University of Mumbai (File photo)
Even as results get delayed, teachers on assessment duty ended up wasting over two hours Monday as they could not log in to the server for the onscreen evaluation of Mumbai university final-year papers. The first of the four non-instructional days declared by the university, thus, did not go off to an efficient start.
Teachers said the server was down because of overcrowding as many of them tried logging in at the same time. Deepak Wasave, the officiating Director of Board of Examination, said the server was down between 10 am and 11.40 am but the process continued smoothly thereafter.
The server problem was encountered despite a government-appointed assessing officer issuing a notice to the service provider to fix glitches in the assessment process. On Saturday, officer on special duty to MU, Vinayak Dalvie, had written to the provider, asking that all technical problems be resolved quickly.
On Friday, the university had declared four non-instructional days — when regular classes remained suspended— for teachers so they could concentrate on assessment. On the first day, 5,023 teachers reported to assess answer sheets, the highest so far. Dalvie said 95,537 papers had been assessed on Monday. Wasave said: “We request the teachers to continue with their efforts so that we can meet the July 31 deadline set by the governor.”
In a bid to provide incentives to the teachers, the university has decided to increase the remuneration offered, said Wasave. While earlier, teachers were paid between Rs 8 and Rs 10 per paper, they will now get between Rs 16 and Rs 20. “We will also clear the pending payments to the assessors within three working days,” Wasave added.
