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ShareBangalore: Technical glitches marred the debut of online Common Admission Test 2009, leading to exam cancellations at some centres and widespread confusion among candidates.
Experts, however, felt that online tests should not be written off yet and such teething troubles are bound to be resolved soon.
"A few slots should be kept open for any online exam. This can be used to accommodate candidates who couldn't sit for the exam due to unforeseen problems (could be a technical snag or power failure during the session). This will ensure there is no confusion or tension among test-takers," said Dr GK Prabhu, registrar, Manipal University, which has been conducting online entrance exams since 2005. Every year, over 70,000 candidates take its tests without any glitch.
There is a need to focus on uniquely Indian problems like power outages, road work, floods or heavy rainfall which could derail any online exam plans.
"Last year, due to road work being done on a weekend, a test slated for Monday could not be conducted because of connectivity issues at the designated centre. So we learnt our lesson and now host exams only mid-week," he added.
Merit Trac, a city-based educational testing company, recently conducted the Gujarat Common Entrance Test online. They conducted the test over four days for around 23,000 students in 11 cities."Some key areas which need to be looked into when conducting an online test include adequate infrastructure and compatible technology which works in the Indian context (even during power cuts making sure data is stored properly) and user-friendliness. Every error likely to be made by a candidate when taking an online test should be considered, so that it doesn't cripple the system in any way," said Madan Padaki, CEO and co-founder, Merit Trac.
While conducting the Gujarat CET, Merit Trac mock-tested systems and processes for four days prior to the actual dates. The error rate for the final test was 1.5%, around 400 candidates had to be re-scheduled because of floods and heavy rainfall at certain centres.
Tweeters furious
The first-day cancellations of the computer-based Common Admission Test, 2009, evoked strong responses from tweeters, who criticised both the organisers, Prometric and the Indian Institutes of Management, for the poorly-managed affair.
Author Chetan Bhagat tweeted, "Oops CAT server crashes... who did it, c'mon, own up!" Candidates who suffered also vented their ire. "My CAT exam cancelled!! (sic) Stupid servers crashed," read Praveen's tweet.
Another candidate,Srivatsa, who couldn't attempt the online test, tweeted, "I was in the batch where CAT exam was conducted online first time ever, and the servers crashed!"
Another tweet read: "CAT servers crashed today... (sic) the authorities shud bounce back with stable systems. But disappointed in Prometric not being able to deliver."
The complaints ranged from the unexpected CAT 2009 cancellations to the speed of test delivery.
One such tweet read, "CAT servers crashed at many places, at others students were hit by other glitches like slow loading of q's (sic) taking more than 15 minutes."
