Anna University, a unitary type of University, offers higher education in Engineering, Technology and Allied Sciences relevant to the current and projected needs of the society in Tamil Nadu. There are about 580 affiliated engineering colleges and these colleges offer various engineering degrees (ug, pg and phd) courses to about 6 lakh students. Apart from regular UG and PG programmes, the university offers MCA, MBA, M.Sc. programmes through 16 Distance Education Centres in which about 1000 students are admitted every year. The need to implement a comprehensive web application was felt by the Controller of Examinations (CoE) to capture the non-confidential data about these colleges, study centres, zonal offices, faculty members and the students admitted every year through Regular and Distance Education modes, which Pre-Examination Monitoring System seeks to address. Pre-Examination Monitoring System essentially helps the CoE in monitoring all the activities carried out by the stakeholders. The focus is on capturing the quality data of students and the faculty members from all the affiliated Engineering Colleges of the state, to ensure examination processing with fewer constraints. Prior to the introduction of this web application, the data was gathered from all the stakeholders through offline mode using various types of desktop tools. CoE faces great difficulty in compiling the data and processing it for generating the Hall Tickets in time for the eligible students and other reports for each Semester Examination. NIC Chennai suggested implementing an Open Source based solution to cover all the Non-Confidential Pre-Examination Data Processing activities and a few Post-Examination Services. Based on the data schema being used by the O/o CoE, NIC Chennai designed and implemented Pre-Examination Monitoring System web application in January 2013. To begin with, affiliated colleges and the CoE were using this application. Other stakeholders like the Zonal Offices and Distance Education Centres were included in the subsequent phases. Objectives The primary objective of this web application is to enable the CoE to monitor all the Pre Semester Examination Processes effectively and to offer few Post-Examination Services. yyRegular and Distance Education Students:
- Capturing the students’ profile and registration of subjects
- Capturing the periodical attendance and internal assessment marks
- Registration for the examinations
- Generating Hall Tickets for the eligible students
- Semester examination results dissemination
- Registration for revaluation/ review of answer scripts
yyAffiliated College
- Capturing and updating faculties’ profile
- Selecting the suitable examiners for practical and theory examinations
yyZonal Offices
- Appointing examiners for the theory and practical examinations
- Appointing squad members and university representatives for examinations
- Appointing examiners for central valuation and revaluation of answer scripts
yyO/o Controller of Examinations
- Uploading the Master Data to the database server whenever needed
- Transferring the processed data from this system to the secured, confidential data server for further processing
- Monitoring all the examination related activities carried out by the stakeholders
Salient Features yyCapturing the complete details of every UG/PG/PhD student yyRegistering the students for the semester examinations yyAssigning the elective subjects chosen by the students yyCapturing the periodical course attendance details yyCapturing the periodical internal assessment marks yyGenerating the examination hall tickets for the eligible students yySelecting and allotting the examination related duties to the suitable faculty members yyCapturing the examination absentees details yyRegistering the students for the revaluation of answer papers yyCapturing the complete details of every teaching staff member yySending e-mail alerts to the staff and the principals concerned with the examination duty assignments along with the details of date, venue, time etc. All these data updations can be monitored by the Controller of Examinations by generating various types of periodical reports and Exceptional Reports. Thus, the web application considerably reduces the processing time ensuring timely generation of hall tickets and publication of examination results. Apart from these processes, following Non-confidential Post-Examination processes are also covered by this web application: yyDisseminating UG/PG Semester Examination Results through web and Android Mobile App, from the separately processed data uploaded by the O/o CoE yyGenerating the Results Summary Report for the colleges from the results data Other modules implemented a. Distance Education Centres (DECs) and O/o Director of Distance Education The above-mentioned modules meant for the affiliated colleges offering the regular UG/PG/PhD courses has been implemented for the Distance Education Centres which offer PG courses in Distance Education mode, after customization. There are 14 such centres functioning under the control of the Directorate of Distance Education. Almost all the options available for the affiliated colleges are made available for the Distance Education Centres module also. b. Zonal Offices This module is basically for monitoring the Zonal Offices which involve in the activities like appointing the Internal and External Examiners and Hall Supervisors for all colleges, Flying Squad members, University Representatives, Answer Scripts Evaluators etc. based on the profiles of the faculty members of all the colleges functioning under its jurisdiction. There are 20 Zonal Offices functioning under the control of the CoE, which take care of all the affiliated colleges. Success of this web application has already been reaped by all the stakeholders as the web application has appreciably speeded up the entire processing right from capturing the students profiles till the results declaration after the revaluation of answer scripts. All the 6 lakhs+ students studying in various branches of the 580+ affiliated Engineering Colleges can login using their Register No. and Date of Birth as credentials and view the following details through the Students Corner section of this web portal through out the academic year: yyBasic Profile yyElective Subjects chosen yyPeriodical Course attendance details yySemester Examination schedule for the subjects they have registered yySemester Examination results (including the results of the revaluation and review of answer scripts) yyPeriodical internal marks yyExamination attendance The same Students Corner section is made available as an Android Mobile App, which has received a huge response from the students’ and the parents’ community.