Q. What is the expected date for the results of NMAT online test?

The results for the NMAT were announced on time, as per plan on March 2, 2010.

Q. How is your experience of conducting online test in India?

Pearson VUE has been conducting online tests in India for over a decade and our experience has shown us what a great potential India has to convert its homegrown exams to CBT. Moving the APAC headquarters from Australia to India was our biggest move to show our commitment to India.

Q. Please tell us about the Advantages of online testing over traditional testing?

CBT takes advantage of a more efficient system which saves time for the students, provides them with the flexibility of choosing and or rescheduling their test date, ensures security, helps differently-abled students and opposed to popular belief, nullifies chances of leaked question papers. The user interface is also designed to minimize reliance on computer skills. Candidates do not need to have prior computer experience to use CBT. There is a reduction in response errors as questions are presented one at a time. Moreover, mistakes in transferring answers from an exam booklet to an answer sheet are reduced. Even with these advantages, it retains the edge of the pen and paper exam - the ability to move within sections or questions. During the time allowed for the test, candidates may return to previous questions, change their answers and mark questions that they would like to review before completing the test. However, once the candidate completes the test or the test time is over, the candidate can no longer access any test question.

The administration of the test is unbiased test and so is the scoring, because it negates human error while evaluating answer sheets. Time-keeping for each candidate is rigidly controlled so that everyone has exactly the same amount of time to complete their test. For the institutes, it is more efficient considering the number of students that sit for exams every year. The sheer logistical nightmare of distributing question papers to widely scattered exam centres and then collecting and transporting the answer papers back to the evaluation centres is avoided. There is no need to appoint a large staff to painstakingly go through the answer sheets and tally the marks. This also enables easy scalability across geographies, as with the NMAT this year, which went global.

Q. How do you see market emerging from here and what will the future trends?

With technology changing at such a fast pace, and India being on the forefront of this changing technology, CBT adoption by the masses is not far away. India is maturing to the idea of CBT and accepts the benefits and convenience that CBT has to offer over paper and pencil testing. We see more and more exams converting to CBT just by virtue of CBT's advantages.

Concluded.

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