Amid the Covid-19 era, parents are anxious to send children for exams. An increasing delay in conducting the exams is gravely burdening the education sector. In such a scenario, e-assessment platforms can provide fairness in online exams while safeguarding the health of the students.
Here are few ways to maintain transparency and fairness in online exam:
1) Remote Proctoring:
Remote proctoring can be a very efficient way to supervise the candidates during an online exam. In this process, the candidates can be remotely monitored by the supervisors from a remote location. The monitoring can be done either with the help of live video streaming or recorded video as a medium to maintain the veracity of the examination.
2) Image Proctoring
Image Proctoring is yet another mechanism which can help educators conduct examinations under the limited internet connectivity situations. In this mechanism, after certain periodic intervals of time, a web camera can be used to capture images of the candidate appearing for the Online Examination. Screenshots of the screens of the student’s current access can also be captured to further improve the overall security.
3) Question Randomizations
Randomizing test questions is a great strategy to improve the effectiveness of assessments in e-learning. A finite number of questions can be randomly pulled from a large question pool or a question bank, so that each learner gets a different set of questions.
4) Multiple-choice Randomization
In this mechanism, the test is taken in MCQ format and order of the questions as well as the order of the possible responses is randomized independently for every student. This type of randomization can greatly reduce the possibility of cheating during a timed testing environment.
5) Concurrent Login Prevention
Concurrent Login Prevention in online assessment can be used to prevent malicious logins in the exam from different IP addresses. This mechanism can be used to ensure that only a single student is logged in with a unique ID and hence barring the system from being accessed with multiple IP’s.
6) Screen Switching
In this mechanism, the online test occupies the whole screen so that the candidates are unable to switch the screen. The system can end the ongoing test automatically if it finds the candidate switching the screen to search answers.
Using innovative security mechanisms such as Remote Proctoring, Screen Switching and Question Randomizations, the educators can ensure security of the online examinations.