BENGALURU: A new examination evaluation system put in place by the Bangalore University will help it save Rs. 2.29 crore this year. With the varsity deciding to go digital a large part of its expenses towards will be saved. Currently, the University spends Rs. 2.50 crore on each round of examinations, leading to the decision to shift to the digital mode. To start the process, a scanner, printer and servers have been procured and the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) has agreed to provide software assistance.
This year, exams will begin on April 27 and the University has decided to implement the system on its own. “VTU is already successful in digital evaluation and they are assisting us,” said Professor KR Venugopal, Vice-Chancellor of BU.
BU gets over 15 lakh answer scripts, which are evaluated manually and marks are entered on an Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheet. This is set to change as well since the staff will be trained on digital evaluation and online entry of marks. “Even the staff training will be provided by VTU as they already have the experience,” Professor Venugopal said. According to him, once the process is implemented, the costs for each round of exams will come down drastically to Rs. 21 lakh.
However, teachers and staff are not happy with this decision. “We do not have formal computer training and we feel it is not good to start digital evaluation in the absence of proper training,” said a senior faculty of BU.“To go for digitisation there should be proper basic infrastructure in place,” said another faculty member.
Joint evaluation centre at Jnana Bharati
To streamline the evaluation process, Bangalore University has decided to set up a separate centre at the Jnanabharati campus. For this, the VTU will be joining hands with BU wherein it is providing financial assistance and BU is providing the land. Once the centre is ready, both the universities have decided to hire software engineers to handle the centre where the entire process of evaluation of answer scripts will be conducted.