An online question bank will soon offer error-free, non-repetitive and quality question papers to thousands of students in affiliated colleges of Mahatma Gandhi University.
The unique project will be rolled out ahead of the first semester examinations in November for students who joined various undergraduate programmes in the academic year 2017-18.
“The question bank will be available in read-only format on the varsity’s official portal. The bank will have at least 150 to 500 questions for each part in a question paper based on the minimum number of questions that should be attempted in each part. A computer generated programme will select the questions for the semester examination from the question bank,” said R. Pragash, Syndicate member and convener of the body’s standing committee on examinations. The question bank will have numerous questions to check the knowledge of each student in a subject, except for the examinations in French and German. Faculty members will submit the questions in the first round of the preparation of the online question bank.
Dr. Pragash said it would be vetted to avoid inaccuracies and to ascertain that it was within the syllabus by a panel of expert faculty members and members of the Boards of Studies. “We plan to form an expert panel comprising senior faculty members of various subjects under Kerala, Calicut and Kannur universities, which would again check the standard of the questions asked besides checking whether it conforms to the syllabus prescribed. The question bank will be uploaded on the varsity portal after getting the clearance of the panel,” he said.
Teachers in various affiliated colleges could submit the questions through the already functional teachers’ portal of the varsity, which is password protected. The varsity plans to invite questions from the students in the second phase of the online question bank project.
Dr. Pragash said each student would get an online registration user ID and password, with the varsity initiating a major digital project soon. From initial registration till the issue of degree certificate, all aspects related to a student would be made online. Students could submit the questions for the bank using their user ID and password, once the digital project turned operational, he said.
The varsity authorities hoped that they would be able to prepare question papers for a period of at least five years using the computer-generated random selection method, which would ensure that the questions were not repeated and were error-free. Students had the advantage of widening their learning process and improving the level of knowledge in each subject by going through the question bank, they said.
