Dr Syed Zahoor Ahmad Geelani
University is a multifaceted institution of advanced learning usually meant for disseminating and creating new knowledge, deliver quality education, work for national interests, further international cooperation and produce skilled human resource. In our country we have as many as 907 Universities as of 31-12-2019, out which 399 are state Universities, 334 are Private Universities, 126 Deemed to be Universities and 48 Central Universities. Besides there are other more than 40,000 colleges and 10752 Stand Alone Institutions providing higher education in different disciplines. In its last tenure of UPAS –II the government of India has established 14 New Central Universities; the main aim behind the establishment of these institutions was to make some change in the existing higher education system of India. These universities were assigned the pace setting role in progress of academic education and skill development and at the same time were expected to bring reforms and transformations into academic sectors through creating of skilful human powers. These CFI must be attached and collaborated for promotion to institute and must be supportive for regional level development of colleges and institutes and as such have leadership role in the higher education sector of our country.
The Central University of Kashmir is working hard in realising its objective of being a pace setting institution in the country in general and in J and K in particular. We have been successful in developing a robust online pedagogical strategy wherein the students on rolls were supported by compete SLM package along with supportive zoom classes, whattapp voice messages, Google classes, and periodic guidance and counselling sessions. Along with the online e – transmission of teaching learning materials and guidance a large number of webinars and e-conferences were organised by the different departments of the varsity. When we have almost completely shifted to online pedagogy we need to explore the possibilities of Online evaluation process, although there are a number on impediments which restricts our progress towards online examination system but owing to the grim situation created by the global pandemic we are almost left with no option other than to shift to the online examination.
The School of Education, Central University of Kashmir organized a National e- Conference on “Challenges and Opportunities of Online Examination amid Covid-19” on July 3rd 2020. Two key speakers deliberated threadbare on the subject The speaker Prof. S. K. Yadav, Former Head, Department of Teacher Education, NCERT in his presentation stressed that online examination needs to be emphasized as its importance has been highlighted by number of commissions & committees from time to time. He stressed that the examinations now should be based on self-assessment and need to be more innovative. Prof Sanjev Sonawane, Dean, Faculty of Multidisciplinary Studies, Savitribai Phule Pune University described various e- Assessment tools which can be employed especially during Covid-19. He deliberated that 21st century demands using the internet and digital platform tools to plan, share and curate learning. He made the participants aware about the different online tools which can employed and also elaborated the context and procedure to use for their implementation. Here I want to share his detailed deliberations for the Teachers of our state so that we all may get benefited by the online assessment tools available for us, if at all we may someday switch over to online examination. These latest online e-assessment tools are
- Topgrade Quiz Maker
Topgrade is one of the best e-assessment tools used by more than 250,000 students use to improve their exam results. We can create quizzes, courses and flashcards in it. It can be had from https://www.topgradeapp.com/ Its main features are
- we can create an unlimited number of resources to help us learn.
- We can choose from several question types including multiplechoice, fill-in-the-blank and matching.
- We are also able to add images and time limits to our questions.
- Best of all we can create resources anywhere and anytime, online or offline, via our Android and Apple apps.
- Class Maker
It is very secure, professional web-based Quiz maker, easy-to-use, customizable online testing solution for business, training & educational assessment with Tests & Quizzes graded instantly saving you hours of paperwork, It can be downloaded from https://www.classmarker.com/. The main features of this e-assessment tool are
- Secure & private, easy to define test settings, no software installations required and can create assistants to help manage your account.
- Custom certificates & exam branding, exams can be conducted with public & private options
- Results automatically graded & viewable in realtime PCs, Macs, iPad, iPhone, Android, Chrome book & more.
- ProProfs (Quiz Maker)
This tool can be used to make delightful quizzes and tests using ProProfs Online Quiz Maker Software, can Create a quiz from scratch or pick from 100,000+ customizable quizzes that come bundled free of cost with online quiz software.
