The Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) on Monday wrote to the University Grants Commission (UGC) seeking immediate cancellation of online open book examinations (OBE), which are scheduled to begin from July 10.
Following complaints from hundreds of students regarding glitches faced in the ongoing mock online OBE, the teachers’ body wrote to the UGC seeking “timely intervention” in the matter.
“We hope that your timely intervention will prevent DU from going ahead with this fault-ridden proposal and creating unwarranted stress and trauma for students. Any further delay has the potential to destroy lives and careers of several lakhs of students,” the letter read.
“The entire [mock OBE] process was marred by technical glitches and faults which have been widely reported. This shows the complete unpreparedness of the university to conduct these exams on such a large scale and has given rise to severe anxiety for thousands of students,” the letter further said.
Amid strong reservations from students and teachers, the university had announced that OBE will be held for terminal-year students this year due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The mock exams began from July 4 and over the weekend hundreds of students complained of not being able to access the portal, with issues ranging from problems with registrations to incorrect question papers.
In its response to the issues raised by students, the university has issued a clarification.
DU said students might have faced difficulties in downloading the question paper due to the fact that they were searching for specific question papers or searching with titles of subjects or courses, which were not fed into the system.
“Students are advised that this is purely a mock test and any sample paper may be used for writing and they can take any paper of their choice. Students may be assured that on the day of examination, all question papers shall be available as mentioned in the datesheet,” the response read.
As for complaints pertaining to students not being able to register, the university said that it was due to “unmatched data as filled out by students”.
DU also clarified that for uploading answer sheets, students can upload one file of 5 MB, and that multiple files can be uploaded.
“All students belonging to the PWD category who have registered for OBE mode have been mapped in the system and the time of five hours has been kept for them to log out for examinations,” the response added.
Insensitive order
Meanwhile, DUTA has termed an MHA notification permitting the conduct of examinations in universities as “insensitive”.
DUTA president Rajib Ray said, “Contradictory MHA orders in a gap of few days, even as there is no change in the COVID-19 graph, shows that mental and physical well-being of lakh of students have been compromised.”
“There is no answer yet on how non-terminal-year students can get degrees without exam for a semester while final year students’ degrees become less valuable without exam every semester. Is an exam that has no mechanism at all to monitor malpractice an acceptable basis for award of degrees?” Mr. Ray said.