DU students claim to face glitches in open book exam (Source: Getty/Thinkstock)
The first day of Delhi University’s (DU) mock online open-book exams (OBE) Saturday saw several complaints from hundreds of final year students including difficulty in registering, uploading of incorrect question paper and network problems among others, as #DUAgainstOnlineExams trended on Twitter and teachers said they were inundated with panic calls and messages from students.
Despite staunch opposition from students and teachers of all political and ideological shades, DU has decided to hold exams for its final year students – roughly around 2.15 lakh in strength, according to officials. While the mock exams will be held from July 4-8, the actual exams will begin on July 10. Students will have 15 sessions spread over five days to attempt the mock exams.
From Saturday morning itself, students said they had begun facing problems. Ishika Kumari, a final year student of Political Science from Rajdhani College she had tried to register for the mock exams from 9 AM to 12 PM but in vain.
“I started trying to attempt to login to the portal around 9 AM to register myself but have been unable to do so. It says ‘invalid, the record not found’. How can my record not be found when the admit card is already in my hand? These are mock exams so I am not that worried but if I can not register myself, how will I sit for my final exams?” she asked.
Students also alleged that the university uploaded incorrect question papers and the website wasn’t working. “First it took so much time to register, even after having done that, when we clicked on Hindi (Hons) paper link, it showed the B Com (Hons) question paper. Now the website has crashed around 12 PM,” said Utkarsh Singh, a student of Satyawati College.
Another student of Chemistry (Hons) at Rajdhani College too said the website showed the Physical Sciences paper instead, that too of the second-year course.
Several students also took to Twitter to bring attention to the problem. “This is the list of the subjects I get for my b. El. Ed exams but there is no b.El. Ed subject yar…. I think du may change the course of the students through this mock test (sic),” tweeted a student.
“So Du’s mock tests has started today as a trial for final exams as students tried giving it,sch a worst experience,frst my data wasn’t correct in their system, thn the question paper, which was out of syllabus,is it a joke?it gives so much anxiety for finals (sic),” another student tweeted.
However, Dean Examinations Vinay Gupta brushed off the allegations. Denying that there had been any major problems with registration, he said, “More than 30,000 students have registered in the first slot. There may be some glitches but the point of holding these mocks was to smoothen them out.”
He also denied allegations of subject papers being mixed up. “I’m sitting here with the question papers open in front of me. There may be an issue in one or two cases but otherwise everything is in place,” he said.
Gupta also denied that the website crashed. “When the exams are actually held, students will come to the portal in batches since exam timings are different. During mocks the load is much more and yet the website hasn’t crashed which says something about our preparedness,” he said.