One of the most pressing challenges during the pandemic has been conducting remote exams while ensuring students don't copy or cheat. From August to September 2021, the educational institutes under the Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University (AKTU) and the Board of Technical Education Uttar Pradesh (BTE) conducted over 3.3 million unique proctored exams without batting an eyelid. Almost. And they did this with the help of Wheebox, a cloud-based global assessment platform.
While the face recognition feature of the Gurugram-based start-up ensured that only a bona fide candidate logs in, over 3,000 remote proctors from the institutes were also ensuring that no cheating ensues. "Our AI keeps checking for any discrepancies like a student peeking at his phone too often and alerts the remote proctor who can then chat with the student or also conduct impromptu video conference to check if there is any reason to really doubt the student," explains Nirmal Singh, Founder and CEO, Wheebox.
These exams were mainly conducted for diploma and ITI (Industrial Training Institute) courses via Wheebox's own browser, SafeExam, so that the students' movements outside the test window could be monitored. While Wheebox's online proctoring solutions also helped capture and archive the screen of the students in real-time, all this while keeping in mind data security and user privacy settings. So capturing photos, question bank management and how to monitor the chats happening between a student and a proctor — all of this was done being mindful of the users' privacy.
This partnership between the Government of Uttar Pradesh and Wheebox launched in July 2021 will soon take another turn. India Skills Report is a proprietary report of the start-up research for which will be conducted. The team, along with officials of MHRD and NSDC, will conduct employability tests for students to assess their skill set and the report will be launched this November or December. On the other hand, the start-up's partners will assess what the industry needs and if feasible, connect the companies' needs to the students' skill set.
