The OMR reads the special mark made by pen or pencil, OMR focuses light on the page and detects the mark. OMR is also the process of reading information that people mark on surveys, tests, and other paper documents.
What is an OMR scanner?
OMR scanner is a hardware device/machine it has an optical device which is used to scan OMR sheets. The OMR scanner throws a light onto the filled form, the scanner then detects the contrasting areas of the light at certain positions on the form, some portion of the OMR detects black marks because less light is reflected from the area due to the filled area and unfilled area fully reflect the light, the contacting colors help to detects the answer filled by the participants.
In the initial days, it was mandatory to use OMR scanners as OMR technology was not highly developed but now with the emergence of OMR software, dependency on bulky scanners is not necessary.
What is OMR software?
OMR stands for Optical Mark Recognition and Optical Mark Reader. OMR Software process the data that comes from the scanner, it can process design, print, scan, read and evaluate all types of OMR sheets and forms. Generally, OMR software is compatible with normal ADF scanners, we don’t have to buy costly OMR scanners.
The traditional method of OMR Processing is time-consuming and costly. The OMR software makes the processing and analyzing of data hassle-free and easy.
OMR software captures data from OMR sheets through an image scanner and processes tests, surveys, checklists, and attendance sheets.
OMR solution is extensively used in the education sector, few of the use cases are:-
- Test, evaluation, and assessment scoring.
- Course scheduling.
- Grade reporting.
- Admissions & enrollments.
Application in other industry are:-
A). Job Applications & Member enrollments.
B). Time & Attendance and Payroll deductions.
C). Training and Course evaluations.
D). Customer, Employee, and Patient surveys.
E). Vehicle Registration & Incident reporting.
F). Patient Encounter & Health risk appraisals.
G). Elections.
Advantages of OMR
1. It's the easiest method to conduct and evaluate offline examinations and reporting.
2. Organizations can think of question patterns and develop their models.
3. Fast processing of results - It takes less than 5ms on average for testing.
4. You can analyze and process the results in multiple formats.
Key feature that we should look while selecting an OMR Software
Easy to customize- The question patterns keep on changing and various competitive exams have different patterns of question papers.
This Feature enables you to create a customized OMR template as per the question paper and examination pattern. As a user you should be able to design the OMR Sheet as per your requirement.
Ease of Use- Though most of the organization have IT team, but many times it’s used by people not so technically potent, we have to make sure that it is easy to use for everyone.
Scanner Independent- The scanner plays a critical role in OMR solutions, there are various kinds of scanner at different price points and capabilities.
It’s suggested that the OMR software be independent of the scanner so that you are not binded to any particular scanner and choose the scanner that best suits your requirement and budget.
Accuracy: As OMR are primarily used for examination evaluation, the accuracy of OMR software should be 100%, a small error can create distress among all the stakeholders.
Reporting & Analytics: Today reporting and Analytics is an integral part of any evaluation, with exam different stakeholder subject teachers, students, parents and the principal/Director of the Institute looks a different metric and reports, if the OMR software can give various report required by all the parties it will really make the job of examination & evaluation very easy.
