On-line Exams: Can Indian Universities Overcome Teething Points?

Final Monday, Sunaina, who’s in her remaining 12 months for the Grasp of Arts programme in Social Sciences on the College of Delhi, was sitting in entrance of her laptop to seem for her on-line examination. The query paper for the examination was imagined to be uploaded on the college’s devoted portal at 9:30am. Nonetheless, the portal at the moment confirmed a message saying, “no examination scheduled for in the present day.” Sunaina was in the end in a position to obtain the query paper solely by a few of her mates over WhatsApp at 9:45am. Although she was uncertain of its authenticity, she started writing her solutions since she was dropping on time.

“By 10:45am, the college emailed us methods to obtain the query paper, nevertheless it was all trouble at this level,” Sunaina stated.

After finishing her examination, she got here again to the college’s portal to add her reply sheet. But it surely wasn’t prepared to just accept reply sheets from college students even till 1:30pm — the time at which college students had been required to submit their solutions. She then ended up emailing her reply sheet to one of many given electronic mail addresses.

Sunaina is not the one pupil of the Delhi University who confronted points whereas showing for its on-line exams, which the college calls Open Ebook Examination (OBE). Actually, there are a whole lot of scholars complaining about comparable technical issues on social media. Devices 360 spoke to many of those college students, whose names have been modified to guard their privateness. These tales spotlight the distinctive challenges college students are going through in 2020, and the way India is struggling to deal with the problem of a totally digital schooling system.

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Delhi College is the primary public establishment within the nation to begin internet hosting on-line exams in the course of the coronavirus outbreak, although a couple of different Indian universities are additionally planning to embrace an identical mannequin within the coming days. It received a nod from the Delhi Excessive Courtroom earlier this month to start with the OBE mode for final-year college students after cancelling common exams as a result of pandemic and suspending on-line exams scheduled earlier for July 10. The primary examination was performed on August 10 that resulted in a number of technical glitches.

Crashing of the college’s portal was one of many greatest points reported by a number of college students and fogeys. Nonetheless, many different issues had been additionally discovered within the mannequin that would have emerged as a reference for different establishments and universities within the nation.

 

Web sites-related issues aren’t new for Indian college students as comparable points are fairly frequent when the outcomes of secondary and senior secondary college exams are being introduced within the nation. Simply in July, the web site of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) was affected by a technical issue that made college students await hours to see their outcomes on-line.

M Sasikumar, Govt Director on the Centre for Improvement of Superior Computing (C-DAC), stated that whereas it is troublesome to provide a precise reply of what induced an outage, load-bearing capability was the extra seemingly trigger in case of the Delhi College or CBSE websites.

C-DAC, a analysis and growth (R&D) organisation of the Ministry of Electronics and Data Know-how, conducts varied on-line coaching programmes and exams within the nation. It is usually a scientific physique that helps the federal government develop within the fields of blockchain and construct new fashions of e-learning.

“If auto-elasticity is inbuilt, the system might add extra servers because the load builds up,” Sasikumar informed Devices 360. “Many web sites depend on handbook intervention right here, although. Individuals additionally tend to cluster entry on particular factors, as an example, inside minutes of outcomes being introduced or on the final day of utility for an examination.”

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Having stated that, other than the crashing of the web site and points associated to uploads on Delhi College’s portal, even the e-mail tackle of its grievance cell ([email protected]) was discovered to be unavailable on the preliminary stage. This was additionally pointed out by the Delhi Excessive Courtroom in one among its current orders. A pupil additionally shared a screenshot displaying the unavailability of the e-mail tackle with Devices 360.

Delhi College’s grievance cell electronic mail ID wasn’t working initially

 

Some college students showing for the Trendy Political Philosophy examination on Friday complained that they had been initially given a query paper that was made for the mock take a look at and was 45 minutes after the examination was began. The college even requested the scholars to alter the distinctive paper code (UPC) on their reply sheet as per the brand new query paper supplied to them. Nonetheless, after the difficulty raised by some professors, it was later determined to retain the prevailing UPC.

“The college performed 4 phases of mock OBE to coach the scholars and to enhance their system,” Advocate Akash Sinha, who’s a counsel for the scholars submitting a petition in opposition to the OBE mannequin within the Delhi Excessive Courtroom, informed Devices 360. “Nonetheless, every subsequent part was a good worse outing for the college.”

