Improvements for a Sustainable Distance Education with the New UNED On-Site System for Virtualization of Exams: Malaga Region (Andalucía, Spain) as Case Study

UNED University provides distance higher education to a high number of students, and, consequently, has to perform a large number of tests (ca. 780,000 exams in 2013). UNED has performed several improvements in the way these exams are made during the last year, with the implementation of a new protocol for evaluation procedures that optimizes transportation through on-site digitalization of exams being the most important. This new method is called virtual attaché return case. The virtual attaché return procedures optimize security and transportation costs through on-site digitalization of exams, bringing a new logistics paradigm. The great value is that exams are directly sent to evaluators in a digital manner. This speeds up evaluation procedures for our Bachelor and Master Degree students. The original documents remain thus safely stored at the Associated Centers. In the case of the Malaga region, two improvements have been performed in 2014 in order to save energy and money for the University and also to more than 6,000 students. Until this year, the exams of the entire region were performed in Malaga city, but in 2014, Marbella has been also habilitated as an examination center. By this manner, the students that are resident in the Marbella area (ca. 1,500) do not have to go to Malaga to complete their exams, saving time and money (Marbella is around 60 km far from Malaga). The other improvement is related to the use of the virtual attaché return, for the first time, in the Andalucia region. An economic study of the time, energy and money saved with these two innovations during the first exams celebrated in January–February 2014 is analyzed in the present paper.