Students’ academic progress is stunted due to many factors such as lack of study material, resources and assessment facilities. Even his life values and integrity were affected. When the uproar over test malpractice began, the concerns of K-12 education stakeholders grew. Today the online testing business is worth lakhs of rupees but mostly used for higher education and corporate training. To harness its full potential, the K-12 sector needs to embrace it with the same enthusiasm as higher education.
As children start going to school, going digital and taking advantage of technology is ushering in a new era in education. Technology has made us more efficient, safer and flexible. In such a fast-paced online world, the assessment of student learning should also change. Today we will focus on advancements in technology-assisted testing or assessment. We can divide assessment into five areas:
Schedule Preparation: The stress of exam preparation is on the students as well as the parents. However, conducting tests is no less a challenging task for teachers and school administrators. Work manuals and plans are too long. Because a large number of students, classes, teachers, venues are involved and then holidays, course completion and time slots have to be ensured. Overall, it is very tedious work and it takes a lot of time.
But if technology is used throughout the examination process, it is easy to plan and ensure timely examination, as all the work is done online. It benefits students and parents as well as saves time and resources. It is more secure and has no errors. With the school academic calendar setup, teachers and school administrators can better manage revision plans for students by noting and calculating the days required for revision before exams. In this the needs of each student can be kept in mind. Additionally, calendar management allows all participants to automatically block dates and set alarms for each scheduled exam. Thus the efficiency and success of the entire system increases as well as fairness. Not only this, this system also facilitates exam preparation for all standards in one step.
Question Paper Preparation: Usually students or their parents rate the question paper as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depending on how the question paper is set. It should include syllabus and subject matter objectively. There should be a balance between practical and theoretical aspects and it should properly assess the student’s skills and knowledge. In the new round of NEP 2020, the question papers will focus on HOT (Higher Order Thinking Skills) as well as holistic development of the student.
With technology today, teachers and school administrators are able to create subject-specific question papers at the click of a button. A ‘test generator’ tool is available in the form of a huge database of questions. This subject-based, in-depth study included questions through randomization. It creates multiple test papers on the same subject keeping in mind the difficulty level and variety. Don’t ask questions repeatedly. It also has the advantage of controlling.
Test Conduct: After preparing the exam schedule, the biggest challenge for the teacher or school administrator is to organize the exam. This includes planning the seating of students, issuing admit cards, providing necessary facilities for proper conduct of examination centers and processes, collection and care of answer sheets and uploading scores of students within stipulated time. On the other hand, students have to pay the full fee, mark a mandatory level of attendance and their parents or guardians have to complete some formalities to appear in the exam. Automation has eased the work of teachers and school administrators in the planning of examination participation. School administration is more able to check and monitor school performance in real time.
There is a built-in check for short attendance or non-submission of fees, which makes it easy to generate admit cards. Teachers upload test results to the mobile app within minutes. This is an example of saving time and energy. They did not need to prepare paper marksheets. Online tests/assessments also show how much time students have spent on a question. This information is helpful in understanding common problems faced by students.
Result Disclosure: Publishing the examination results is another important task of school administrators and it consumes a lot of time. It should be noted that children must obtain passing grades in all subjects and must not have any errors in payment of fees. But the process becomes more complicated when the question arises whether students have scored highest marks in two out of three subjects, average marks or rank in secondary examination or merit assessment.
Today school administrators simply select the year through technology and the system automatically generates report cards for all students in the school. In this way, the administration can easily close the report card of the child whose fee is not paid. If the data is robust, this system is much more efficient than the previous one, which required a separate report card for each student. Thus, administrators save a lot of time and get time to focus on other matters.
Analysis: Today’s report card contains a combination of marks for each subject, including students’ interests and the teacher’s brief view of them. If the report cards show some data about the students’ progress, interest, hobbies, development, various aspects of behavior etc., then their importance will increase a lot. However, this requires the school to record and store each student’s information.
It is also easier if we take advantage of technology that is capable of in-depth analysis and evaluation of student performance. Schools can compare student performance on tests using modern testing methods, analyze trends and behaviors, and suggest improvements through various ed-tech tools. Automated reports for teachers and class performance can also be generated easily.
Finally, there is strong evidence today that many benefits of educational technology can be derived from test management. Dependence on online systems is increasing worldwide. In this case, it would be appropriate to assess student learning in terms of this trend. Although the current testing system has its own advantages, the addition of technology to it can make it more efficient and effective.
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