Gaya, April 11: Magadh University is set to become the first varsity in the state to provide digital answer books.

Students appearing for the Part I, II and III examinations in April and May this year would take the exam in the new digital format.

A total of 2.4 lakh students will take the varsity exams this year. Magadh University vice-chancellor Arvind Kumar said the new format would lessen chances of errors in checking answer books the results would also be published faster — the time taken would be a maximum of one week after the evaluation.

Providing details about the digital answer book, Kumar told The Telegraph all the information filled up by the examinee, co-examiner and the head examiner would be digital. “Each answer book will have separate optical mark recognition (OMR) and barcode. The answer book would be of same nature as in banking or other competitive examinations, where information is provided in digits and the blocks are coloured with pencil or even by a pen.”

The vice-chancellor further said the answer book would be in three digital flaps. “The upper flap would be filled up by the student with roll number, college, course, subject, paper among others. After examination, all the answer books would be brought at the university headquarters. The upper flap would be scanned and preserved in the form of data in computer. The answer book would then be sent for evaluation where the remaining flaps would be filled up by co-examiner and the head examiner respectively,” he said.

After the evaluation, the co-examiner and the head examiner would fill up the marks obtained by the student and other related information in the other two digital flaps, the vice-chancellor said.

At a recent meeting at the state human resource development (HRD) department, the department secretary emphasised introduction of digital answer books across various universities in the state.

As an experiment, the digital answer books are being introduced in the degree Part II examinations beginning from April 15.

Also in the Part III and Part I examinations, beginning May 4 and last week of May respectively, students will be given the digital answer books.

Around 75,000 students from 44 constituent and other affiliated colleges under Magadh University are going to appear in the Part II exams, while nearly 1.15 lakh students would take the Part I examinations.

In Part III, about 50,000 students are going to appear in the examinations.