Schools and colleges, time to go digital

Bangalore University has just shown the way by introducing digital evaluation and it's time for other colleges and schools to emulate it to make things easier for both teachers and students. Murlidhar S, co-founder and CEO of MeritTrac Services that is collaborating with RM Assessments to produce evaluation software, tells DNA how the digital evaluation system works and what are its advantages

Each and every single mark counts. That's exactly why the school Boards and universities receive huge numbers of applications from students for revaluation and re-totalling. Though there are no statistics available on the exact number of students opting for revaluation on a yearly-basis, it is estimated to be some 10-15%.

Mistakes committed during totalling of marks, teachers missing to evaluate answers and administrative errors contribute to a major part of evaluation errors. Such mistakes could be easily avoided by digitising the process of evaluation.

Digitising evaluation
Answer scripts are scanned and uploaded to the software

Evaluators get login IDs and passwords

Teachers then evaluate the  answer scripts online

Whether a student has answered a question or not, the evaluator has to fill in the box allotted for marks, hence the chances of an error in the calculation are minimised

Advantages
Evaluation becomes easy and fast
Totalling is computerised
Retrieval of data and answer sheets     becomes fast and easy
Rate of error comes down
Quality control is optimum
If the university/board permits, evaluation can be done from home as well

(Since the evaluation is done online, the answer scripts scanned at one centre can be evaluated at other centres too. If there is a dearth of evaluators at one centre, the answer scripts can be forwarded to another)

Beware evaluators
Some of the softwares alert the chief administrator immediately if an evaluator commits a mistake. Teachers would have to constantly be on their toes, because dummy answer scripts could be included without their knowledge to check them.
 
Tried and tested
MeritTrac conducted pilot projects using its TracMarks software on CBSE answer scripts in October/November last year. Around 500 English answer scripts were evaluated in the Delhi region using the software. This year, in July/August, the company plans to conduct another pilot project on a larger scale with the CBSE, said Murlidhar, adding that the Board is contemplating implementing the system.

"Such softwares could fasten the process of evaluation and earlier results could be expected. Besides, it will help teachers evaluate more number of answer scripts since softwares save precious time of evaluators by remove the burden of totalling off them," Murlidhar said.

Moreover, there is a definite shortage of manpower to manually correct the scripts.

“The problem in manual correction is that if evaluators commit an error in judgement, then the issue is sorted out by just issuing a warning to the evaluators as it can't be really checked. This is a major issue in this country, especially with thousands of complaints related to evaluation coming in each year. The best solution will be tackling this problem using technology,” he sums up. Cambridge School Board had been using this system for the last six years, where 4-4.5 million answer scripts are evaluated every year.

Besides, instances of answer scripts being washed away and burnt could be avoided by digitising them.