Chapter 1

Introduction

The entrance examination is one of the most essential factors for students' admission to
colleges nowadays, though some universities, particularly public universities, have more
demanding entrance examinations than others. [1] They are by far the most important center of
erudition, autonomous knowledge, and creative activity. They provide and improve university
education, hence contributing to the advancement and application of scientific knowledge. They
play an important part in the society's scientific, cultural, social, and economic growth.[2]

Examination marking may be tedious, laborious, and unpleasant. As far as possible, avoid
marking a big number of scripts in a short amount of time. Put marking scripts into manageable
bundles. It is less overwhelming to have ten scripts on the desk and others concealed than to
have the entire pile hanging over while writing. [3] Setting up examination papers and grading
them are time-and labor-intensive tasks that require a lot of resources and put a lot of strain on
course teachers. [4] It is an important yet time-consuming academic support job. This becomes
considerably more difficult when instructors are required to grade hundreds of individual exam
sheets. [5] This is mostly simply due to the fact that some instructors choose to undertake
traditional checking rather than utilize the newer method of checking students' papers.

Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) is widely used at colleges for reading multiple-choice
examinations. [6] For almost 80 years, it has been utilized in some form or another to transform
paper data into a machine-readable format for analysis. Software-based OMR offers significant
advantages over hardware-based OMR in that it requires only regular paper and printer toner,
and the computer and scanner may be utilized for other purposes when not processing forms. [7]
Also, examination is one of the educational experiences where technological advances have
allowed us to do so with greater accuracy. [8] Showing up results in an instant, which means less
time spent checking and greater accuracy.

In this paper, the admission has a hard time checking the examination paper of the
applicants because of the manual checking that they usually do. That's why The NU Smart Check:
Cloud-based Mobile Exam Checker project can be used exclusively for National University by the
proctors to check bubble sheet exams in less than a seconds and display the results. It is a mobile-
based application that uses the Flutter frameworks, and respectively, it also uses Optical Mark
Recognition for scanning the paper. The paper has a pattern to recognize the specific area of the
marking, and the size of the paper is like the size of the traditional bubble sheet, which is half of
the letter size of a bond paper. It aims to lessen the labor time of every user of this system.

1.1. Project Context

Many of them have maintained traditional pen-and-paper examination methods. [8] As for
the admission, the manual checking process is by giving scantrons provided by the university to
ensure that the machine will scan the paper. Once the applicant takes the examination, they will
gather all examination papers and use the OMR machine available at the school to check them.
On the other hand, admission still wastes a lot of time because they scan the paper on the OMR
machine manually.

However, the admission still faces problems in manually checking the examination papers.
Once they scan the papers, there are times that the machine can't read the scantron. The machine
occasionally creates an error, and it is not always readable or acknowledged by the machine and
the accuracy of the result is not 100%, so they will have to scan it again and re-check if it is right
based on their answer key. There are times that the machine is not working, so they will find
another device to scan the paper, if there are no spare devices, they are checking by their own
hands and it takes a lot of time to check the applicant's papers either way. That's why there's a
delay in giving them the result of their examination. There is also no item analysis in the OMR
machine.

Managing the grading of a paper-based exam becomes a time-consuming operation in

extensive and distant learning courses. Hundreds of examinations might be submitted in some
places, with numerous individuals assisting with grading. Once the tests have been scored, it
must compute the grade total. The examinations must be sorted, sent to student locations, and
returned during class time, [10] and the result will be displayed to the students quickly, reducing
tension. [11] It is important to consider an assessment method that will assist students in
overcoming their anxiety. [12] This type of evaluation is simple to mark, which minimizes the
marking time of proctors.[13] Since the software will lessen the time-consuming job of checking
over exam papers, they can also stop bringing their test papers home to inspect. [14] Examination
results will be available in minutes if you use Smart Check: Cloud-based Mobile Exam Checker
with Recommender System for National University. It also has an analysis of the item, and once
you scan the paper, it will also show the percentage of the overall score and the designated
applicant number.

1.2. Purpose and Description

 The NU Smart Check: Cloud-based Mobile Exam Checker system is a mobile application
for the Admission Office of the National University's main branch. This system's intended to
provide a faster and more accurate result for the examination of the students and reduce the
working hours of the administrator.

First, This study will benefit the proctor in charge of checking the examination. The
application aims to provide a mobile application that will reduce the user's working hours, speed
up the delivery of the students' examination results through a scanner, and show the
recommended course based on their scores.

