SIBM Pune leverages technology to bring innovation in its exam process

Pune (Maharashtra) [India], January 18 (ANI/SRV Media): While all B Schools are conducting exams online, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM) Pune has used technology to conduct the exams in an innovative way.
SIBM- Pune, a constituent of Symbiosis International (Deemed University) - SIU offers two-year full-time MBA, MBA (Innovation and Entrepreneurship) and MBA (Leadership and Strategy) programmes and a weekend MBA-Executive programme through properly structured and outcome-oriented learning objectives.
Due to Covid-19 pandemic the entire first semester was conducted online and students had not yet returned to the campus. The visionary leadership at Symbiosis comprising Dr Vidya Yeravdekar - Pro-Vice Chancellor, SIU and Dr Rajini Gupte - Vice Chancellor, SIU took a futuristic decision to conduct the examinations fully online.
While many B Schools are using online platforms to conduct examinations, the unique innovation of the online exams conducted by SIBM Pune was - 'None of the examinations had a question paper! Using the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine learning (ML) algorithms each student was given a unique set of questions generated one after the another in real time from a huge question data set'. Hence there was randomisation of questions and the answer options along with a timer. This ensured none of the students had the same question paper to answer.
Hence there were very limited chances for malpractice. This made the final question paper almost unique to each individual. Depending on the credits allotted for the course, the duration for each examination was allocated. Machine Learning put to effective use to normalise the questions difficulty level, which changed depending on the answer responses given by the student. Added to all this, image capturing technology was used to monitor the students, which needed very limited bandwidth and hence the examination was conducted in a hassle-free manner. It was mandatory for the student to keep their camera ON during the exam.
Through application of artificial intelligence, the activities of every student during the exam was tracked in order to identify suspicious activities. All these ensured the chances of unfair exam practices to be almost negligible.
"The challenge was to conduct examinations online in a smooth manner for students spread all over India which is as efficient as an offline exam. Thanks to AI and ML - We leveraged technology and could do this in a very efficient way," said Dr R Raman Director - SIBM, Pune and Dean Faculty of Management - Symbiosis International (Deemed University).
Adhering to University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines SIBM Pune has each of its program mapped to specific program objectives which further is mapped and linked to the course objectives. The program and course objectives are designed to facilitate student learning and helps them achieve specific conceptual and practical skills while pursuing the program. SIBM, Pune takes utmost care to focus on designing these program and course objectives to prepare students to be future employers and employees.
"Online Process had to be streamlined. All faculty members and staff members had to be trained to handle the operations and also were asked to map each question to one specific course outcome. We could complete all the tasks with timelines and this was possible due to sincere involvement of all process owners" said Shraddha Chitale, Controller of Examinations - Symbiosis International (Deemed University).
"SIBM Pune's proctored online examination was taken by students spread across the globe. The process was planned ensuring that the quality of evaluation was not compromised in any manner. Faculty member's designed Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) linking each question to one specific course outcome thereby mapping to the Program Outcome. The difficulty level of each question varied between low, medium and high. The process of preparing for the examinations was a long-haul exercise and both the faculty and academic coordinators had to be oriented towards this new technology in a short timeframe" said Dr V V Ravi Kumar - Deputy Director - SIBM Pune.
The B School used a third-party software which had AI and ML capabilities. A question bank was created with a large number of questions with each question following Bloom's learning taxonomy. Each question bank passed two levels of scrutiny from the subject experts.
"At SIBM, Pune we believe in continuous improvement of processes. The Director is tech savvy and strives to bring in cutting edge technology into academic processes." said Prof Sunaina Kuknor - faculty in charge for the MBA examinations.
"For the working professionals pursuing MBA-Executive program, the challenge was to schedule examinations on Saturdays and Sundays along with the support systems being operational during the weekend" stated Dr Abhijeet Lele faculty in charge for the MBA-Executive examinations.
At the end phase of the examination, feedback from students was captured, where they gave their experience about the new mode of examination which can further help in improving the process. The examination process was unique and it ensured that the content, syllabus coverage, ethical practices were not diluted in any way even though it was not a regular pen and paper examination but a remote online proctored one. Just as in a pen-paper examination, it was ensured that the Course Outcomes and Program Outcomes of the Program were achieved.
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