Perception of Students in Online Test in Engineering: Case of NMIMS University

Abstract

Integrating technology in education can be advantageous for universities and help engage better results for students. An understanding of students' perceptions will help identify obstacles and promote online tests at universities, it is, therefore, important to understand from students about their perspective for the online test and paper-based test. To achieve this goal, a 22-item questionnaire was prepared to understand and study the perception of online and paper-based test for university students and was administered to 476 students (379 were male, 96 were female, and 1 were other). The set of research questions comprises - demographic information, students' perception for the paper-based test, and students' perception for the online test were analyzed through statistical measures like one-way ANOVA, and t-Test with p-value. After careful analysis through various responses across various dimensions, the results of the study indicated that the difference between the perception of students on the paper-based test and the online test is statistically significant. Overall, students' perception of the online test was positive with the mean trend of 3.42. In India, the online test doesn't have a positive approach, universities refrain from online test and continue to make a traditional approach which does not achieve the targeted result. The major concerns highlighted were the technological incompetence of students and teachers alongside distrust in the technology infrastructure. Using our study, universities can identify obstacles, and prepare an appropriate result-driven plan of action for implementing the online test and make easy migration from paper-based test to online test.