Bowing to pressure from students, the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) has postponed semester-end examinations. It will now conduct them only after students – most of whom are taking online classes – return to colleges for lectures, or ‘contact classes’.
Speaking to The Hindu , Vice Chancellor Karisiddappa said, “We want to make it very clear to students that we will conduct one month of classes and only then hold the examination. If colleges are allowed to reopen in July, then the examination will be conducted in August,” he said.
This will be applicable to first, second and third-year students.
Final-year students will attend contact classes for one week to 10 days soon after which they will have to appear for their exams.
Although the university had initially stated that online classes were accessible by 70% of their students, students organisations had refuted this.
All India Democratic Students’ Organisation (AIDSO) Karnataka State Committee, carried out a survey among 4,000 engineering students from 225 engineering colleges across 29 districts in the State. It revealed that only 22.8% students were able to access online classes. Around 97.1% of those surveyed had stated that they were not ready to take the examination based on the online classes.
More than 90% said that they were not able to grasp concepts during online lectures. Many could not attend classes due to poor network connectivity, erratic power supply as well as socio economic constraints.
The overall consensus was that online lectures were not helpful. As a way of protest, engineering students had launched online campaigns stating that they would be unable to appear for the examination owing to inadequate preparation. As part of the campaign, they attempted to reach out to the Prime Minister as well as Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa demanding that semester examinations be cancelled and students be allowed to attend classes for the next academic year.
According to the VTU's calender of events, the academic year is supposed to end on June 1. The semester end examinations were supposed to be held in June and the results were expected to be announced in July.
