Despite facing opposition from several stakeholders, Delhi University pushed ahead with the conduct of at-home open book examinations (OBE) for its final-semester students with the release of guidelines for postgraduate students on Monday. Guidelines for undergraduates were issued last week.
The university asserted that the examination would require limited Internet connection and hardware for the download of question papers and the upload of answer sheets.
Students will be given a total of three hours to attempt the examination. While two hours have been granted to answer four out of six questions, to be prepared by individual departments, one additional hour has been allotted for technical aspects such as downloading and uploading. Persons with disabilities, among whom visually impaired students have been particularly raised concerns about such exams, will be given five hours to attempt the exam.
Common Service Centres
With regard to issues of weak Internet connection available with students of Jammu and Kashmir on account of the communication blockade there and those in other parts of the country, the university announced that it has tied up with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) to allow access to their Common Service Centres (CSC). There are about two lakh centres situated at gram panchayats across the country, DU said, where students may download, print out, scan and upload their question and answer papers using the centres resources.
The nearest such centre may be located from the MEITY’s website. For students who aren’t able to attend the exam despite this, DU said that they will be given a chance to attend conventional examinations when the situation returns to normal.
For those who are able to attend the exam, the question paper will have to be downloaded from a portal developed by the university. However, in case students face issues in downloading, the question paper may be emailed or sent via WhatsApp by the department. The university’s website has been often criticised for crashing at times of heavy traffic such as during admissions and the filling up of online forms.
Similarly answers, which will have to be written on plain A4 papers, may also be emailed to the department in case of issues faced however this may be done only in case of emergencies, the notification stated. The university also stated that mock tests would be conducted a week prior to the commencement of examinations in order to help practice the tools of accessing the examination.
Guidelines for examinations of intermediate semester students including those in NCWEB and SOL will be issued later this week.