Most DU students lack resources, material to give online exams

Twenty-year-old Sachin Pathak, a student of Delhi University, is worried about his final-year exams in July. Reason? His phone’s keypad is not working. And the phone is to be shared with his sibling—another final-year student of DU. They are residents of Delhi’s Burari area where father works as a daily wage labourer.

HT Image

“I don’t even have a touch-screen phone. How is it possible for me to finish my paper within two hours with such slow Internet and then look for a place where I can scan it and upload it within an hour? The cyber cafes, if open, will have a queue,” Pathak, who wants to apply for jobs after getting his degree, said.

“I have plans to study via correspondence and apply for jobs to support my family. If the exams are conducted online, I will not be able to score well,” he added.

Hundreds of DU students like Pathak posted their concerns on social media on Friday using the hashtag #DUAgainstOnlineExams which had over 48,000 tweets till Friday evening. The “Twitter storm” comes a day after DU announced that it may conduct an open-book online examination for final-year students if the Covid-19 situation prevented it from holding a regular pen-and-paper examination. Using memes and video messages, students highlighted their concerns about the online open-book examination, including poor Internet connectivity, lack of access to devices, inability to download reading material, risk of impersonation, and lack of familiarity with the open-book examination mode.

While the notification released on Thursday refers to final-year students, first- and second-year students are also anxious about their mode of examination. Harsh Suri, a resident of Kashmir and a first-year student in Hindu College, said, “We’re stressed because there is no clarity yet. Students from Jammu and Kashmir are neither able to attend their online classes nor download 100 MB reading material on the 2G network. Even laptops don’t work on 2G network and we are unable to research for our assignments. How are we supposed to give our exams? Even to tweet against the online exam took me 20 minutes.”

Amal K Simon, another final-year student and a resident of Kerala, said, “We don’t have reading material at home and everything is in Delhi. Besides, we have never appeared for any kind of open-book test before and are not trained for it. So many of my friends from remote areas run the risk of having their job offers rescinded because they will be unable to appear for these exams.”

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad on Friday submitted a memorandum to DU vice-chancellor asking for wider consultation with all stakeholders and recommending measures like multiple modes of examination and the promotion of intermediate students based on their earlier marks. The Vice-Chancellor was unavailable for comment.

Meanwhile, the varsity’s Covid-19 task force constituted to look into academic matters during the pandemic, on Friday, wrote to all principals asking them to compile e-resources to help students. “There are many students who don’t have their books. So we have asked principals to identify and share e-resources which can be compiled by us and sent to students who can use them,” Payal Mago, a member of the task force, said.