Bare Necessities: The Education Essentials that you need to know about!

Not so long ago, perhaps a couple of pandemics before, a certain Benjamin Franklin once was quoted saying “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Fast-forward to the D-year i.e 2020, it would be sheer ignorance to believe that investments in education have not taken a multi-million turn for the better. With the dawn of the E-learning platforms, there has been an educational renaissance when it comes to how the average student approaches subjects in school, colleges and universities of all sizes.  

With a renaissance comes a plethora of Educational arsenals that institutions have deployed during the last decade or so. Everything in the range of smart classrooms, VR based teaching, Hololens technology and a ton of other marvels have sprung up in the Ed-tech space.

With all these resources available on the market, it becomes all the more imperative for decision makers from institutions to adopt the right tech-solutions to address their academic concerns and also keep up with the changing times. All of this keeping the ever-looming cloud of budget constraints in mind.

With all things taken into perspective, the pandemic has brought up two essential e-learning commodities into the limelight — LMS and Proctored exams.

With Virtual Classrooms being the talk of the town, it also is important to point out the impact LMS (Learning Management systems) and proctored exams during these testing times.

Here’s what you should know:

1. LMS ( Learning Management Systems)

– An LMS is a platform for digital learning. Its key features can be found in the abbreviation.

L — Learning. With an LMS, you can create a single source of e-courses and training materials. This will become a unique source of knowledge in your area, so that it becomes the hub for all information  in an institution.

M — Management. You can manage courses and learners, and even improve your own efficiency by analyzing user usage and courses learnt on LMS.

An LMS lets you create eLearning content (lessons), organize it into courses, deliver the content (either internally to your business or to a wider internet audience), enroll students to said courses, and, finally, monitor and assess their performance (attendance, grades, etc.), thus making it an integral part of any educational setup.

2. Proctored Exams

With institutions being forced to resort to make students write exams from the confines of their homes, it becomes increasingly hard to monitor students in real-time.  A number of measures have come up to curb the loopholes of the conventional exam and this has led to the induction of proctoring of exams using AI based tools.

What is Remote Proctoring and what are some of its concerns?

Remote proctoring enables students to write a test online in a remote location, while maintaining the integrity of the test. Students must confirm their identity and they may be monitored through video. This video is then used to flag any irregular student behaviour. Some of the concerns include location of the proctor, connectivity, lack of qualified proctors and exteneded test schedules to name a few.

Proctored Exams minimizes the burden of such exams by using AI based tools remove the anomalies of remote proctoring and allow seamless invigilation of exams.

Different types of online proctoring include: Recorded, Advanced Automated and Live Online proctoring methods.

There are additional checks done to make online proctored exams secure like limiting the number of IP addresses, blocking copy-paste options and freezing the screen if a candidate switches applications.To put it in a nutshell, these two developments have been a revelation in the past half a year and will continue to be an integral part of the ed-tech revolution in the months to come.