If you haven't heard of Littlemore Innovation Labs, it's probably because they're spending their time trying NOT to leave a paper trail! With their tech-driven innovations, they are helping universities and institutions go paper-free during exam season — aiding them to save over 20 million sheets so far.
Though paper as a medium has practically held monopoly in the exam system, Srikanth Ganesan, who founded the start-up that is based in Singapore and Chennai, observed that it involved risks like malpractices, question paper leaks, candidate impersonation and a long exam cycle. He quickly recognised the need for a custom-built hardware which can be controlled by a software ecosystem with a high level of reliability, security while offering an experience similar to that of writing on paper.
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From setting the question paper to students writing exams and evaluation of answer papers, PEXA is the software that controls every aspect. Meanwhile, students are provided with an examination device called DigiTaal. Students can write and draw on this device as they do on paper. In fact, it has many student-friendly features and analytics is one of them. The examiners can get to view analytics on how much time was spent on a particular question, the total time spent to attempt the full question paper, level of difficulty, comparison of marks and much more.
Security is a major factor here. Biju Zachariah, who is the President of Littlemore Innovation Labs, says, "There are multiple layers of security with automation at different levels, to ensure critical data points are not available for human access at any time during the entire exam cycle. The advantage of this software is that you don’t need internet connectivity, AC Power, LAN Cables and power backup while conducting examinations. The faculty can go ahead and conduct examinations as they would do on paper. There is no last minute rush to print question papers. Apart from this, DigiTaal has biometric and built-in stealth mechanisms. Whenever there are any doubts about the integrity of the test taker, what one needs to do is analyse their digital footprint with the audit trail created in the system." He also states that they have delivered 1.5 million exams successfully without any adverse incidents.
Given the fact that they are disrupting a century-old system, the adaptation has been extremely fast among students and universities till date. At present, PEXA and DigiTaal is being used by 10 Universities in 70 colleges across 50 locations in India. "We are on the verge of expansion and if an exam needs to be delivered in Leh or Ladakh then we will do it. We are hopeful of expanding more into the North and West this year. Currently Manipal University, IIIT Bangalore, Nimhans University and Reva University have conducted paperless exams," he adds.
