The education and testing sectors have undergone great changes in the recent past. Rather than the old pen and paper tests that were used in assessments back then, online examination platform have increasingly been replacing them. This change is spearheaded by the desire for convenience, enhanced safety and ease of use. The purpose of this article is to review the impact of online platforms on examinations, their benefits and their effects on changes in students and professionals’ assessment.
What is meant by an Online Examination Platform?
An examination platform is an online system that enables individuals, institutions, and other organizations to administer exams and assessments. As opposed to other examinations involving paper, it enables automated, interactive and secure tests. Some of these tools have proved very useful in the institutions of learning, in the case of tertiary instructional structures, as well as in professional certification courses and recruitment.
When compared to the traditional paper-based exams, digital exams allow for easier execution and faster results as well as increase the excitement of the tests among the participants. Examination can be taken at any place and at any time of the day, therefore, logistical issues and expenses pertaining to setting traditional examinations are minimized due to this new development.
Advantages Associated With Online Examination Platforms
1. Greater Accessibility and Versatility
The main reason why such online systems as Think Exam are so popular is because they are very accessible. These days, their learners need not be present in class to write the exams and therefore, as long as there is a device that is connected to the internet, it is possible to write. This allows students living in different cities to take exams at the same time without any time zone complications.
2. Faster Feedback and Grading
Paper-based examination systems do not have an advantage over online exams when it comes to immediate and detailed student performance assessments. Thanks to online tools, students do not have to wait too long, if not at all, for feedback that helps them gauge their performance, as well as advice on how to improve this performance. In this way, feedback enhances the active learning of skills.
3. Secure and Uncheatable
Easy when it comes to modern day online exams, they come with several security layers. These layers comprise the most advanced proctoring, where an AI monitors the examination, locking the browsers, and securing the fingers in place by doing Biometrics. This enhances the fairness of the examination, facilitates candidate integrity and makes it harder for candidates to cheat.
4. Cost Effective and Green
When online exams are wrongly de-emphasized, the process of paper printing, distribution and physical logistics must necessarily come to play. Nonetheless, in the case of an online exam solution, there is no such cost as these online exams are known to be cost efficient and also support the green environment. Most educational institutions conserve resources, and time and embrace the social responsibility of environmental conservation.
5. Flexible and Extensible
Online testing programs can be customized for various educational and occupational purposes. They can consist of different types of questions, such as multiple-choice, descriptive, coding and simulations. Platforms like these can handle upward of hundreds and even thousands of test takers at once without any problem, active or dormant.
Online examination platforms and educational changes
The shift to incorporate online examination platforms is more than merely technological; it’s a shift in both student learning and ways of student assessment. The following are the noteworthy transformations that these platforms have brought to the academic scenario:
- Self-Learning: Most platforms have adaptive mechanisms to change the braided level of the test according to the candidate’s control capability. The target of this is to slow the students down to their own level of comprehension.
- Embedding Interests: Different forms of content like simulations, multimedia contents or gamified assessments increase the desirability of studying by making it interesting and fun.
- Insights of a Data-Centric Nature: Educational institutions are able to capture and monitor performance patterns over the period of time for their students, which aids educators in decision making while providing specific tailored support to them.
- Competitive Examination Taking: A student who has been using online tools to practice tends to relax during difficult, high-competitive examinations due to familiarization with such a format and knowing that he has already scored some marks.
Professional and Recruitment Online Examination Sites
There is more to online examination sites than just educational purposes. It is a critical part of recruitment and professional certification. Normally, companies use these platforms to effectively measure the skills, abilities and the capacity to solve problems in any given task. Examples of such features are; the use of machines where marks are awarded automatically once the exam is submitted, the tracking of the time taken to complete an exam and providing analytic reports which help the heads of the departments and the hiring committees quickly zero in on the best candidates.
Many professional licensing bodies have adopted exam delivery through online platforms. This is with the aim of ensuring that such examinations are standardized in all regions thus such tests will be fair and comparable and the integrity of the certification will be preserved.
Think Exam is another popular online examination platform suitable for conducting offline exams.
ISSUES THAT POSE CHALLENGES AS WELL
Despite many benefits afforded by online examination platforms in Nigeria, there are however a few challenges which need to be addressed:
There can always be technical issues or complications that cause interruptions in the conduct of exams. Network connections and other infrastructure must be reliable and enough support should be provided.
Technology Literacy: Basic level computer skills are required to help candidates use online platforms effectively.
Protecting Data: Protection of information about students and candidates sensitively must be enforced through reasonable regulations and measures.
Such challenges, if faced at the right time, increase the benefits of using such an online examination system.
Conclusion
This represents the possibility of abandoning the old way of conducting exams on paper and relying on online examination platforms as an ideal solution. The great advantages of such platforms are that they are flexible, enable security and enhance interactivity which is crucial for learners and the institution. The online examinations provide immediate results or feedback, customized programs, and the tools to cope with many users asking to be evaluated, thus disrupting the traditional evaluation of knowledge and skills.
In other words, while technology will advance, it will not be easy to pass and avoid elongation of introduction through long sentences that for practical reasons are not recommended anymore. However, there will be more and more use of the underlying canvas and online examination platforms.
FAQs about Online Examination Platforms
1. In what way can the usability of examination platforms support examinations?
Consider that a single online examination platform will often contain within itself everything that is needed in order to conduct an examination, such as the setting up of a timetable, creation of such exam question papers, marking of the papers taken by candidates, production of results, etc.
2. Do you think an online examination platform is able to support in conducting national examinations if this is required?
Generally, yes. In fact, such sophisticated online examination platforms are usually cloud services that are verticalatively modular to a high extent. So, such institutions can conduct high scoped exams involving thousands of examinees all at the same time which runs smoothly.
3. What is the selection criteria for a good online examination platform?
There are certain mandatory characteristics of an industrious examination system that include AI monitoring, ability to create different types of questions, in-depth reporting, real-time proctoring, usable from the mobile phone, or and safely encrypted file systems.
4. What are some of the effective fairness mechanisms employed by online examination systems for remote examination management?
To maintain the integrity of examinations conducted online as well as to oversee that no malpractices are done during the test, they employ resources such as tracking the usage of the webcam, screen recording, audio monitoring, and Artificial Intelligence based evaluation of the candidate’s behaviour.
