‘Special measures’ to ensure DU internal exams finish before semester tests

New Delhi: To ensure that internal assessment and practicals for the academic session 2020-21 are conducted before the semester theory exams scheduled in December,

New Delhi: To ensure that internal assessment and practicals for the academic session 2020-21 are conducted before the semester theory exams scheduled in December, Delhi University’s exam department on Saturday asked principals, deans and heads of department to adhere to “special measures” devised for the same.

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The notice lists guidelines for the internal assessment and practicals of the current second- and third-year students. The undergraduate admissions are currently underway and the session for first-years is slated to begin November 18.

Manoj Khanna, principal of Ramjas College, said, “As per the academic calendar released by University Grants Commission (UGC), the classes for first-year students will begin on November 18 and their semester exams will be conducted in March. Since the remaining exams (for other years) are being conducted in December, they (university) will chalk out a plan for the assessment of first-year students accordingly.”

“Instead of the three existing components of internal assessment viz Class Tests, Tutorial Test, and Attendance, only one component defined i.e internal assignments maybe carried out for the current semester for this examination, except SOL as a special measure due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” Dean (Examinations) said in the notice. These assignments will be conducted online and students will be asked to submit via email in the defined time.

For undergraduate (UG) practical exams the teachers will give assignments based on practical syllabus while for the postgraduate (PG) practical exams, the evaluation will be in “100% continuous evaluation mode.”

Viva-voce, moot courts, and oral exams will be conducted through Skype or other online teaching platforms. For internship or apprenticeship mandatory for completion of degree in most professional or technical courses, the students can take up online internships and the period of internship can be reduced by clubbing it with assignments.

“In the present scenario, appropriate measures have to be adopted to facilitate the UG/PG students pursuing projects and dissertation. Accordingly, review-based/secondary data-based projects or software driven projects shall be accepted by the Faculty/Department/College instead of laboratory-based experiments or field survey based assignments to these students,” Dean (Exams) said in the guidelines.

Payal Mago, principal of Shaheed Rajguru College of Applied Sciences, said, “After the Covid-19 lockdown struck in March, the previous academic session saw similar guidelines being implemented for internal assessment of existing students. However, this is not for first-year students since we are yet to see if their entire semester will be fully online or a hybrid mode if they are allowed to attend offline classes at some point later.”