THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: KEAM, the entrance examination for admission to engineering courses in the state, is all set to be conducted in online mode from next year. At present, the exam attended by around 1.2 lakh students every year, is held in the traditional pen-and-paper mode.
Inaugurating the new office of the Commissioner for Entrance Examinations (CEE) at the KSRTC terminal complex in Thampanoor, Higher Education Minister R Bindu said preliminary steps to convert KEAM into a computer-based exam have begun.
According to a source in the CEE’s office, the government had planned to conduct KEAM in online mode last year but it was put off owing to some technical difficulties. At present, students record answers to multiple-choice questions in an Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheet. This is later scanned at the CEE’s office to prepare the score.
However, the transition to online mode would mean that the exam will have to be conducted in phases, as it would not be possible to arrange over 1.2 lakh computer terminals at the same time. “The questions will be selected randomly by the system from a large question bank. So, the confidentiality of the exam will not be compromised even if it is held in phases,” the source said.
In the online mode, students will have the option to edit the answers if required before final submission. At present, over three to four weeks are required to scan the OMR sheets. Once the exam becomes computer-based, evaluation becomes faster with the scores being made available to the candidates in the shortest time.
Except for KEAM, other entrance exams conducted by CEE are held in an online format. The large number of candidates was the reason that prompted the government from continuing with the pen-and-paper mode. However, with national engineering entrance exams such as JEE shifting to a computer-based format, it was decided to adopt the same mode for KEAM.