The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on one of society’s most crucial systems – education – affecting almost 1.6 billion students across 190 countries and continents. The closure of schools and other learning spaces impacted 94 per cent of the world’s student population. To lessen the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic’s probable ramifications, education establishments and institutions scrambled to revamp their traditional teaching and assessment structures to make the virtual transition optimal. What began as a temporary solution to meet social distancing requirements, has taken on a life of its own. The way we view norms for education has shifted, restrictions and constraints around the industry have been lifted, and hybrid learning has become a post-pandemic reality. This has counterbalanced the ed-tech industry’s great flood of technological developments and experiments. Every part of the traditional educational process has gone digital, from attendance to teaching to exams. With this proportional shift came significant progress in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to conduct remote online assessments.
Although this transformation offers great potential for the sector’s growth, a move of this magnitude is certain to bring its own set of difficulties. Keeping the academic year on track and ensuring learning continuity during these exceptional circumstances is a difficult challenge in and of itself. The seamless conduct of examinations has become a necessity of the hour, especially to assure uniform and unbiased evaluation for all students. Concerns about authentication and authorisation can have serious consequences for institutions. And during the administration of online tests, institutes have significant difficulty in terms of assessment security.
It is impossible to achieve the high quality anticipated of virtual examinations without first identifying and overcoming the factors that have stymied their implementation. The long lead time in question paper creation, which can cause delays in different associated activities, is one of the most significant issues faced while organising virtual examinations. Also, limited and repetitive inquiries raise issues about honesty and reliability, particularly in national-level assessments. A disconnected system can also lead to a lack of cooperation between departments, which is a big hindrance to keeping these tests efficient. Without a unified system in place to manage a large number of applications and registrations, conduct exams, and process results, the education system as we know it now will become inefficient. A unified platform with end-to-end assessments minimizes the need to coordinate and sync across multiple departments and that helps smooth each phase of the process, making the entire online exam and assessment process simple. Another key issue is the use of cutting-edge technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) in end-to-end assessments, which reduces human error and improves the integrity and credibility of virtual evaluations in general.
How will AI help to optimise the admissions and assessment process in the long term?
The education industry has experienced an increase in the number of student applications for admissions in recent months. Because of the automation of the process, applying for admissions has become easier and far more accessible. This huge influx of student applications has put pressure on the industry. Management and faculty are under tremendous pressure to meet deadlines set for the new academic year without the use of automated technology. Managing test centres across the country has become more expensive since the outbreak. End-to-end assessment solutions can make remote examination and assessments a reality by leveraging analytics and artificial intelligence to automate and speed up usually time-consuming procedures like scheduling tests, managing large admission processes, cancelling exams, and rescheduling.
End-to-end assessments can help institutes develop a quality-driven education ecosystem by generating the same degree of respect and honesty that these examinations are recognised for, which is difficult to do in a fragmented system. With the world still perplexed by the massive disruptions brought on by the worldwide Covid-19 crisis, the education sector is under tremendous pressure to rehabilitate and emerge stronger. It is critical to act now to avoid learning losses and to prepare the road for future developments.
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