Osmania University to switch to online evaluation of answer

For the first timein its 100-year history,city-based Osmania University (OU) will switch to online evaluation of answer scripts of post graduate exams, doing away with the conventional manual evaluation.

The OU administration is of the view that online evaluation would help the varsity announce results faster, without errors, and also curb malpractices.

"The new system will help the varsity in retrieving information quickly, unlike in the traditional evaluation system.

There are several other benefits too,"OU Vice-Chancellor Prof S Ramachandram said in a release.

The University has firmed up ties with an outside firm to undertake the bar codingand scanning of answer scripts which will be uploaded on to the dedicated server in the Data Centre located in the Central Facilities for Research and Development on the campus.

The varsity has put in place an online evaluation process for 80,000 answer scripts of the MBA second semester examinations to start with, the release said.

The coded and scanned answer scripts willbe made online and access to the scanned scripts will be made available through the internet at designated online evaluation centres that will come up in the jurisdiction limits of the varsity.

Earlier, in the manual evaluation system, every answer script had to be coded by a few professionals, which was a time consuming process.

"OU will be the first in the state to introduce the online evaluation system," OU's Controller of Examinations Prof Kumar M said.

Using a special ID, password and an OTP,evaluators can access the 32-page answer script, evaluate and award marks, it said.

The marks awarded in a particular answer script will be totalled automatically by the system and sent to the main server, the release said adding nearly 30 to 60 answer scripts would be given to the evaluators on a daily basis in phases.

Once the process is a success,the online evaluation would be extended to all under graduate and post graduate courses, the release added.