Education sector Ready With Contingency Plans

Hyderabad: Telangana State Universities and their affiliated colleges are well prepared to run their operations smoothly even if they have to face a situation similar to the second wave of Covid-19.

According to the State Higher Education Department (SHED) officials, unlike any other State in the country, Telangana has a well-poised Information Technology (IT) infrastructure in the education sector, developed in the past two to three years. Currently, barring the conduction of semester and year-end examinations, the State's IT infrastructure can handle the end-to-end processes, all the way from admission to result declaration and even the issuance of digital certificates, which is in line with the latest addition of a digital academic certificate depository.

Speaking to The Hans India, Osmania University Vice-Chancellor Prof D Ravinder said, "The University has been conducting online classes during the academic year for the past couple of years," and added that the faculty could even evaluate answer sheets of the examinations online.

Against this backdrop, a proposal has been mooted to develop an electronic writing slate to replace students writing examinations on paper-based answer booklets. On one hand, it will help save a lot of paper by shifting from paper-based to paper-less examination mode and on the other, in situations like the Covid-19 pandemic, such an approach will come in handy while conducting examinations.

The proposal is still in the initial stages of discussion with a top IT company to develop a slate. Students will be writing answers on the slate instead of a paper-based answer booklet. All that the students have to do is to save upon completion of writing and submit the same and marks are awarded by evaluating the digital answer scripts submitted by the students online.

Once the slate component of writing examinations is integrated, the entire process of admissions, conducting classes and examinations, declaration of results, issuance of digital mark sheets and other certificates will get automated.