Technology should not be blamed for the failure of any online testing programme, as there are ample technologies and solutions available to take care of any large programme, computer experts said today.
"Technology should not be blamed for any fiasco in a large online testing programme, as several technologies and solutions are easily available," they said in the backdrop of the recent problems faced by students in the online test of the CAT for admission in business schools.
Refusing to buy the excuse of viruses to be the cause of failure at the testing centres, experts said there are many ways in which the entire system can be made trouble-free, and it is only the culture of organisers taking responsibility in verifying the system before putting it out for the students – who are already so tensed and waiting to finish the exams.
It is purely the organisers' responsibity to see that things move smoothly, as the number of people appearing for the examination was not difficult to be handled by the available technologies, they said at a panel discussion on "Opportunities and threats in the online testing domain" at Indian Merchants Chamber here.
The experts were Prof Deepak Pathak, head, computer division of IIT Mumbai, Vijay Mukhi of IMC and Ninad Karpe, CEO and MD, Aptech Ltd; who initiated the discussion.
The organisers (like IIMs) along with the industry (like Prometric) which provides the service for such massive online tests must plan the logistics and carry out dress rehearsals – end-to-end tests (to the remotest place), conducting extensive trials, Pathak said.
"More than that, all the centres including the remotest one should be provided with mandatory do's and don'ts so that every centre will uniformly follow the rules, without getting into any 'virus' problem, he said.
The competitive CAT exam that went online for the first time this year ran into trouble, when computers crashed in around 40 centres across the country, as an American firm Prometric was awarded the USD40 million (Rs185.5 crore) as a five-year contract from IIMs.
Around 2,40,000 students had registered for CAT this year which was scheduled at 105 centres in 32 cities, all linked to a main server.
"I do not know what were the problems encountered in online CAT examinations and how it happened, but for the sake of future successful large scale pre-admission tests, it was important that a joint exercise is carried out by institutes and the online industry. An end-to-end testing is very crucial," Pathak said.
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