Automated Skill Evaluation and Result Management System For the Department of Examination (General Information Technology) Dissertation

Abstract

Department of examination of Sri Lanka is the most trusted institution in conducting examinations. It is accepted that 90% of general examinations are conducted by this institute. The examination/evaluation process begins with calling applications & ends with issuing results & certificates. This entire process, no doubt is carefully designed & well established. But when considering the time taken and the true evaluation/testing capabilities (such as evaluation of candidate’s practical knowledge), it gives us a second thought, whether the current system has achieved the desired objectives. The existing system caters only for OCRs (Optical Mark Readers) for MCQ (Multiple Choice Question) correction and some database handling. All the other processes are manual. National Evaluation and Testing service, Department of Examination provides the guidance towards excellence in educational achievement. Certification activities are carried out using evaluation instruments and methodologies ensuring reliability and validity to suit national needs. In the meantime our school system is gradually turning into a Computer Assisted Learning System. Computers are being donated to schools and, as a result, significance of Information Technology has grown up. However, most of the schools seem to be very unfortunate as they can not afford to have internet facility due to less availability of the required infrastructure. The project, Automated Skill Evaluation and Result Management System for the Department of Examination (General Information Technology), will open new dimension for testing and evaluation in school system. It is capable of testing out the candidate’s theoretical knowledge/skills in the tested area. Its robust ability to mix up the questions from a huge questions base facilitates the examiner to offer different test papers (Automated) in each candidate attempt. Another important factor is the long time taken to process and issue the test results. This is assumed to be due to the sort of distant/offline nature of the existing system and the lack of interconnectivity between the main actors (such as the connection between the examiner and the results coordinator, etc.) of the scenario. A well secured, centralized, network oriented system is suggested in this project to bridge the gap between the main actors. As a result the test results are processed and issued in a fraction of a time so that the candidate needs not to wait for months to decide whether to re-sit. Moreover, with the candidate’s detailed test reports provided, he/she will have the opportunity to know the areas he/she is lacking of, so that they could put more emphasis on them. The local school system is now heading towards a distant, LMS (Learning Management System) based study environment (Eg: Schoolnet) and the proposed evaluation system can be easily embedded/attached to a LMS (with proper supervision on the site) to give a fully functioned Distance Learning and Evaluation System. Various reports presented at various stages ease the task of the examiner and the results coordinator. The system administrator is provided with the overall control of the entire system. The proposed system was implemented with Microsoft Visual Basic as the front end builder and MSSQL (Microsoft Structured Query Language) Server 2000 being the backend implementer. Seagate Crystal Report software application was used for report design purposes.