Delhi University Open Book Exam: Students flooded social media with tweets requesting to cancel the open book exam.
Delhi University Open Book Exam
In view of the prevailing situation of Covid-19 Pandemic, DU has announced to take Open Book Exam (OBE) which is scheduled from July 1, 2020. However, students flooded social media with tweets requesting to cancel the open book exam. Vinay Gupta, Dean of the examination has informed through the notice that the examinations cannot be conducted in the conventional mode as per the existing government norms of maintaining social distancing & safety and for the health of the students.
The matter was intensively deliberated in the bodies i.e. Task Force constituted by the University in view of COVID 19 and the Working Group on Examinations, based on which it has been decided that as a one-time measure, Open Book Examinations (OBE) shall be adopted as an alternative mode of examination for the final semester/term/year students for the academic session 2019-2020 for grading so that students of the university can take their career forward”.
As per media reports, students of the school of open learning (SOL), University of Delhi have alleged the SOL website crashed on Thursday 25 June 2020 when they logged on to try and download their admit cards and question papers for internal assessment. This comes less than a week before Delhi University holds centralised online open-book exams (OBE) for its final year students.
Meanwhile, 25 Academic Council (AC) and Executive Council (EC) members wrote to the DU Vice-Chancellor to cancel the OBE”.
Students are in mental stress because of OBE. They are treating that we are under severe mental pressure and it will not be surprising if we will hang our self and decide which is this exam is becoming more and more stressful for us. Few students have also created and claimed that they went home for Holi celebration and after that Corona hits in our country. Unaware of lockdown, students don’t have hard copies, books and reference material with them to prepare for the exam in this situation.
They have requested Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank who is the union cabinet minister for human resource development, former chief minister of Uttarakhand and MP Haridwar Lok Sabha constituency. He tweeted,” I have advised the @ugc_india to revisit the guidelines issued earlier for intermediate and terminal semester examinations and academic calendar. The foundation for revisited guidelines Shelby health and safety students, teachers and staff.
Apart from scribes, students without disabilities in Jammu and Kashmir and in Assam se that connectivity is a major hurdle for them. To this, the University has said that students who are facing problems regarding the access of internet all connectivity issues can write exams at a common service centre across the country.
One of the students said that they are facing more problems than this by worrying and complaining that,” we have continuous rainfall from four to five days, from dusk till dawn which has flooded the area and limits the mobility”. She said.
After looking at all this situation, University is offering a second chance for the exam to those who are unable to set in the first chance. But, students are demanding to evaluate them on the basis of their previous semester. Academic Council and Executive Council members have also requested the DU Vice-Chancellor to cancel the OBE.
