Part of the series: Cool Sites by Guest Author, Shankar Ganesh
Make no mistake – there’s an evolution happening in education right now. Schools are increasingly embracing technology to enhance learning in their classrooms. Still though, a few processes, like examinations, for example, are done in the traditional way. It’s time schools get rid of the plain old pen-and-paper way of testing and move to online tests. Here’s why:
1. Time Saver
Since online tests are self-graded, Professors can be relieved of the burden of evaluating test sheets manually. There’s also a good chance that students will complete online tests quicker, once they get accustomed to the process.
This is perfect for public schools and universities – all the time saved can help instructors focus better on preparing lessons and course material. Students get their results in no time – enough motivation for them to get involved in academics.
2. No Logistical Challenges
Believe it or not: conducting paper-based exams is logistically challenging. Test times have to be scheduled and test sheets have to be gathered. There’s plenty of work involved and there are chances things could go awry.
An online testing platform eliminates all that cumbersome work. Scheduling tests can be done at the click of a button. Students can be batched and questions can be replicated in random order for each of those batches with little effort.
3. Multimedia
Schools have embraced multimedia by the way of instructions. It’s time to bring all that interactivity to tests. Multimedia is a great choice for authentically assessing a candidate’s level of understanding. Plain paper is inadequate in that respect and it should be chucked.
An online test can be embedded with relevant multimedia elements to make it more challenging, unique and fun for students. More student engagement, guaranteed. It’s not like assembling projectors in classes. Embedding videos and pictures is a piece of cake.
4. Low Cost
Development and delivery of online exams is much more efficient and cost effective when compared to distribution of paper and pencil-based exams. There’s not much effort involved in reproducing questions for tests if they’re done online. Scoring isn’t expensive as well – it is all automated.
In addition, online tests take away the costs involved in storing the enormous volume of data that is associated with the analysis of student scores and report generation. Online tests are your best bet.
5. Reduced Cheating
Better scores translate to more rewards in the US and according to experts, one to three percent of teachers tamper with students’ test scores every year. No disrespect to educators, but that means a few thousand teachers indulge in “actual cheating” annually (NYTimes story).
On the contrary, evaluation in online tests is completely automated – the computers know nothing about the candidates. There’s no way to skew answers and this is possibly the best way to do away with cheating in exams.
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Shankar Ganesh is a young blogger from India. He’s pursuing his bachelor’s degree in engineering in India, and is currently working to make sure that more teachers and educators get to know about Zoho Challenge, Zoho’s sweet quiz maker application.
