DU online open book exam begins, students complain about difficulty in uploading answer sheets

Delhi University's online open book examinations for final-year undergraduate courses began on Monday with many students complaining about receiving two question papers and difficulty in uploading answer sheets.

The exams began at 7.30 am and are being held in three shifts.

Zubair Khan, a student of School of Open Learning (SOL), said, "I had my Hindi exam today according to the date-sheet. When I opened the portal for downloading my question paper, I found that two question papers were uploaded -- one of Hindi and another of the paper scheduled for August 13. I sent mails to the SOL but there was no response. I consulted a professor who advised me to attempt the paper scheduled for today."

Another student, Deepak Gupta, said he was not sure if he could successfully upload his answer sheets before the scheduled time of 11.30 am.

"It was 11.28 am by the time I finished creating PDF files (of my answer sheets). I tried to upload them but they didn't get uploaded. I have mailed them to the designated ID but do not know whether they will be accepted," he added.

A student of B.Sc Physical Science, who did not wish to be identified, said that the paper was quite tough and in a situation, when classes could not happen properly, it was unjust for students.

Abha Dev Habib, a professor of Miranda House, said most of the students in her class did not get a confirmation mail after uploading their answer sheets. The students then mailed to the varsity website their answer sheets and got an auto-generated response.

Pankaj Garg, a professor of Rajdhani College, said that the main problem that students faced was in uploading the answer sheets.

"They faced problems in uploading PDF files and some of the students said that if they could upload answers to two questions, they could not upload the answers to the third. They were not sure whether their answer sheets were uploaded. The college received answer sheets on email post 11.30 am, which was the scheduled time," he said.

Garg also said that teachers will face issues while evaluating answer sheets.

"There is a fair possibility that there would be swapping of the pages while scanning and uploading, this would disturb the sequence.... Teachers have to be very very careful in connecting all those pages which belongs to the same question," he added.

While scanning some pages may be blurred and it would be difficult to read them carefully and it would be more difficult to connect to the next page and hence the continuity of the answer would be lost, he added.

For teachers, the most challenging point would be marking of pages, it seems that evaluation would take much longer, he stressed.

The exams have been postponed several times. The Delhi University Teachers' Association had been demanding that the exams be scrapped and the students evaluated on the basis of previous performances and an internal assessment.

The Delhi High Court gave its nod to the university to conduct the exams.