BANGALORE: Former Vice-Chancellor of Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) Dr K Balaveera Reddy has exposed several myths related to the digital evaluation system (DES) that was announced by present VC Prof H Maheshappa less than a month ago in a letter written to Governor and Chancellor H R Bhardwaj.
Dr Reddy said, “In DES it is stated that the digitized answer booklets can be sent to colleges or homes and the examiner can value the scripts from their college or from home. Then where is the confidentiality? It may be recalled that in earlier days, the answer scripts were sent to the residences/ colleges of the examiners but it was later cancelled and the valuation was centralised.”
He added that VTU could not hold the valuator responsible due to the absence of any signature of the examiner on the answer scripts.
Dispelling claims of the DES being tamper-proof, the former VC said, “When the answer scripts are cut at the stitched side, there are complaints that the question numbers are cut off and therefore the examiner may miss awarding marks for a question. The scanned answer scripts are transmitted on public internet and are amenable for hacking by criminal hackers. Then, where is the transparency and security for the data sent to valuation centre from the scanning centre? Hence, DES is not tamper proof and transparent.”
Also, Dr Reddy calls it ‘humanly impossible’ for the DES to produce results in three days as claimed by Prof Maheshappa. “It is claimed by the VC that a faculty will value about 50 scripts per day. This amounts to reading about 2,200 pages per day on a computer screen. Even if it takes only 15 sec per page, for 2,200 pages it takes approximately 9 hours of continuous work without break. It is humanly impossible for a sincere examiner to value 50 answer scripts on a computer in a day.”
“It is necessary to investigate the utility of the DES, violation of the VTU Statutes and misuse of the University funds by an External Expert Committee,” he requested the Governor.