Exam paper distribution
Exam paper distribution and the delivery of personalised and blank answer sheets as well as supporting materials is achieved in one of two ways, depending on your deployment option.
Exam paper distribution and the delivery of personalised and blank answer sheets as well as supporting materials is achieved in one of two ways, depending on your deployment option.
First, we can despatch exam scripts securely by courier to your school/college/university.
Second, exam paper delivery is via a web portal and grouped by component and/or candidate ready for downloading and printing.
One of the disadvantages associated with the traditional pen and paper test is the logistical challenge of transporting materials to remote centres as well as the return shipment of completed answer sheets back to a central location or bureau for scanning. It is not uncommon for the process to take several weeks when returning from some parts of the world.
Consequently, a web portal (see screenshots below) is available for larger deployments where venues can test their scanning, download and print question papers (QPs) and answer papers (APs), scan completed APs, monitor progress, fulfil re-scan requests and reconcile scanning. The portal serves as the front-end to the platform for your users as well as acting as the one-stop location for all centre printing and scanning functions.
Upon login, users are presented with three main sections:
The ability to instantly despatch exam papers and supporting materials securely across the globe significantly reduces the time, cost and risk, whilst offering the robustness of papers personalised to the candidates.
Performing much of the reconciliation work to help expedite script processing, the portal improves efficiency as the centres handle exceptions directly.
Secure logon fully supporting role-based access, Single Sign-on (SSO), Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) and synchronisation with user directories.
Markers and administration teams can request centres to re-scan APs where necessary to improve image quality for marking.
Where papers cannot be scanned, perhaps due to a candidate’s additional needs or where they have been barred from completing the test, their status can be set accordingly from within the portal to ensure the session can be completely reconciled.
Centres can record absent candidates in several ways; an invigilator’s report completed during the test, through the portal or by importing data from a third-party attendance system.
The portal will provide a central analytics dashboard for test centres and administration teams to view upcoming sessions and monitor scanning progress for any session or centre.
This will include the real-time status of each candidate and test components (entered, paper printed, scanned, verified and marked), re-scan requests generated by markers and non-reconciled pages and outstanding issues for the centre.
To save transportation costs, exam paper distribution is online. Venues can download blank or personalised QPs and APs for each component from the web portal and arrange printing on laser printers or with a local commercial printer.
The download page provides session, description, create date and status information about each PDF. Guidance on printing test papers is provided in addition to instructions for candidates, invigilators and interlocutors. Test pages are available to assist in the calibration of printer and scanner settings.
You can customise the web portal to meet your corporate brand guidelines and change colours, logos, and fonts.
The web portal allows centres to download non-personalised AP’s for walk-in candidates. Centres can also request last-minute amendments to QP’s/AP’s and regenerate PDFs.
If you have last minute entries/amendments or QP’s/AP’s have been lost/damaged before the test date, centres can regenerate PDF packs for local printing.
Some of the benefits include:
Distributed
Following a OJEU tender process, the British Council commissioned Civica as the prime contractor to deliver an on-screen marking (OSM) solution to mark up to 2.25 million ‘pen and paper’ IELTS tests each year.
As part of the agreement, Civica appointed ePC as its sub-contractor for the script capture, processing and verification work.
Enterprise
Expert in language assessment automates paper-based assessments with OMR exam processing and on-screen marking system.
Mid-volume
Leading UK university uses TeleForm to design, scan and verify OMR answer sheets from undergraduate and postgraduate examinations.
