The first day of the end-semester exams for students of Anna University went without a hitch with students completing their paper within three hours and uploading them to the college website, said the teachers.
The university sent the question papers to the college principals who then uploaded it onto an online platform. Students logged in only to download the question paper.
After completing the exam, they had to scan and upload the answer papers to the college website. The candidates had to provide details such as their names, registration numbers, the exam paper code, date of examination and their signature on each page. Candidates were allowed to use a maximum of 15 sheets or 30 pages.
They had to physically courier/mail their answer sheets to the college as well. For forenoon session, it has to be done on the same day. For the afternoon session, the students are allowed till noon the next day.
“One hour is not enough to upload the answer papers particularly for students in remote areas,” said T. Saravanan, principal of New Prince Shri Bhavani College of Engineering, an institution near Tambaram. “For students who have exams in both sessions it becomes more difficult to upload the soft copy as well as send hard copy to the college,” he said.
A. Ramesh, principal of Chennai Institute of Technology in Kelambakkam, said students did not face any difficulty.
The question paper had three parts. Though two-thirds of the questions were direct from text books, some questions in Part C required students to don their thinking caps.
“Though open book exams are welcome as it is about application in engineering, we, as teachers, need to improve the standard of question papers. As much as 75% of the questions required just a reproduction of what they had learnt in the textbook. We had been conducting classes on Google classroom and trained them on the method at the third assessment a fortnight ago. We followed the same procedure and so students did not struggle,” he said.
The exams will continue till July 29 as the higher education has permitted students from even semester to retake the exams if they so wished. Also, students from all semesters are writing the exams at one go, making it a massive exercise.
