I was asked by a non-profit for which I had volunteered in the past, to provide mass testing service for more than 2000 school students. The non-profit working in educational field was assigned the task to asses public schools run by my city’s Municipal Corporation (City Council). They needed a simple yet easier and affordable solution which can provide testing solution to assess about 2000 students.
I initially proposed internet based testing using one of the many available Open Source learning management systems. However, absence of adequate computing facility for all the students to appear at once, prompted me to find other solutions. With much research, I finally settled on the idea of conducting an OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) based examination.
I created the OMR based solution using several Open Source and Proprietary tools, and successfully conducted the examination. I also added several statistical analysis tools to asses the data in various ways, so that City Council would be better equipped with using the data for improvement. The exam was successfully conducted. I was able to provide the service in less than third of the cost charged by other commercial corporations who provide similar services.