The Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) on Monday, May 12, launched three candidate-centric digital initiatives, a college portal, mobile app, and a chatbot, to streamline examination processes and provide easy access to essential information.
Inaugurating the initiatives, Karnataka Higher Education Minister Dr MC Sudhakar said that such advancements ensure timely and accurate information, eliminate confusion, and reduce the dependency on intermediaries, stated a report by The New Indian Express.
The college portal consolidates crucial data about colleges, including infrastructure, course fees, and faculty details, allowing students to make informed decisions before option entry. It also enables students to report excessive fees directly to the Fee Regulation Committee. Earlier, students had to depend on the scattered sources for information and the new college portal consolidates all relevant data in one place, with colleges themselves having been given access to upload their information directly to the portal. It provides detailed insights into each college’s infrastructure, academic environment, hostels, classrooms , faculty details and more, enabling the students to know well about the college and campus culture.
“Many students, unaware of college conditions, make choices blindly and later request changes. This portal will help avoid such issues,” Dr Sudhakar elaborated.
The KEA mobile app provides all the services available on the KEA website, including application submission and fee payment, making it particularly beneficial for rural candidates who were depended on cyber centres and often made errors during online application and seat allocation processes. Additionally, the app also features push notifications to keep students updated, according to the report by The New Indian Express.
The KEA chatbot, powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), has already served over 1.35 lakh students, offering instant responses to queries. All official KEA information is uploaded to the chatbot system and candidates can simply type their questions and receive accurate responses based on the available data.
Currently available only in English, a Kannada version is expected within a month.
The minister also said that the government is set to revise the rule under which engineering colleges were allowed to charge and additional fee for various skill-based training programmes. "The police will be revised next year. The government will assess what training each college is offering and then re-evaluate the fee structure," he added.
Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (COMEDK) will begin its seat allotment only after KEA’s first round, he said. The government is also considering reducing fees for unfilled engineering seats and reviewing the increase in computer science seats.
