Around 35,000 students take DU's online open-book exams

Nearly 35,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students took the online open-book exams of the Delhi University (DU) on Monday and no technical glitches were reported, officials said.

Monday was the first day of the exams and the officials said all the 35,000 students uploaded their answersheets using the portal and there were no email submissions.

DS Rawat, Dean (Examinations), said the process went off smoothly and there were no complaints of any technical glitches.

Last year, when the OBE was held for the first time, students had complained about failure to submit answersheets, problems in downloading question papers and other issues. Some had also said they were grappling with COVID-19 in the family and would not be in the right frame of mind to appear for the exams, but Rawat said most of the students wanted to finish their academics.

Arpita, a third-year BA student, said, "The process went off smoothly. One of our classmates encountered issues while uploading the answersheets but in the end, he was also able to upload those."

Shashwat Verma, who took the exam from his hometown in Kanpur, said, "OBE is a time-taking process. The question paper takes a couple of minutes to download and after finishing the exam, clicking the photos of each page, converting those into the PDF format and uploading takes time. The internet speed also poses issues. But whatever said, the OBE was smoother this time as compared to the last time."

Ramhari Chowdhury, a student of Motilal Nehru College, took the exam from his hometown in Mathura. "The process was smoother than the last time and I could complete the paper in time," he said.

The exams were postponed twice.

The exams were scheduled to start from May 15 but were deferred to June 1 owing to a spike in the number of coronavirus cases across the country.

Later, the university released a new notification, saying the final semester or the annual exams will commence from June 7, instead of June 1.