CHENNAI: The Higher Education department has issued guidelines to universities and colleges in the State to make proper arrangements for the upcoming online semester examinations which will be conducted between February 1 and February 20.
Colleges have been directed to provide internet facilities for students who don’t have access to it. The exams will be conducted through WhatsApp and e-mail. As per the notification, college principals have to appoint nodal officers for each of the subjects. The officers will form WhatsApp groups wherein students will have to acknowledge after downloading the question paper; this way, the number of students appearing for the exam will be ascertained.
The students will have to scan and upload their written answer scripts on e-mail or send them through WhatsApp to the concerned teachers within an hour of completion of the exam; failing to do either, they will be marked as absent. Along with sending the answer scripts online, the students are required to send them through post or courier to their institution within a week, or hand over them in person to the colleges concerned.
The department has now granted one week’s time to send the answer scripts as rural students have been complaining that they face difficulty in uploading answer sheets and posting the answer scripts immediately after the exam. “Based on the information on the WhatsApp group, the nodal officers will enter the absentees in the university website through Examination Registration system,” said the notification.
Several teachers, however, still feel the exams are going to do no good for the students. “They will happily open their books and copy. There is no use of such exams,” said the principal of a government arts college in Chennai.