Proctoring Based Online eXamination

In the education sector during this pandemic, many examinations had to be cancelled and due to lack of a proper cheating detection mechanism exams could not be conducted online from home. Online examination is such a use case where not only AI but also Cloud as well as cyber security are also very critical.

NIC, Odisha is developing online examination product named as PBOX: Proctoring Based Online eXamination to facilitate conducting online examination. The system uses AI based face recognition tool to identify and authenticate the candidate before start of the examination. During the examination, the system monitors the activities of the candidates and records images whenever any activity violates the rules defined.

The Online Examination System is a technology-driven way to simplify examination tasks. This examination system uses fewer resources and reduces the need for question papers, answer sheets, attendance sheets, exam room scheduling, arranging invigilators etc. This system is a cost-effective and scalable way to convert standard pen and paper-based exams to online and paperless mode. The AI powered system ensures security and anti-cheating policy. It also facilitates working on minimum network connectivity as exam can continue if network gets disconnected in between the exam for some time.

TPBOX aims to provide robust and secure software solution for examinations to be conducted online or at center level by using Face recognition based authentication in addition to username and password and Proctoring. It is powered by AI/ML which enables it to carry out absence detection, person swapping detection, multiple person detection and eye ball tracking.

There may be different modalities for online examination:

Mode A: Online With/Without Proctoring

The complete online mode where all candidates will appear for the examination by using his/her own desktop with/without proctoring as configured by the examination controller. Central server will handle all the requests.

Mode B: On-Campus mode With/Without Proctoring at Center Level

Examination will be conducted at multiple examination centers simultaneously and all candidates will have to appear for the examination at their concerned centre. Centers will be having local servers with specially designed application deployed on that which can communicate with the central server securely. This decentralized mode of conducting exam will be much more suitable where controlled environment is the mandate.

A pluggable proctoring solution (e-Nirikshak):

This is a sub module of the PBox project. The main objective of this module is to power any online examination system other than PBOX with AI/ML based proctoring vision with very optimum integration code. It detects and records the following types of violation along with time stamped evidence picture and report host application through REST API call.

This violation recording will use an internal clock for time stamping to avoid network glitch during communication. In addition to this the recording of the violation will still continue even with the temporary network failure and syncing at suitable time when sense the network availability.