Hyderabad: The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has proposed norms for the open book test, which allows students to take their books and study material into the examination hall, where question papers would be aiming to test the cognitive skill of the students, rather than the memory. Engineering colleges welcome the move and have stated that the open book exam pattern assesses a student’s skill in application, analysis and evaluation, which is the need of the hour. Education experts say that there is also a need for teaching reforms along with examination reforms, for the open book test to be fruitful.
According to the McKinsey report, only a quarter of Indian engineers are employable, many engineers are finding it difficult even to code and are not suitable to market demands. Experts say that if these many students were failing in the job market, then there is something wrong with the system itself.
Mr N.V. Ramana Rao, Director, National IT, Warangal, said, “Open book test would definitely be helpful, because the concept of the system is to make use of the available knowledge and generating new ideas and solving problems. There will be questions based on application of the existing knowledge, its learning by experience and intuition. It’s a good experiment and definitely possible. It has been experimented and succeeded in many Educational institutions abroad.”
Speaking about the setbacks of the existing examination system, Mr.Ramana Rao, added that now our system concentrated on content like definitions and procedures in the examinations. With the introduction of the new system, there would be a full-stop to rote learning methods and also there would be not any scope for malpractices. “It will truly test the intellectual capabilities of the students,” he said.
Dr N. Gautam Rao, Chairman, Telangana Engineering and Professional colleges Association, said the evaluation part would be a bit challenging for teachers as each student would be answering in his own angle and there would not be one single correct answer. Teachers should also understand the creativity levels of the student, otherwise this pattern would be risky for students’ results. “Teachers should be trained well before the implementation of the open book test,” he said.
Mr M. Srinivas, an Engineering student, said, “It’s a nice idea to implement this new examination system, but there are many other things in colleges, because of which engineering students are getting affected. Mainly quality of teachers should be improved, as, it is directly proportional to the student’s quality.”
After the four member AICTE committee proposed the examination reforms, the proposal of open book test is under review with the Ministry of Human resource Development (MHRD) and awaiting its response. If there is a green signal from the Ministry, then it is likely that the Open book exams will be conducted from the next academic year.
