BANGALORE: The Academic Council of Bangalore University on Monday approved a combination of classical and objective type examination for alternate semester examinations in its undergraduate programmes.

The university will seek legal opinion on the proposed changes and then decide on implementing them from the second semester of this academic year or the opening semester of the academic year 2007-08.

According to the proposed changes, for the first, third and fifth semester examination, the existing classical type of question papers (comprehensive, essay and précis type of questions) will continue. For the even semesters of second, fourth and sixth, objective type question papers will be introduced, except for the languages. The classical type question paper will continue for language papers of the second semester.

The objective type question paper will be introduced only for theory, with a marks component of 60 in Science and 90 in Arts. The practical component of 30 marks for Science subjects and Internal Assessment component of 10 marks for both Science and Arts subjects will remain unchanged.

There will be no negative valuation for the objective type question papers, wherever introduced. Distance education courses will remain under the classical mode, as these students face only three annual examinations.

The new arrangement will not apply to B.Ed., B.P.Ed., Law, Engineering and Rehabilitative courses where other statutory / governing bodies are involved in the matters of curriculum and examination. Vice-Chancellor H.A. Ranganath told the Council that objective type question papers would mean speedy and direct tabulation by OMR sheets without the need for valuers. Besides, since second, fourth and sixth semesters would come under the objective type and there are no languages in the sixth, the results could be announced within 15 days.

That way, students aspiring for higher educational opportunities in India and abroad would not be put to undue hardships because of delayed results, he explained. Multiple choice questions had another big advantage: graduating students would be better equipped to face the objective type preliminary examinations conducted by various academic and recruitment bodies. With many Council members raising apprehensions about the objective-type question papers, the Vice-Chancellor agreed to convene a meeting of principals of all affiliated colleges and hold workshops by every Board of Studies to build up a bank of objective type questions.

With the State Government not ready to leave core subject examinations to colleges, the university will continue to conduct exams for all the six semesters.

The Government Task Force headed by M.R. Srinivasan had recommended that the examinations of first, second, third and fourth semesters of all undergraduate degree courses could be conducted by the respective colleges and the fifth and sixth semester exams by the university.

Had they been approved, the recommendations would have reduced the university's burden of conducting three semester examinations once in every six months. As Mr. Ranganath said, the university had to evaluate about 11 lakh answer scripts in a month, without sufficient teachers.

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