The inception of COVID-19 has drastically modified the upper training panorama everywhere in the world. Many schools, universities, and institutes of nationwide significance have already began the net mode of analysis within the place of pen and paper, as have examination our bodies on the central and state degree. Examination our bodies at central and state ranges (just like the UPSC, CSIR, PSC) can profit from on-line exams for preliminary screening in a significant and productive method. Larger academic establishments (just like the IITs and the IIMs), recruitment exams of presidency businesses (just like the UPSC or the Railway Recruitment Board), proficiency assessments of personal recruiters for brand new workers (within the advertising and software program industries), and correspondence programs supplied by distance training universities are pondering of adopting the trendy methodology of on-line system of examinations.
Execs and cons
A transparent benefit of on-line examinations is that it’s cost-effective and simply scalable to any variety of examinees, wherever on this planet they could be. That is essential for assessments like IIT-JEE and NEET, that are taken by aspirants overseas. Plagiarism checking software program can be utilized to see if examinees have copied the solutions. As well as, the prevailing social distancing norms can simply be maintained if examinees take the take a look at at their dwelling.
Despite the demand for on-line examinations, there have additionally been protests towards utilizing such companies. Many eminent educationists are of the view that this mannequin of assessing college students or aspirants can’t be absolutely foolproof. Examinees can simply appoint proxies (impersonators) to take the take a look at. There are additionally college students who pay different brilliant college students to jot down the examination on their behalf. This may be caught if the examiner inspects the stay image feeds in the course of the examination, mixed with ‘sound-matching’ strategies by which the real voice of the examinee (maybe saying their very own identify a number of occasions) is pre-stored in a database, and the sound matched at periodic intervals in the course of the examination.
The image and voice of the examinees are each obtainable in a number of software program like MS Groups, Zoom, Google classroom, and so forth. These real-time feeds, nevertheless, are restricted to the image and voice of the examinee, and to not his/her display screen. Examiners don’t have any technique to see the examinee’s display screen (no matter whether or not they’re utilizing a laptop computer or sensible cellphone). Utilizing display screen splitting (a number of home windows), display screen seize, and display screen sharing (distant login) strategies, or by snapping an image, the examinee can simply transmit the questions immediately to proxies by means of e mail, Bluetooth or WhatsApp, and submit the solutions despatched to them as their very own.
On the infrastructure aspect, examinees may face bandwidth constraints if they’re positioned in distant villages or on the outskirts of cities. Availability of gadgets to connect with the Web may put some at an obstacle. For instance, sensible telephones use CDMA, the pace of which is determined by the gap of a tool from the closest transmission tower. Probably the most distinguished drawback is the problem of safety of the entire examination course of itself. All safety points have to be thought-about to implement a safe on-line examination system.
Blockchain to the rescue
A Blockchain is an archive that collects, registers and shops the rising listing of information utilizing cryptography inside a community. It’s also a peer-to-peer expertise that organises or information time-stamped transactions in such a method that none can modify it with out discover by others who’re members of the identical Blockchain. Every file listing, named as block, incorporates a hyperlink to the earlier block that’s cryptographically hashed, and has a timestamp, and transaction information. Which means that any info recorded within the Blockchain ledger can’t be secretly altered, as the entire Blockchain ledger turns into corrupted and tempered. As well as, Blockchain information are replicated and saved on a number of machines to scale back vulnerability. All transactions have to be authenticated and linked to the Blockchain community by miners. The mining course of is fuelled by a consensus mechanism inside the community. The perfect and unsurpassed resolution for steady authentication, confidentiality and robustness in any safety framework is the Blockchain expertise. Thus impersonations may be decreased, if not annulled, utilizing a mixture of on-line proctoring and Blockchain.
H. Blankson is a analysis scholar and Dr. C. Rajan is a professor at Vellore Institute of Know-how. cvrajan@gmail.com
