Amid mounting scrutiny around CBSE’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, several reports indicating the board’s ignorance toward the inconsistencies flagged during the dry run have surfaced. Times Now has learnt that the concerned authorities were cautioned against the numerous red flags that popped up during the trial run.
During a pilot testing in Delhi, evaluators flagged various issues, including a pressing need for human interface in evaluation. According to sources, the OSM was “neither teacher-friendly nor learner-centric,” which put undue cognitive and physical strain on the evaluators.
Surprisingly, evaluators were ready to review extra copies in a manual way instead of shifting to the digital evaluation system. They were visibly hesitant to assess copies online because of the increased cognitive load, time consumption, and operational challenges.
Noticing the reluctance among the examiners, senior CBSE officials assured them, saying, “Only non-academic subjects such as Physical Education, Fine Arts, yoga, etc will be evaluated through OSM post the dry run.” However, the situation unfolded differently.
What Challenges Were Faced by Evaluators?
During the trial run, the examiners struggled with multiple issues. The following are the significant arguments put forth by the panel to CBSE after the dry run:
In the course of assessment, the evaluators encountered a marks discrepancy issue, as Sets 2 & 3 displayed the aggregate marks as 70, while in reality, the exam was held for 80 marks. These sorts of errors left them perplexed, and they ended up awarding marks out of 70. The same questions structured differently across sets further made uniform assessment hard. In addition to this, there was no way to go back to the pages that were being assessed, which left examiners with no option but to proceed further even if marking was incorrect.
On top of this, no step-wise marking was provided in the writing section, barring students from reviewing the marks allotted for format, content, and expression alike. “The lagging issue during step-wise marks allocation increased the turnaround time for assessing copies,” according to sources.
Despite being present, the remarks feature was non-functional, which barred evaluators from justifying students’ marks. Also, the absence of a highlighting tool prevented teachers from circling or marking errors, which resulted in zero feedback transfer. “Risk of superficial evaluation with instances of blind or arbitrary marking, with evaluators awarding marks without thoroughly reading answers,” was another red flag underscored yet overlooked by the board.
Not just these, but poor interface design made it harder for teachers to see the question paper and marking scheme simultaneously. Overlap between step marks and overall scores affected marking.
For situations out of the examiner’s control, like power cuts or network failure, there was no auto-save feature, resulting in data loss. The examiners who had articulated readiness to check additional copies manually were extremely reluctant to do so in digital mode. Moreover, the lack of technical assistance to handle concurrent glitches for seamless evaluation further made evaluation harder.
Lastly, the new evaluation system was inconvenient for teachers, as it increased cognitive load and physical strain during long working hours. The absence of a collaboration and discussion mechanism among evaluators negatively impacted standardisation of marking.
These issues were prominently flagged by the panel that participated in the dry run. Most of the warnings were seemingly ignored by the board, leading to frustration among evaluators during the assessment. When the results were announced, students also discovered inconsistencies and superficial evaluation, leading to unexpectedly low scores.
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