Enhancing the Administration of National Examinations using Mobile Cloud Technologies: A Case of Malawi National Examinations Board

Technological advances and the search for efficiency have catalyzed recently a migration from paper-andpencil based way of doing things to computer-based in education and training at all levels with its drivers being faster administration, processing and delivery of examination results, error free marking of test items and enhanced interactivity. This research paper aims at establishing the challenges currently faced by Malawi National Examinations Board (MANEB) when registering candidates for national examinations as well as disseminating examinations results. A Short Message Service/Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (SMS/USSD) based mobile application using cloud infrastructure is proposed to address the challenges. Data was collected from 80 respondents consisting of teachers, parents and students whose analytical results show that current MANEB business processes have a number of irregularities that subsequently result in candidates’ registration records missing or being incorrect as well as delayed access to examinations results by candidates. The proposed SMS/USSD application was tested and proved to be faster and more reliable than the traditional computer based approach that is currently being utilized. Keywords—National examinations; Short Message Service (SMS); Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD); candidate; cloud computing; Malawi National Examinations Board (MANEB)