Open-book tests for DU 5th semester begin as glitches largely ironed out

New Delhi:

Open-book examinations

for students of the

fifth semester

at Delhi University (DU) began on Tuesday. This is the fifth phase of this format of exams being conducted by the university since the

Covid-19 pandemic

struck. The first

OBE

was held in August last year.

The first couple of times when OBE was implemented, being a new system, the students faced some issues like technical glitches while writing papers and submitting answer scripts. In the OBE held this June, around 350 students were also hauled for using “unfair means” while taking the examinations.

According to senior officials of the university, around 1.49 lakh students were warned of the consequences of resorting to unfair means before the exams.

“A system is in place to detect copying or use of unfair means in the examination. Over 350 students caught using unfair means in June had their paper or whole semester cancelled,” the communication from DU's examination department read.

While most of the technical glitches have now been ironed out, university professors remain uncertain over the learning patterns and assessment outcomes of this mode of examinations for students.

Many argue that the OBE has taken a toll on the “essence of examinations”, with students not having the proper approach.

Kumar Ashutosh, professor at the department of tourism at the College of Vocational Studies, said, “Usually students are worried before examinations are held, but now that factor has vanished as they know that they’ll be able to manage somehow. Recently, when we held a doubt-clearing class, only 25 out of 120 students attended. They are now relaxed knowing they can refer to their books at any point.”

Ashutosh, who teaches tourism management, further added that in the long run, students might also face difficulties during placements as their domain knowledge might not be up to the mark.

“We recently conducted campus placements, and only four students out of around 30 got selected. The feedback we got from the hiring company was that the candidates were falling short on basic domain knowledge. This might get reflected for other technical subjects as well once everything normalises,” Ashutosh explained.

Even in science streams, professors pointed out that successive batches of students are clearing practical examinations without having conducted a single experiment in the laboratory.

Sanjay Batra, professor of chemistry at the Sri Venkateswara College said, “How will students even conduct further research in future without carrying out any practical experiments?”


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