The Indian Institutes of Technology want to move towards making the Graduate Aptitude Test

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in Engineering (GATE) completely online. This year, the IITs offered the online option in two out of 21 papers, but are now trying to get more papers in the online mode. This could eventually make the examination system more flexible and accommodating for students.

The papers of two subjects, namely textile engineering and fibre science (TF) and mining engineering (MN), were conducted online in GATE-2010, and were taken by 1,700 candidates out of the total 4.6 lakh that appeared for it.

“This year, the National Co-ordination Board (NCB) would meet in the third week of May to take stock and decide how many more papers would be made online in GATE 2011,” chairman, GATE Committee-2010, G B Reddy told Financial Chronicle.

“This is an experiment that we are carrying out,” he said, adding, “Eventually we want to make the entire exam online. We want to make it a multi-session exam that could be held more than once a year. This can only be possible by making exams online.”

GATE is an all-India examination administered and conducted jointly by the Indian Institute of Science (IIS) and the IITs on behalf of the NCB-GATE, ministry of HRD. The online papers of GATE-2010 used customised software from MeritTrac, a training and skills assessment company. The company is in talks with IITs for an enhanced role for GATE 2011, but no formal decision has been taken by NCB yet.

COO MeritTrac, Murlidhar S said, “Out of 200 million exams in higher education conducted in 2009, only 0.75 million were online. The market opportunity, therefore, is massive.”

MeritTrac had earlier said it will be investing Rs 15-20 crore for setting up of a whole ecosystem for online examinations.