Digital transition: KEAM exam to be held in online mode, 1.2 lakh students to benefit
Author: BI Bureau
New Delhi: The Kerala Engineering, Architecture, and Medical Entrance Exam (KEAM) will transition from a pen and paper to an online mode from next year. At present, the exam is taken by around 1.2 lakh students every year and held in the traditional offline mode.
The government had initially planned to conduct KEAM in online mode last year, but due to technical difficulties, the transition was postponed.
Currently, students write their answers to multiple-choice questions on an Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheet, which is later scanned at the CEE's office for scoring purposes.
However, conducting the exam online will require it to be conducted in phases since it would not be feasible to arrange over 1.2 lakh computer terminals simultaneously.
In the online mode, questions will be randomly selected by the system from a large question bank, ensuring the confidentiality of the exam even if it is conducted in phases.
Additionally, students will have the option to edit their answers before final submission. Unlike the current process that takes three to four weeks to scan the OMR sheets, computer-based evaluation will be faster, allowing candidates to receive their scores in a shorter time.
Except for KEAM, other entrance exams conducted by CEE are held in an online format.
The huge number of candidates appearing for the examination was the reason that prompted the government from discontinuing with the pen and paper mode. However, with national engineering entrance exams such as JEE shifting to a computer-based format, it was decided to adopt the same mode for KEAM. /BI