It can also help to get access to a library of 100,000+ ready-to-use questions and 10+ question types including fill in the blanks, multiple choice, hotspot and more with our quiz builder tool. This tool can create scored quizzes, personality quizzes or surveys with ease, add images, presentations, and videos to make your quiz interactive. The tool can be had from https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/. Its important features are
- World’s simplest way to create online quizzes, delightful reports & analytics
- Customize quizzes your way with quiz creator software
- Quiz anytime & anywhere with quiz generator with 100+ settings & Configurations.
- Online Quiz Creator
This is a very user-friendly e-assessment tool used to create online quizzes and can be downloaded from the link https://www.onlinequizcreator.com/. Its main features are
- It helps in Challenging the users on any platform. Lots of question types to choose from (Text questions, Multiple choice questions, image questions, multiple right answers)
- Advanced game statistics and rankings, rich tools and sharing.
- Moodle
Moodle is the world’s most popular learning management system. The focus of the Moodle project is always on giving educators the best tools to manage and promote learning, but there are many ways to use Moodle. It can have online from https://moodle.org/ with the following features
- Moodle is an Open Source Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
- It has become very popular among educators around the world as a tool for creating online dynamic web sites for their students.
- Quiz Pedia
Quiz Pedia is a digital tool for quizzes in the classroom. It can easily add text, pictures and sound. It can be downloaded from http://www.quizpedia.com/ with following features
- Use quizzes to assess student’s level of understanding or make the students co-creators of the own learning and allows them make quizzes themselves and then share them with their peers.
- Free, but access to statistics, feedback function and customizing requires a fee.
- Interact: Create a Quiz
Interact is a tool for creating online quizzes that generate leads, segment our audience, and drive traffic to our website. It can be had from the link https://www.tryinteract.com/ with the features such as personalized quiz, scored quiz and assessment quiz.
- Quest Base | Freely create on-line and printed
Quest Base gives us the freedom to ask, Millions of questions (and counting) published and printed with QuestBase free of charge. The online source for this tool is https://www.questbase.com/ with the features such as to create quizzes, tests, assessments, exams or get feedback from surveys and polls, within minimum possible time.
- Socrative | Student Response System
Socrative is a smart student response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational games and exercises via smartphones and tablets.
These apps are super simple and take seconds to load and run. Teachers control the questions and games on their laptop, while students respond and interact through their smartphones/laptops. Users can run it as an app or on any web browser. This e-assesment tool can be had online from the link https://www.socrative.com/ with the following featues
- Quiz and Grade at the speed of learning with activities like Quizzes, Quick Question, Class count.
- Helps to get instant feedback and can create personalized activities.
- It has option for more time for teaching; it is available on all platforms and is free for students.
- Hot Potatoes
| It is high time to explore the options of alternate channels for assessment and evaluation at all levels of schooling, we can no longer resist the concepts of Open Book Examination, Blended evaluation and on spot Evaluation and integration of pedagogy with evaluation.
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The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling us to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is freeware, and we may use it for any purpose or project we like. It can be integrated with Moodle. It can be retrieved online from http://hotpot.uvic.ca/.
Besides there are so many more e-assessment tools available online which can be used by the functionaries to initiate the process of online assessment of the students at different levels, no doubt the process of online examination does not fully suit to the educational scenario of our country but there is an age-old proverb that necessity is the mother of invention and in the present Global pandemic which is by every passing day becoming uglier especially in our own country now we have no option other than to turn digital.
In our own social-political scenario we are between the devil and the deep sea like situation, neither we have basic digital infrastructure in place nor we are having the normal internet speed available here and one more serious impediment is that the end-users are also neither well trained to use digital platforms nor the necessary ICT gadgets are easily available with them. Keeping in view such a grim situation we cannot afford to completely rely on online platforms but at the same we have to switch over to it sooner or later. In my opinion the best solution for the functionaries is to develop a blended approach just like we are now using blended pedagogy for the teaching-learning process and that is the only way forward and a win-win situation can be generated. I suggest that we must start an online examination supported by individualized interaction either face to face or with the help of other ICT Channels.
