The Mumbai university (MU) on Thursday extended the academic term of engineering colleges by 10 days. This means the semester-end exams in May 2014 will also be delayed by a week. On Wednesday, TOI had reported about principals fearing delay in starting new term.
The varsity’s ambitious online assessment of engineering papers failed to take off on Thursday, too.
Earlier, the academic term was from January 2 to April 16. But as now it will be from January 13 to April 26. But the dean of technology, S K Ukrande, clarified that the number of teaching days will not be affected owing to the extension. “Colleges will get the required 90 days for teaching.”
On Thursday, assessment of engineering exam papers began, but it was only for the master’s programme, which was not done online.
This year, answer sheets of the first-year and final-year undergraduate students were supposed
to be assessed online. But the project failed to take off on Thursday, as promised by the MU, as the preparations are still not over.
A college principal said they are still clueless about the assessment schedule. “We are being told that the assessment would soon begin, but there is no clarity on the date and list of examiners. We hope that the process be glitch-free,” said the principal. He added that though teachers had reevaluated papers online, the number of answer sheets of the main exams is very high.
But Ukrande said, claimed that it is the first year of implementation for the massive project. “We are trying to ensure that the process does not suffer once it is launched. We are doing test runs at the centres.Currently, the scanning process is being done at the university and papers should reach the 10 assessment centres by Saturday afternoon,” he said. He also claimed that the quantum of work involved is a lot in the process and therefore, the delay.
He added that once the assessment is done in 20-25 days, the results will be announced soon.
Source: TOI
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