DU teachers complain of technical glitches while evaluating OBE answer sheets
new delhi: While Delhi University managed to get away with conducting the online open-book examinations despite multiple scoldings from the Delhi High Court over its unpreparedness, protests from students and teachers, educators at the varsity are now facing a slew of problems evaluating the answer scripts submitted online.
Much to the horror of the teachers evaluating the answer scripts, their apprehensions about online evaluation turning a nightmare are coming true with many reporting technical glitches in the portal and bad scans of answer sheets.
As the first phase of the online open book exam finished, professors said many issues such as multiple answer sheets, bad scans or replacement of checked copies have left them perplexed, frustrated and anxious. "The copies checked in the last ten days have been replaced today. What is further puzzling is that all copies have been replaced by the same answer script — that too of a different course altogether," a teacher from DU told Millennium Post. DU Teachers Association (DUTA) General Secretary Abha Dev Habib said that many teachers have complained of similar technical issues.
"Teachers of one stream are getting the answer sheets of other streams to evaluate. For example, computer science teachers are getting instrumentation, maths, chemistry papers to evaluate," Habib said.
However, the technical issue was later rectified after many teachers complained of it. "Teachers were tense the whole afternoon as they wondered if all the evaluation work they had done so far was wiped out due to some technical error," she added.
Meanwhile, issues like bad scans have become problematic for teachers. In some cases, the pages have been attached up-side-down or the same answer sheets have been uploaded.
"It is chaotic and we are taking double the time to evaluate the answer sheet. The scans are so bad, we do not understand what to make of them," said the language professor.
"Such technical glitches show how fragile the entire system is. We generally check copies sequenced according to roll numbers. This time it is not the case. So, in the 50 copies allotted to me for evaluation, all are random copies — of students from across colleges. There is no sequencing," Habib said.
Teachers have been demanding proper evaluation guidelines, which they say have not been issued by the university yet.
While DU was battling petition in the court, insisting that it would like to go ahead with the examinations through the online mode, many teachers in addition to highlighting problems students might face, had also talked about problems they would face while evaluating the scripts.
