Mumbai: ,With online assessment being streamlined for all examinations of the University of Mumbai (MU), teachers are now demanding that the university conducts all examinations online.
This demand has come as earlier this month, MU announced its plan to give away offline exams and shift to online exams to go completely digital.
At present, all semester exams are conducted offline through traditional methods. But all assessments are done online through the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system introduced in 2017.
Jitendra Sharma, a teacher and examiner of MU said, “We faced some technical and practical difficulties in learning the OSM system at the beginning. But now the process is streamlined. We have written to the university to start online exams so that it reduces the work load and prevents discrepancies.”
Currently, answer sheets of offline exams are scanned and sent to examiners for paper correction. Examiners conduct online assessment and send the marks to the university.
Ela Dedhia, a teacher and examiner of Nirmala Niketan College, Churchgate said, “If exams are conducted online, then it will save time and efforts spent in scanning and uploading answer sheets.
Students can directly submit their answer sheets and we can access it for online assessment. It will also save manpower, costs and prevent physical and technical errors, which usually occur in manual scanning of every sheet.”
Authorities of MU revealed they are in the process to conduct online exams but the project might take some time.
A senior official of MU said, “Most of the competitive tests are conducted online. We will provide stylus and a computer to students in an exam hall where they appear for the exam and directly submit their work.
But this project will take some time as we have to manage both technical and financial constraints.”
Over 15 lakh students appear for final year MU examinations every year. Vinod Malale, senior official of MU examination department, said, “We are now focusing on digitalising various processes.
We recently started providing online marksheets to engineering students so that they can acess it from their homes and do not need to come to the university.”
