Online Exams

The news of hiccup in the CAT examination conducted by IIMs is the current topic of debate amongst technocrats, academicians and examinees. Despite of all these problems, we need to applaud the initiative of the premier management institution of India to make the examinations on-line. The glitch in the process appears to be temporary in nature, these type of problems arise in all technological implementation and more so, in the cases, where there are large number of examinees appearing for the exams from different locations across India.
Any new system that is introduced faces initial resistance and adaptability problem. At the same time, we need to remind ourselves that India as a whole (barring the metro cities) is still facing problems in infrastructure (mainly uninterrupted power supply and reliable network) and collaborative work environment (exams of such huge magnitude demands collaboration among all the stakeholders).
My experience with the on-line examinations is interesting and worth sharing:
1. The technical staff at the examination centres work hard to keep the lab ready to use, but not without assumptions that, examinees are accustomedo working with PC and thus leave many issues for the examinees to decide.
2. The lab instructions manual or handouts in most of the cases are not complete.
3. The labs infrastructure in many cases is not consistent. The power back up is generally not tested with full load and more often not, it fails in the actual situation of power failure.
4. The software used for the examinations have many unresolved problems, for example: readability of the questions on the screen (in actual test condition) is poor, navigation is poor and many a times layout is also confusing.
5. The examinees well versed with pen-paper style of examination, generally, find it inconvenient to write on-line examination.
The on-line examinations are here to stay, and I look forward to radical shift of all types of examinations from paper-pen style to on-line examinations.