This study will also be beneficial for the University's Admission Office, which will be the
one that handles the list of applicants and the information about the applicants who will take the
examination. This application can provide admission with a more convenient tool to sort the
information they gathered and has an archive wherein it can store the past activity of the students
who take the examination.

It will also benefit the University to accommodate all the students who want to take the
entrance examination. In addition, the University's entrance examination, which is the usual
traditional method, can turn into a modern approach since it's innovated using the application
instead of the OMR machine.

Lastly, the study may be helpful to future researchers that will conduct similar research on
other universities' mobile exam checking systems.

1.3. Objectives

The general objective of this study is to develop a Cloud-based Mobile Exam Checker for
the National University Admission Office.

Specifically, this study aims to fulfill the following:

1. To design a Cloud-based Mobile Exam Checker for the admission office to scan the
applicant's examination and show the result with the recommender system.
2. To gather the analysis from the number of enrollees per batch and overall enrollees, it
also included the item analysis for all the examinees.
3. To create a system's administrator module responsible for adding a user from the
Admission Office, it features some admin settings like activity chart, privileged users,
recent batch for the examination scanner, edit answer key and timer.
 4. To evaluate the system using the following criteria:
a) Functionality
b) Usability
c) Performance/Efficiency/Reliability
d) Compliance (Security and Data Privacy)

1.4. Scope and Delimitation

1.4.1 Scope

Mobile Application

The mobile application is separated into two (2) modules of users: the Administrator and
the Admission. The administrator section has access to all of the system's modules. It can also
inspect the previous applicant clusters via the archive. Most existing modules are for admission.
The login module and the dashboard module with the activity chart submodule, and for the import
data and the export module. It also has an archive module.

The system is developed for the National University Admission Office examination checker
that must use a smartphone, either Android or iOS, and an internet connection to check the
papers. The full-stack development will be done in the Flutter framework, and the cloud database
will be Python, which will be used for data export and Github for the code repository.

Furthermore, The system administrator will manage users with access to the program.

1.4.2 Delimitation

Mobile Application

The system will be used by National University - of Manila, and the target user will be the
Admission Office of the National University - of Manila and the proctors who are the ones to
access this system. The university will be the one who provides the paper that will be used in the
examination to make sure that the application can scan it properly because there's a pattern. In
addition, The developer will not cover the import of the list of applicants and the examination
checker. The recommender system will only show the courses that you've got the highest score
on a specific subject developer will not cover the import of the list of applicants and the
examination checker. The examination checker can only function with an internet connection.

References

[1] A. Carrion-Silva, C. Diaz-Nunez, and L. Andrade-Arenas, “Admission Exam Web Application

Prototype for Blind People at the University of Sciences and Humanities,” International Journal of
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10.14569/ijacsa.2020.0111246.
[2] J. Poláčková, “Relationship of Success in University Study and Admission Exam Results,”
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[3] B. Smith, “Traditional unseen, time-constrained written exams,” in 500 Tips on Assessment,
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[4] Al. D. Alrehaili, M. A. Siddiqui, and S. M Buhari, “Comparison Intelligent Electronic

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[5] N. P. Calaguas and P. M. P. Consunji, “Mobile Optical Mark Recognition Application as A

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[7] S. C. Loke, K. A. Kasmiran, and S. A. Haron, “A new method of mark detection for software-
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[8] M. Alomran and D. Chai, “Automated Scoring System for Multiple Choice Test with Quick
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[9] P. Tanna, N. Bhatt, and S. Patel, “An Innovative Approach for Learning and Evaluating
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[10] A. Bloomfield and J. F. Groves, “A tablet-based paper exam grading system,” ACM
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[11] Mrs. S. R N, “Online MCQs Examination System,” International Journal for Research in
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[12] C. Demir, “Testing Model with ‘Check Technique’ for Physics Education,” Universal Journal
of Educational Research, vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 1437–1441, Jun. 2016, doi:
10.13189/ujer.2016.040622.

[13] S. Merritt, Mastering Multiple Choice, 6th ed. The Brain Ranch, 2006.

[14] Smart Communications, Inc., “Mobile app that helps teachers check test papers is SWEEP
Awards runner-up,” Press Releases, Mar. 23, 2015. Accessed: May 23, 2022. [Online]. Available:
https://smart.com.ph/About/newsroom/press-releases/2015/03/23/mobile-app-that-helps-
teachers-check-test-papers-is-sweep-awards-runner-up

_______________________________
ROBEN JUANATAS
Thesis Adviser