Mitigating the Delay in Exam Results Through Digital Evaluation

Digitalisation has pushed most industries and professions towards a state of comfort and ease. The sectors that have seen a phenomenal transformation because of digitalisation are Automotive, Banking, Manufacturing, Transport, Retail, and many more. Technology has left no stone unturned when it comes to transforming industries.

Even the Education sector has embraced digital transformation understanding the dire need to change their operational strategy for suiting the ever-evolving digital landscape. As a result, the Education field now requires a solution that drives out the manual fallacies in its operation to bring about a radical transformation through automation and digitisation. The question that pops up is: How can the industry work hand-in-hand with technological advancements? Digital Evaluation comes as the befitting answer to this question.

The ease and convenience of uploading answer scripts from any location on an online platform for a glitch-free evaluation is the bottom-line definition of Digital Evaluation.

One of the major issues in manual evaluation is the inordinate and indeterminate delays in the delivery of results.

Recently, the state public service commission of a state in India organized their civil services examinations. Through the paper-based system, it was concluded that about 4-5 months would be required in correction of the answer sheets due to the high volume of answer scripts that needed to be evaluated. This undue waiting period further led to a delay in other affairs, such as conducting interviews and designating the shortlisted officers.

Many reasons are associated with these abnormal delays taking place. And the major ones include:

• Lack of high-quality evaluators available in all areas of the region.
• Incapacity of executing parallel evaluation on paper-based sheets.
• Necessity of re-evaluation also accentuates the waiting period in the non-digitized structures.

Benefits of Digital Evaluation

Digital evaluation has helped institutions in gaining a lot more autonomy and flexibility in their assessment procedures. Some key benefits are:

• Reduced time for evaluation, leading to a swifter and smoother assessment process.
• Minimized possibility of errors that were present in the manual setup.
• Evaluators can work from remotely located evaluation centres too. Their unavailability in certain regions is no longer an issue.
• Parallel evaluation is now possible since the sheets can be accessed simultaneously.
• Greater transparency of the assessment procedure since students can access their answer scripts online.

Introduction of TracMarks

To help the State Public Service Commission mitigate these hurdles, the institution partnered with MeritTrac Services. MeritTrac introduced their on-screen marking platform, TracMarks, and subsequently, the desired solutions were achieved. The immense assessment delays have been reduced to a mere two months, and other logistical hindrances have also been addressed and eliminated.

Conclusion

Though technology is gradually permeating the education sector, we are yet to see the complete adoption and inculcation of this tool in a field that affects every individual and society at large. Digital Evaluation can be considered as a great asset in fixing the blind-spots and the limitations in the assessment process. On the forefront, companies like MeritTrac are striving hard to incorporate digital advancement in a country like ours. The purpose of this wave is to explore the sphere of technology and make it more accessible to the industries and to the people of our country alike.