The growth of technology-enabled learning globally has resulted in hundreds of service providers mushrooming in India in the last 10 years. In 2009, the ValueNotes report ‘e-learning Outsourcing: Advantage India’ estimated over 140 technology-enabled learning providers catering to the corporate, government and education sectors across the world. While these companies primarily focused on international markets for business (US and UK), ValueNotes highlighted the trend towards exploring the domestic corporate and education market.

With the Indian higher education sector undergoing major changes, domestic providers are now offering a variety of services to help educational institutions become more efficient and globally competitive. Technology can benefit these institutes in areas such as course delivery (through e-learning), automation of administrative processes (ERP, etc), and exam management (through online delivery and assessment), among others.

Universities and exam boards in developed countries are all trying to leverage the use of technology in these activities, leading the way for innovations in education. Many universities offer completely online e-learning courses. Large scale, internationally renowned exams such as the GRE, GMAT and TOEFL, are held online in many countries. As evangelists in the education sector are exploring, the potential for technology is immense.

ValueNotes recently completed a study (in collaboration with EDGE forum, initiated by MeritTrac) about the role of technology in Indian higher education, specifically in the examination process. As per our estimates, the size of the Indian higher education exam market is in the range of Rs.35,300 – 52,400 million, including university end-course exams and entrance exams. The number of exams in the country is estimated to be over 200 million each year. The huge size of the market justifies the need for a step up in efficiency in many areas of exam management. Automation and the use of technology in exam management could save universities and exam boards around 20-50% of their overall costs, depending on the level of implementation.

The extensive study includes views from 75 decision makers in universities and exam boards, namely, vice chancellors, registrars, exam controllers, and education experts. All decision makers interviewed see technology as an important tool to bring about changes in the Indian higher education sector. The majority of respondents are interested in online exams, with a significant untapped section (52%), which have not yet initiated any pilots, internally or through external providers.

Exhibit 1: Interest levels in online exams are high

Many potential rewards for Indian educational institutions

The factors which will most influence Indian exam authorities to incorporate exam technology and online assessments are faster results, greater transparency and higher security of processes.

• Processes and assessment set to change: With the advent of technology into exams, the lengthy processes are expected to be faster, more efficient and fair. Assessment is also going through many innovations and is moving towards becoming a more robust system, where all stakeholders are aware of student performance.

• Greater importance to security of exams: All exam authorities expressed concern about cheating and other malpractices in exams. They use various methods to curtail it, and hope that technology will help them in this endeavour.

• Automation of administrative tasks: To reduce pressure on the university administration and staff, a number of universities are planning to increase automation and reduce administrative and repetitive tasks. This will also help them cut costs and lower manpower requirements.

Infrastructure and suitability of exams are the main challenges

Exam authorities opined that there are major challenges which inhibit their usage of technology in exam processes.

• Lack of suitability: There was ambiguity regarding the creation of online exams, and format and adaptability also came up as concerns. According to over half the respondents, the current exam formats allowed them more choices and they did not believe they could adapt it to the online format.

• Lack of infrastructure: Online assessment will require a strong and wide spread infrastructure complete with computers, Internet, and support from technology companies, and India currently does not possess sufficient resources to move. Many feel that awareness about computers is low among the rural students.

• Lack of knowledge: Size of universities and therefore ease of implementation, lack of knowledge on best practices and hard data were other major issues that came up during the survey.

Online exams in India – future plans

The majority of exam authorities (68%) said they want to implement online exams in the future. With almost half the respondents believing that less than 10% exams will be online in the next 2 years, and nearly 50% looking to go online in the next two years, the gap or opportunity is tremendous. It establishes the need to share knowledge, experience and beliefs about the entire process of going online. It also firmly establishes that improvement is assessment using technology is the way to go.

Exhibit 2: Increasing use of technology in exam process

While universities may not risk conducting entire exams online just yet, they are already moving towards automating of various exam processing, right from candidate registration to result declaration.

The ValueNotes study shows the high level of interest among exam authorities, to introduce the use of technology in exam systems. Considering there is still a lot of groundwork to be done, the penetration of online exams will increase by 5 -10% in the next two years. However, given the greater levels of experiments and innovation in assessment, we believe that there will be significant traction over the next three to five years. Going forward, Indian higher education needs to be equipped with trained faculty, infrastructure and technology that can adapt to Indian requirements, which in turn calls for a lot of experimentation, innovation in assessment techniques, and an openness to experiment with traditional methods. Technology providers must be sensitive to the unique challenges that Indian universities face, and present customised solutions. The good news is, there are quite a few domestic providers specialized in exam technology. With many international clients, these companies are in the position to offer Indian universities the best of breed technology, with on the ground support and access to facilities. Exam authorities that are as yet hesitant in initiating in-house pilot activities need to explore collaborations with external agencies. Only innovations through such experimentation will bring about the much required change in the learning and assessment experience for the average Indian student.

This article was first published in Global Services. For a complimentary copy of the EDGE-ValueNotes report on online assessment, please email us.