Students complain of glitches on first day of DU mock exams

The first day of the Delhi University's mock exams was marred by technical glitches as final year students faced issues in downloading question papers and uploading answer sheets.

This is the second instance of students complaining of glitches during mock exams.

Earlier, when the exams were scheduled from July 10, the university had held mock exams and students complained of technical issues. It was the same situation on Monday as students took mock exams ahead of the scheduled online open book exams from August 10.

Abha Dev Habib, treasurer of the Delhi University Teachers’ Association, said they received mails throughout the day from students who faced difficulties.

"It is unfortunate that instead of taking special measures to ease situations for students, getting degree has been made much harder for terminal semester students. How many mock drills these students will have to face," Habib asked.

"Also by insisting so much on exams despite uneven teaching, the UGC is putting the cart before the horse. There was no institutional help given to teachers or students to cope with changed circumstances. And we are about to repeat the mistake. With few days left for the new session, we see university lacks preparation. Systems have been made to unnecessarily spend energies on exams which are discriminatory and open to rigging," she added.

The DUTA and student bodies have been opposing the open book exams but the university has decided to go ahead with them.

A student, who took the mock exams, complained that the website did not work properly when he tried to download the question papers.

A Bachelor in Management Studies student at the Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies said the mock test for his course was scheduled at 11.30 am. However, even after multiple attempts at login, till 11.50 am, he found no mock papers on the dashboard.

"We are already mentally harassed and exhausted. These things give us a huge amount of stress and impact our mental health," he said.

A student of the university said while uploading answer sheets, she found that out of the six sheets, only four were uploaded and the remaining two kept on showing their status as "uploading" but later disappeared.

"After three failed attempts, the two remaining sheets were finally uploaded. While uploading the answer to another question, all of the six sheets reflected the status as 'uploading' but disappeared after a few minutes," she said.

She added that they got only an hour for downloading, scanning and uploading. Scanning alone takes about 40 minutes, the student said.

"If such glitches occur then we won't be able to upload within the stipulated time," she rued.

Other students complained that they could not even access the site and only got error codes.

Calls and messages to Dean (Examinations) Vinay Gupta remained unanswered, many students claimed.

A Delhi University official, requesting anonymity, said, "As many as 32,786 files were uploaded till 2 pm on Monday. Over 5,000 students uploaded answer sheets, while 13,013 students attempted the papers till 2 pm." 

Image credits: PTI