NU exams Day 4: Many engg students unable to submit papers online

Nagpur: Nagpur University seems back to square one on the Day 4 of its final year examinations as hundreds of students, particularly those belonging to engineering faculty, failed to submit their papers in time due to technical snag in the app.
On Monday, too, chaos and confusion ruled, just like the first two days of online MCQ tests. On Thursday and Friday, over 3,000 failed to give their papers, while on Monday, thousands complained their papers were not accepted by ‘Pariksha App’. Only on Saturday, the university could conduct exams with only minor glitches.
Though NU assured re-exam for those who missed it on the first two days due to snags, on Monday none of its officials were available to provide any assurance. Vice-chancellor Subhash Chaudhari did not take TOI’s calls and even Board of Examinations and Evaluation (BOEE) director Prafulla Sable had his phones switched off. Students frantically called NU helplines and officials but got no response from either.
This debacle has raised a big question mark on NU claim of having developed the first ever app in the state for conducting online exams. Former and current NU statutory members attacked software firm Promarc, that claims to have developed the app for NU for free. They demanded company’s ouster from all NU projects.
Even mayor Sandip Joshi, who’s NU Senate member, flayed administration for playing with students’ future and advised its top brass to study pattern adopted by YCMOU that had successfully conducted online exams of over one lakh students so far.
A senior Promarc official admitted examinees were facing problems with question papers not being submitted into the server due to big load of files. Till evening, they had not received papers of about 900 students out of 11,091 who appeared.
“Today we started the exam 15 minutes earlier than normal time. However, the students knew it through media reports and they logged in at the same time. We faced problems only during engineering faculty papers where over 11,000 students appeared. Still, our server didn’t crash. It was due to poor connectivity of service providers and also quality of handsets that paper submission was delayed,” he said.
Even as paper was completed by 4.30pm, NU server continued to receive papers till 8.30pm. “Today, there was a big quantum of over 11,000 examinees. Over 55,000 photographs were to be uploaded due to proctoring software that keeps track of all movements. Obviously, it takes time, as it depends on connectivity speed and configuration of handsets. We assure the students that their papers have been submitted, even if they received an error message. They shouldn’t panic,” he added.
NU claims to be the only university in Maharashtra using proctoring software, which slows down the mobile, as it records all sounds and photographs on a real time basis and detects suspicious activities.
# Students registered & appeared in exams on Monday:
Faculty ----------------- Registered ------------- Appeared
Commerce ---------- 2,505--------------------- 2,459
Humanities ---------- 186--------------------- 180
Science-- ---------- 1,744 --------------------- 1,702
Engineering ---------- 11,289--------------------- 11,091