Online examination and assessment system

Abstract

Online Examination and Assessment System (OEAS) is a Web-based application for academic institutions with NUST being the primary focus. The main objective of the application is to automate the manual examination process by providing efficient, convenient, free of prejudice, flexible, secure and error free management of Examination process. The application is developed with a view to implement automated examination system mainly focusing on objective type questions coinciding with the generic entry test scheme. The application gathers user input and then compares it with pre-fed answers to generate results without the need of having a dedicated external examiner. System is user access driven with various privileges and rights for the users depending upon their operational role. Administrator maintains the system technically, generates log reports and creates user accounts. Center President looks after the overall exam conduct to include test timings, maintenance of login activities of candidates and generation of attendance report. Question Setter maintains the question bank which is further used for paper generation by the system. Paper Setter designs the layout of the examination papers. Exam Directorate provides requisite staff and administers examination details to include the test dates, test location test timing and also generates student based result report. Security of the questions is ensured by encrypting the system with AES and question bank is stored in database which is also password protected. JavaScript and AJAX are used on client side as scripting language and application is supported on all browsers from IE 6 and onwards to Firefox and Google Chrome. On server side, Windows Server 2003 onwards is used as operating system and database is managed using Microsoft SQL server 2008. Asp.net framework 4 is used as server side scripting language.