Sinha additionally identified that the present mannequin concerned severe problems with privateness, dealing with of delicate info, and storage and sorting of reply sheets of the scholars, that are being collected through each the college’s portal in addition to by emails.

“It should be a nightmare to type and retailer related info as possibilities of redundancy is extraordinarily excessive as a result of some college students are importing solutions each on the portal in addition to by the given electronic mail addresses,” he underlined.

However nonetheless, Delhi College released a press assertion final week that claimed the preliminary success of its on-line examination mannequin.

“Cumulative information reveals that the variety of papers tried by common, NCWEB (Non-Collegiate Girls’s Schooling Board) college students, and SOL (Faculty of Open Studying) is 1,10,085 and 1,54,142, respectively on the OBE portal. The reply scripts submitted by common, NCWEB college students, and SOL college students are 82,496 and 1,08,846, respectively on the OBE portal,” the assertion stated.

Widening schooling inequality
Since Delhi College is a famend public central college within the nation, numerous college students come right here from completely different states and areas and belong to distinct social lessons. Thus, the mannequin of conducting on-line exams is not possible for all college students.

Azam is a type of college students. He moved again from the college’s hostel to his house in Kashmir final month after his remaining 12 months exams had been postponed as a result of pandemic. However attributable to solely having 2G connectivity within the area, he is not in a position to rapidly entry his emails or WhatsApp messages.

“The 2G networks right here has made it fairly troublesome for college kids like me to seem for on-line exams — regardless of whether or not the college’s portal is working or not,” he informed Devices 360.

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Much like Azam, Debolina, who’s in her remaining 12 months of the Grasp of Laptop Functions (MCA) programme at Delhi College, went to her house in Meghalaya after seeing the postponement of her exams. Nonetheless, she’s going through lack of electrical energy and Web connectivity in her hilly state and discovering it fairly troublesome to seem in on-line exams from her house.

“I really feel defeated as a pupil not as a result of we now have to do the OBE examination however as a result of once we do have an issue associated to it, the college isn’t keen to both assist us by the method or categorical its issues in the direction of its college students,” she stated.

The college engaged with the Common Service Centres (CSC) scheme by the Minister of Data and Know-how (MeitY) to assist college students like Azam and Debolina. Nonetheless, some college students stated some CSCs within the nation weren’t even notified concerning the exams.

“I personally referred to as up CSCs close to my space [in Delhi] to see in the event that they had been notified by the college, however the declare of CSCs turned false as most CSCs had been closed and none of them had acquired any official notification,” stated Arpita, one of many college students pursuing Financial Honours from Delhi College.

These weren’t the one issues of entry both. Sumit Kataria, the President of Delhi division of left-wing pupil organisation College students’ Federation of India (SFI) informed Devices 360 that in some circumstances, visually impaired college students did not obtain a scribe — an individual that helps visually challenged college students write their exams. The college, nonetheless, said in a notification that it had made a provision for requesting a scribe.

“It is not potential to conduct exams on-line in any state of affairs as the present mannequin of on-line examination entails a number of technical issues,” stated Kataria.

Delhi College’s Assistant Professor Meenakshi Chawla informed Devices 360 that she and her fellow professors had been serving to college students in any respect ranges. “With the expertise, with which we weren’t very snug, we try to be snug as a result of at this second, we have no different choices,” she stated.

Nonetheless, some college students disagreed with what the professor stated and famous that the college and academics did not care about college students and their future.

“As a result of they only need to show that they will conduct exams even in these disturbing occasions, they do not care what a pupil is studying and the place the scholar is at present,” stated Prabhjeet, a remaining 12 months pupil of the college.

A questionnaire despatched to the Vice Chancellor and Professional Vice Chancellor of Delhi College did not elicit a response on the time of submitting this story.

Consultants see the continued points with on-line exams performed by Delhi College as a studying for all universities in India. Nonetheless, on the similar time, some consider that the schools within the nation ought to defer the exams altogether and promote college students on the idea of their current efficiency. This mannequin exists in Delhi College as properly — however not in case of scholars who’re of their remaining 12 months.

Director of the Centre for Fairness Research Harsh Mander stated that evaluation-wise, our schooling system should not permit one group of scholars to maneuver ahead and the others to be left behind — regardless of technical challenges and technological issues.

“Our schooling system in any case mirrored monumental inequality,” he informed Devices 360. “However what this second has performed is it has even introduced an extreme hole to that inequality.”

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