SiDEx-Omega is an augmented intelligence tool, designed to provide support in the application of tests (best suited for massive ones), either virtual or presence-based.
It was conceived in the Department of Mathematics (School of Mathematics back then) at Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Medellín (National University of Colombia at Medellín), by Professors Daniel Cabarcas Jaramillo (leading the architecture design) and Fernando A Morales (leading the coding process).
In its early versions (from 2015 to 2019), it was designed merely as a logistic tool for the reliable and efficient management of massive tests; making traceable each test, together with a set of inventories to support all the stages of human grading. When the covid-19 pandemic happened, the software evolved into an automated system, capable of generating mulptiple versions of the same test, aimed to isolate the students up to an acceptable level. This was necessary due to the virtual mode of evaluation imposed by the global confinement. After the pandemic, the system was easily migrated to presence-based tests, while keeping open the virtual mode.
In its latest (and most powerful) version, the system has been operating for six semesters on a row and managed more than 100K tests without reporting a single error.
SiDEx-Omega has made viable, the simultaneous evaluation for large courses (more than 2000 enrolled students), and or continuous evaluation pedagogical approach, in a fast, accurate and secure (against fraud) way, using little resources.
As for the grading, the system offers the possibility of fully automatic or human-supervised type (hybrid). For the latter, the human supervision only checks the student's approach to the problem, from a qualitative point of view, without delving into the calculations; task left for the computer. For any grading modality, the system needs closed form questions. This fact has pushed forward the creativity of teachers/lecturers in designing appropriated types of questions, but also breaking the paradigms previously imposed by the demands of open question tests, as well as the limitations, given the high consumption of human labor that the traditional way involves.
As a result, SiDEx-Omega is now an augmented intelligence system, where the human intelligence and creativity are the biggest assets for both parties: teachers' and students'. It offers unprecedented levels of security against fraud, flexibility in the creation of questions and opens up the door to other pedagogical possibilities yet to be explored.
Our network Quipu-Katari, is an initiative aimed to combine efforts, to permit high-quality evaluation options at the time of pushing beyond the current possibilities of SiDEx-Omega...
