Technical glitches hit exams: On first day of online-offline exam held by SPPU, missing questions & delayed downloads

This is the first time the SPPU is conducting online exams for final-year degree students, and the university has appointed an independent agency for the same.

While it was expected that given the total number of students scheduled to take online exams — 4.5 lakh across all courses, over the next few days — the problems in online examinations would be greater than the offline examination, the scene on Monday was quite the opposite.

Students who had registered for offline examinations reached the allotted centres by 10 am, when the exams were scheduled to begin, but due to technical glitches like question papers not getting downloaded, the students had to wait for nearly two-and-a-half hours before the exams actually started.

Even during the online examinations, certain group of students could only view the answer key options while the questions itself were missing. Such was the situation that the exam department announced that the examinations for BSc Algebra paper would be conducted again on October 17.

As many as 12,000 students registered for the online exams did not take them, and many registered for offline exams also gave it a miss.

Mahesh Kakade, director of the board of examinations and evaluation, SPPU, said, “This is the first time for the university administration as well and we are doing our best for students. They should not panic even if there are minor glitches, we will get them resolved. All students will be able to take the exams.”