CHRIST UNIVERSITY/FILE IMAGE
The Karnataka government has advised CHRIST (Deemed-to-be-University) not to conduct online examinations for intermediate semesters. In a letter to CHRIST, the State Higher Education Department asked the institution to promote the students based on the grading system.
"It is brought to the notice of the government that the Christ (Deemed-to-be-University), Bangalore, is conducting intermediate semester/year examinations. You are therefore advised not to conduct examinations for intermediate semester/year and promote students based on grading system consisting of 50% marks for internal evaluation and 50% marks for the performance in the previous semester," the letter read.
Days back, the Karnataka government had announced that the intermediate semester students pursuing degree and post-graduation courses including engineering and diploma courses for the academic year 2019-2020 will be promoted without examinations. The order, however, stood valid only for government and private universities under the purview of the Higher Education Department. CHRIST, however, is a deemed-to-be-university, guided by UGC regulations and guidelines, which is also facing strong opposition from students. The UGC had asked the universities to complete the examinations by September 2020.
Meanwhile, CHRIST students have been opposing examinations that began this week. Putting forward concerns of students, India TV Digital, last week, spoke with CHRIST but the institution refused to budge. "As many as 94.8 percent students have registered for online examinations. We have to look at a broader perspective. We will 100 percent go ahead with the exams," the institution had said.
Now when the examinations have begun, complaints of students continue. Students say they are facing multiple technical issues while taking the online exams. Here is what students said.
I had to withdraw from exam due to technical glitches," one said. "Not able to upload scanned copy. Network issues leading to exam termination and Christ asking to take offline after August. People not able to login exam platforms. Power failures and much more.
I wasn't able to submit my answers properly. Some questions got skipped automatically.
Just wrote my first online exam and had two issues already. It is very stressful. Took me twenty minutes to just start the exam and more than 15 minutes to upload an answer.
I had to write the same exam 3 times. First because of technical glitch -- after 45 minutes they asked us to stop writing when I was half way through my paper. And then the 2nd time I wrote the exam in a wrong link for about 1 hour and after that the proctor says you are in the old link rather than saying the link is wrong. Then I had to write the exam again. So basically I wrote the same paper thrice. And while I was writing exam in the wrong link they wasted half of my time saying the link is old please join the new one. And I kept telling them it's the new link and other links are deactivated or I'm not authorised to take the test and when I asked them for help they stopped replying to my message. This was mental torcher, and super stressful. I got frustrated writing the same thing for 3 times. So I got frustrated and was not able to perform well.
