The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Now examinations online!

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 21, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Now examinations online!

By A. A. Michael Raj

COIMBATORE, FEB. 20. Outside the auditorium, college students strode purposefully towards lecture halls, chatted as they strolled towards the vehicle park or stopped to converse in small groups, taking care not to disturb those inside the building.

Seated in eleven groups inside the auditorium at the PSG College of Arts and Science were fifty teachers busy discussing among themselves.

Now and again they stopped to jot down a few points.

It was the second day of a three-day workshop on preparing multiple-choice questions that could be loaded into a database and used for online testing by students under the choice-based credit system.

"We are thinking in a futuristic manner. With WTO coming in and education placed in the category of `services', we will have to share our expertise across countries within the next two years. Foreign universities will establish their campuses here and we must also think of exporting education," the Principal, Sheela Ramachandran, told The Hindu .

A college in India could establish a campus in another country and attract students there, or allow students to complete part of their studies abroad.

e-content development

Indian teachers could go abroad under short duration programme to share their expertise, or remain in India and share teaching material over the Internet.

"This is where e-content development becomes important. There are different methods of offering courses through distance education or remote education. Besides projecting the image of a live teacher, we will be able to provide students with notes and display multimedia. They can also answer quiz online," she said.

A glossary or a section on `frequently asked questions' (FAQs) would give additional information to learners.

"In the classroom, we draw the content on the board, but by using multimedia we can also have animation. For example, we talk about the expansion of a railway line because of the heat during daytime. We can only talk about it in class, but by using animation, we can illustrate it online," Prof. Ramachandran said. Using suitable software, it would be possible to use e-content to evaluate students doing examinations online.

"Teachers should be facilitators. When teachers have too much evaluation they have no quality time for students. Now teachers do only manual correction of multiple-choice questions. There is only one correct answer and computers themselves can do the evaluation. It will be quicker and more accurate," Prof. Ramachandran said.

The Controller of Examinations and the workshop convener, M. Viswanathan, said the programme was being conducted under the `College with Potential for Excellence' scheme of the University Grants Commission.

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