Thursday, 26 April 2018

Customised answer sheets: MU’s solution to avoid result mess

  • 26 Apr 2018 | Mumbai | HT Correspondent htmetro@hindustantimes.com

Customised answer sheets: MU’s solution to avoid result mess


MUMBAI: To avoid another results debacle, the University of Mumbai (MU) has decided to do away with discrepancies in its on-screen assessment system. It will introduce customised answer sheets and online attendance during next semester’s exams to be held in October and November.

With these new answer sheets in place, the students will no longer have to enter details such as seat number, course, question paper code and college code manually. Instead, they will be given stickers with these identifiers printed on them, to be stuck on the first page of the answer sheets.
The university believes that the move will put an end to errors in personal details entered by students in the answer booklets.

Currently, these details are entered on an optical mark recognition (OMR) sheet attached to the answer booklet. The booklet is subsequently scanned and the details of students, along with the rest of the answer booklet, are stored digitally.

"Out of every 1,000 answer booklets, two or three contain erroneous details. The system is unable to identify the students to which they belong. We are required to find physical copies of these answer sheets and assess them manually," said Vinod Malale, deputy registrar (public relations) at MU.

During the past two semester exams, the university was unable to trace digital copies of many answer sheets in the system, leading to a delay in declaring results. One of the main reasons for these ‘missing’ papers, according to university officials, is the erroneous information filled by students.

Additionally, the university also has plans to track the attendance record of students during exams through an online portal.

The colleges will be required to upload the attendance report for every test, immediately after it gets over, on this portal. This will enable the university to match the tally of answer sheets with the number of students who appeared for the test, ensuring that none of the answer sheets are ‘misplaced’. “We will have all the data at our disposal,” said Malale.

Arjun Ghatule, in-charge director, board of examination and evaluation, said the two measures are among the prerequisites for the smooth functioning of an on-screen marking (OSM) system. "We thought that OSM is merely about scanning the answer sheets. This is not the case," he said.
"MU’s OSM has been customised, refined and upgraded, so that we could deliver desired results," said acting vice-chancellor Devanand Shinde.


Source : http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx 

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