactive questions.

No more handwriting concerns.

The ability to log on and sit their exams from any Internet terminal (when supervision is not required).

Real time data backup facility, to prevent loss of work.

The interactive Testing Engine delivers the test session using a secure, timed interface.

Management:

At the heart of the system is a powerful database application which ensures that all administration data is kept cohesive, up to date and reliable.

Tools for administrators are included such as:

a) Online exam timetable and resource planning tools.

b) Integrated allocation engine for candidates, markers and moderators.

c) Secure online sign on and access control.

Administrators can easily set exam timetables and allocate

assessments/exam/test to markers, moderators and candidates.

Existing Systems

A number of online examination system soft wares are available today. The system of online exams has been widely adopted by a good number

of organizations and universities. The tasks of maintaining records, score cards, student details, question

papers and so on is very easily managed by the system.

Management of continuously assessed coursework is just as straightforward as summative final exams.

Few examples of available technologies are Exam-software Test Engine, Aotea Online Assessment System, iSummation Technologies - Online Courses Examination System (OCES) and so on.

A brief overview of two of the above available soft wares is followed.

1. Exam-Software Test Engine

Exam Software is a Test Management Software to create and conduct computer based online examination.

You can create quiz, question bank, certification examination questions in any language.

Useful for school, college, university, teachers and professors for managing question papers and examinations. Recruiting agencies, companies can use it for candidate's skills evaluation by conducting online test.

It is very useful for parents in the academic development of kids to improve their educational skills.

Exam Software provides password protection to exam files to prevent unauthorized access to the question paper.

Exam Software provides Print utility to print the question paper as per your requirement.

2. Aotea Online Assessment System

A comprehensive administration tool which is directly tailored to the needs of large scale assessment providers and academic institutions

The Aotea system is a complete software environment which provides an integrated platform for the authoring, marking and management of examination online.

An online searchable Item Bank. A Dynamic Item allocation engine. Print facility for the reports and a history maintained of number of questions

generated and answered each time.

Advantages of the proposed system

Communities and Groups:

The System provides a feature of creating communities and groups for organizations.

Students and faculty of the organization can access the general subject tests.

Privacy for organizations.

Discussion forums:

Feedbacks from the usersImprovements suggested can be implemented

Blogs are introduced for regular updates

Learning material :

Facility to revise before taking up a test Course material made available to students

Faculty uploads all the necessary documents for students on a regular basis.

Analysis of performance:

Facility to analyze every student’s performance. Easy to difficult level of distinction between questions.

Essay type Subjective questions:

Essay type questions for which evaluation criteria are defined as follows:

The marks given depends on the matched keywords in the answer The marks given depends on the total length of the answer

Spelling and grammatical errors are checked with the help of an inbuilt dictionary in the system

Introduction of multimedia:

The proposed Online Examination System supports multimedia files such as images, photos, graphs etc which can be used while forming

various types of questions.

Time-Line chart