The Centre for Development of Imaging Technology (C-DIT) will develop the software required to conduct the KEAM entrance examination for admission to engineering and pharmacy courses.
The computer-based test (CBT) mode will be implemented for the annual examination this year onwards.
The Commissioner for Entrance Examinations (CEE) has been utilising the software designed by the State-run agency for some of its entrance examinations of smaller scale to courses such as LLM and MBA.
The government accepted the CEE’s proposal to directly conduct the engineering and pharmacy entrance examination and deploy an upgraded version of the existing C-DIT software for the purpose.
The CEE had received Expressions of Interest from multiple agencies including private firms having prior experience in conducting CBTs. However, the government decided to adopt the C-DIT software that will be upgraded to handle the registrations and submissions by over 1.2 lakh students who register for the entrance examination on an average. The examination is likely to be conducted across multiple days after factoring in the availability of centres with computer laboratories and such facilities.
The government has also constituted an expert committee for the transparent and efficient conduct of the examination under CBT mode. Joint Commissioners for Entrance Examinations Shabu S.J., Baby Syla, CUSAT Director of Admissions James Varghese, head of the Computer Science and Engineering Department in the College of Engineering Thiruvananthapuram (CET) Sumesh Divakaran and Kerala State IT Mission coordinator Aparna S. are the members of the committee.
Meanwhile, the Higher Education department has reconstituted a committee of statisticians for framing the standardisation procedure and supervising the standardising process in the State.
The final marks of the qualifying examinations conducted by various boards are standardised before finalising the entrance rank lists.
The committee comprises Kerala University Statistics Department Associate Professor C. Satheesh Kumar, Thiruvananthapuram Government Arts College Post Graduate Department of Statistics head N.V. Sreekumar, former Joint Commissioner (Academic) S. Santhosh and Maharaja’s College Post Graduate Department of Statistics Assistant Professor Angel Mathew.
