Restructuring of online exam guidelines to cater to every student's needs.

The following rules have come with the officail university circular, and we need clarification about them - 

We are expected to have an uninterrupted internet and electricity connection. However please note the following    

    1.a) Electricity cuts and internet shutdowns are impossible to be predicted and be prepared for. An electricity backup for laptops is not possible.     

    1.b) It is impossible to confirm a constant internet speed of 1ms/s throughout the examination by students.                       

    1.c) unexpected and unavoidable circumstances may cause a student to change their device of choice. What provisions are made for such cases ? Would the student be held back from completing the semester due to such circumstances?

2. The rules “ only one question will appear at one time “ , “you will get only one chance for a question, so choose wisely” and “ you will not be allowed to revisit that question once appeared and answered” puts us students at an unfair disadvantage. With the current format we lose the opportunity to answer the questions we know first and attempt the rest later as per our convenience; making it impossible for us to manage our time optimally or score in the exam. This level of stringency is unwarranted.

3. The circular does not mention anything related to the total number of MCQs in the paper and weightage of each question in the paper (1 mark or 2 marks). Again, making it difficult to be mentally equip ourselves to utilise time optimally. Not to mention, the number of MCQs are disproportionate smaller to the amount of syllabus expected by each student to cover.

3. The students appearing for ATKT exams have clashing exam time tables hence, appearing for two exams in a day. This is inconvenient and even a burden on the student especially with such a vast syllabus in each subject. 

4. Many students have old variants of devices, and may not be able to have the latest web browser on mobile. similarly, operating systems for computers. 

5. Availability of webcam and front facing cameras may seem ubiquitous in the 21st century but requires advanced and expensive devices that cannot be owned by each student.

5. Our subjects, like many others, have calculations and rough work which aren't allowed to be done on a rough paper during the examination and will be viewed as cheating. 

Its our request to higher authorities to look into the mental health conditions of students during this pandemic. Everyone has bigger problems to deal with, be it financial issues or family problems (health, loss of life etc.). 

We want these rules to be either modified or we want to be graded on the basis of an average of the previous semesters or an online subjective test/open book test can be conducted to avoid the above confusion. 

Final year students, MSU, Baroda    Contact the author of the petition