Onscreen marking has been used Internationally over the past few years to allow written tasks to be marked by teachers. Multiple choice questions and short answer questions have been marked via scanning the test booklets and using Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) and Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) technologies to mark these student responses.
Now we have the capability to use Online Testing Software to allow students to use computers to sit for tests online, provide them random questions from an item bank, have the multiple choice and open short answer questions marked instantaneously. This solution saves money in printing, distribution, collection, scanning, data capture and allowing type written open ended scripts to be marked much more easily using electronic and manually based teacher marking methods. More importantly, it will save time in collating data and providing back results to schools and students in realistic timeframes. In order to use these technologies, there are many requirements that need to be in place to introduce the technology to allow simultaneous online testing for large numbers of students.