ISSUE WITH OMR SHEETS

[Omeire Andrew]

Team,

I currently have approximately 60,000 unmarked OMR student answer sheets from an examination conducted in 2014. Unfortunately, the original OMR processing software used at the time is no longer available.

I intend to process and score these answer sheets using FormScanner OMR and would appreciate your technical guidance on how to proceed. Specifically, I would like to know the recommended procedure for recreating the OMR template and configuring the software to accurately read and evaluate the sheets.

 

For reference, I have attached a clean soft copy of the original OMR sheet layout.

I look forward to your expert advice on the appropriate setup and workflow.

 

[John Polasek]

Since I did not see any public answers, I'll take a shot at it;  unfortunately, Formscanner probably is not going to be able to help you unless you have a very accurate printer.  The software requires 4 corner markers in order to register a sheet.  essentially you would need to print a small "bullseye" in all 4 corners of the sheet and they would have to be in the same spot on every sheet you wish to process.  But IF you have a printer that can register the sheets accurately enough to put those corner markers there, it becomes relatively easy to create a template from an image of one of the marked sheets. in the define template pane, each block of answers becomes a "group" with the number of questions and number of answers specified, then you touch the center of the square for the first answer in the first question and the last answer in the last question and the software fills in all the rest of the locations of the responses.  

In your case, you would have to print a small circle beside the matric number, another above the blank square in the upper right, a third where the horizontal and vertical "ladder" marks meet, and the last overlapping the last horizontal "bar" is in the bottom right.

Then in template definition, the matric number would require 3 groups; a vertical (uncheck answers in rows)  2 question/10 responses, a second group with 6 vertical questions with 10 responses, and a third vertical group group with 3 questions and 26 responses... and follow the same pattern for each of the data blocks.  You will have to "translate" each of the a-z responses into the appropriate numeric, sex, semester,, program, etc but that can be automated by spreadsheet software.