UoP starts online dispatch of question papers to colleges

As part of the new process,every affiliated engineering college receives question paper through e-mail for the subject concerned around an hour before the scheduled examination. The college authorities then print the paper and arrange photocopies according to the number of students appearing for the examination. All these activities are done under the surveillance of CCTV cameras having adequate storage and retrieval capacity.

“In the past,we used to manually send question papers of all subjects to colleges around a week before commencement of the examinations. These would be kept in the strongroom,and issued to students one by one as per the examination timetable. The online initiative of sending the question paper on the day of the examination aims to reduce the storage time of question papers with colleges and thereby addressing the concerns related to their safety and confidentiality,” said a university official.

The process of receiving question papers involves downloading,decrypting and photocopying at the college end,and it is carried out in the presence of the college principal,college examination officer and a couple of examination supervisors.

“We recently held a workshop for colleges to explain the detailed process for conducting examinations using our latest online initiative. Updated information like college network details,e-mails and contact details of principals were collected to ensure smooth execution of the process,” said a university official,adding that the ongoing pilot project of online distribution of question papers could be replicated for all streams depending on the success of the initiative.

While first-year and third-year engineering examinations have begun from May 2,those for second and final years started a day after. The online distribution of question papers is being made applicable to all these examinations.

Reacting to the development,PVG’s College of Engineering and Technology principal Yogesh Nerkar said the initiative on part of the university was proving beneficial for all the stakeholders.

“The initiative has addressed the concerns of leakage of question papers since the storage time of question papers with colleges has come down to as minimum as possible. The move has gone down well with colleges,” he said.

The university is expected to pay around Rs 30 per student as reimbursement to the colleges towards the cost of photocopies and other stationery required for the process.