There are various methods to assess the progress of a student attending courses. Organizing periodical exams is one of the popular methods adopted by many of the universities and educational institutions. Besides, sometimes students are admitted to various courses based on the results of competitive examinations.
Conducting an examination, evaluating the papers and preparation of rank list are complex. It consumes time, money and material. But at the same time, these activities should be done with maximum security and accuracy. Mistakes made here may affect the future prospectus of the students taking the examination.
WebTest, the online testing system aims to suggest a solution to automate the examination and valuation, either completely or partially. This will in turn helps to reduce the cost of conducting examination, time taken for evaluating and publishing the results, preparation of question papers etc. This will also maintain the transparency of the examinations system, as even the student can verify his results against the correct answers.
System keeps a very large question bank per subject per course / examination. Question papers are then formed manually or generated automatically from this bank. It can handle pre-set question papers and random question papers.
The examination can be conducted with or without presence of a supervisor depending on the examination parameters set. The answers can be evaluated on-line for multiple choice questions. The evaluation can be made off-line for descriptive type of questions. The system can prepare the grading, rank list etc.
Preparation of Question paper is one of the major tasks achieved with this system. The system keeps several question banks per subject and course. A question paper is made out of questions. System supports several type of questions such as objective single choice question, multiple correct answer questions, fill-up blank questions etc. Users can attach difficulty factor (a number from 1 to 10 depending on the difficulty) with a question. The difficulty factor help to pick up questions based on difficulty percentage set of question paper or sections within the question paper.
A question paper is then prepared from the question banks based on any of the following choices.
- Pre-defined question paper
- Can prepare manually from question bank
- Can generate automatically (random selection) and then can be set as pre-defined question paper
- Combination of both
- Random question paper irrespective of difficulty factor
- Random question paper considering difficulty factor
The system supports following type of questions.
- Multiple choice questions
- Single best answer - Use radio button to answer
- Multiple correct answers - Use check boxes to answer
- True or False Questions
- Fill up the blanks
- Comprehension and set of questions based on that
- Identifying the Sequence
- Objective type questions with some answers. Student is required to order the answers in a particular manner
- Descriptive questions
- Descriptive with choice
- Multiple questions, but only one has to be answered
Examination Definition
After preparation of a question paper or question papers, the next step is to define an examination. An examination is created with several general parameters that influence the behavior of the test along with one or more question papers.
- Specify a pre-defined question paper - question sequence is maintained
- Specify a pre-defined question paper - randomize the order of questions
- Specify a set of pre-defined question papers and then randomize to students
- Specify a set of pre-defined question papers and then randomize to students with random order
- Specify random question paper with difficulty factor definition
- Specify random question paper without considering difficulty factor
- Number of questions
- Allow practice
- negative markings
- Max marks
- Time
- Optional sections such either A or B
- On-line evaluation or off-line or mix
- Can print question paper
- Can print answer paper
- Can revise answers again?
- How many attempts can be made
- Show result on-line to the student
- Pre-requisites to take the examination Etc.,
Valuation of an examination is based on the examination parameters. If students are allowed to see the marks immediately after the completion of the examination, an online valuation will be done by the system and the results will be shown. If not, the results are computed and stored with the system and will be released only after the administrator approves the results. The questions that are descriptive in nature will be valued by Professors either online sitting in front of a computer or offline after taking print-out of the answer sheets. The system also supports printing questions papers with or without answer keys. After the valuation is done, the grading rules can be applied to grade the students.
Other Features/Facilities
- Option to show answer as soon as a test is over - optional
- Timed test
- 2 exam modes: "practice" and "testing"
- Online statistics to track your performance
- Facility offer a practice test
- Printing of the question papers
- Printing of student answer sheets with/without marking on correct answer - Help the student to compare his answers with the actuals
- Printing of correct answers - applicable only to multiple choice questions
- Printing of Rank list - Individual papers or collective papers
- Printing of examination results
- Printing of certificate (Optional depending on the certificate formats)
- Facility for teachers to value the paper - on-line
- Login facility for Authorized or registered student/candidate
- Login authentication with a user name and a valid password
- Depending on the test history i.e. the number of times the student has attempted the examination. Shall be allowed to attempt the exam.
- The student shall be allowed to attempt the exam for a specified number of times only.
- Implementation of examination pre-requisites if any
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