Computerised testing has winning edge

Asking for a return to paper-and-pencil common admission test (CAT) for the Indian Institutes of Management because of initial minor glitches in the computer-based testing (CBT) carried out this year for the first time is akin to throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Over the years, the number of hopefuls trying out for admission to the IIMs has become so huge that the traditional paper-and-pencil test had become unmanageable. Shifting to the more efficient CBT was inevitable and wise. After all, if India could successfully undertake a paradigm shift of much bigger dimensions like the transition from paper balloting to computerised electronic voting in the general elections, then why doubt the ability to conduct the equally innovative exercise of computerised CAT for the IIMs?

CBT has been around now for over 20 years in the world. Today well over a million exams a month are delivered worldwide via computers and that number continues to grow each year. It is now widely used for admissions testing as well as licensure and certification exams.

What does computerised CAT offer the IIMs? Manageability, for one. The sheer logistical nightmare of distributing question papers to widely scattered exam centres and then collecting and transporting the answer papers back to the evaluation centres is totally avoided. So is eliminated the need for a large number of staff to painstakingly go through the answer sheets and tally the marks. This also enables easy scalability in terms of not only numbers but also geographies. The IIMs can start going global with their CAT.

Since the exam format involves machine readable answers, time is saved since tallying, collation and ranking is almost immediate, unlike in the paper-and-pencil system. Moreover, human errors which occur during manual evaluation are totally avoided. Thanks to no materials and transport involved, the cost incurred per candidate is vastly reduced, of course, not counting the number of trees saved.

It is not very well known that the vendors of computerised CAT -- Prometric -- for the IIMs introduced special security measures for the first time. For example, every candidate had to undergo a biometric identity (fingerprints this time) and photo capture test before taking the exam. This eliminated proxies. The same biometrics will be used to ensure the identity of the candidate during the admission interview. Moreover, video monitors capture the image of every examinee and these photos provide additional identity proof.

It has been alleged that computerised CAT cannot take the load off a large number of candidates taking the exam in a short amount of time (in this case more than 242,000 candidates in 10 days). On the contrary, it is the logistics involved in the paper-and-pencil test method that makes handling large numbers in a short time difficult. In computerised CAT, all that is needed is a sufficient number of terminals and a strong network at each test centre. Incidentally, the test delivery software automatically adjusts for any latency that might result from processing delays and slower than normal system speeds. As a consequence, any time that might be lost due to latency is added back to the available test time.

The major reason for an initial glitch in some of the centres in this year's computerised CAT for the IIMs was the existence of viruses in the networks and computers at these centres prior to the exam delivery. These viruses impacted the functioning of the workstations involved in the exams and created problems for the examinees at these centres. However, once the problem was identified, it was possible for technical teams to respond quickly and clean up the networks. That the repair has been effective can be gauged from the fact that complaints in the subsequent days have gone down drastically.

However, at no time were the result files in danger from the viruses since these files are encrypted prior to being written to the disk. The vast majority of virus programmes are written to work with or corrupt commonly available file formats, such as executable files, and exploit functionality in commonly available applications such as e-mail programmes, internet browsers, and operating systems. The proprietary result files used by Prometric fall outside the scope of what a virus is capable of attacking, thereby vastly reducing the risk of exposure to these viruses.

Therefore, to denounce computerised CAT due to these initial hitches is a case of crying wolf. The IIMs have taken a necessary and bold step in computerising their CAT this year. Once the networks at the test centres have been strengthened and more powerful and advanced virus and malware protection measures introduced, there is no reason why computerised CAT cannot be conducted smoothly to the advantage of both the candidates and the IIMs.

©IANS