|
|
|
|
|
|
Latest News |
| 17th
March 2010 / Times of India / Pune Edition |
|
2 engg papers to go online this April
University’s Move For First-Year Course Part
Of Efforts To Reduce Assessment Burden
Pune: Starting this year, the University of Pune (UoP)
will introduce an online examination for two theory papers
at the first-year engineering degree level course. “The
papers relate to basic electronics engineering and engineering
mechanics, which are common to all engineering batches
in the first-year studies,” UoP’s dean of
engineering faculty Prakash Wani told TOI.
While the papers are scheduled for April/May as part of
the second semester exam for academic year 2009-10, the
online exam initiative comes as an extension of the pilot
project which the UoP had undertaken three semesters back
to introduce online evaluation and assessment process
in engineering studies.
The university then conducted the online examination for
the 50 marks paper relating to ‘Fundamentals of
programming languages (FPL)’ — a practical-cum-oral
subject that was introduced post-revision of the first-year
engineering syllabus in 2007, with a view to equip students
with better programme development know-how instead of
becoming mere ‘coding masters’, said Wani.
“The idea was to curb the tendency of extending
common marks to FPL, which would give us no judgement
as to what the student had learnt,” he said. The
pilot paper involved multiple choice questions solved
online, he added.
Growing in confidence from this experiment involving between
20,000 to 25,000 students who took each of the last three
semester exams for FPL, the engineering faculty has now
decided to venture into the theory papers, he said.
A strong advocate of the online examination process, Wani
said, “Going for such technology-based option is
imperative if universities are to stand up to the competition
visa-vis foreign varsities that are to soon enter into
Indian higher education sector and the innovative evaluation
and assessment mechanisms and tools they are expected
to bring.” Already, there are a slew of competitive
exams like the GRE and the IIM CAT, which are conducted
online, he said.
The growth in the number of engineering colleges under
the UoP, from a little over 30 three years ago to 70,
and the resultant growth in volumes for paper evaluation
and assessment, besides lack of adequate qualified manpower
for such processes, prompted the UoP engineering faculty
to explore online examination, said Wani. “The idea
was also to have transparent, credible and independent
assessment system,” he added.
The engineering faculty involves 40 theory papers and
15 practical-cum-oral papers for various subjects from
the first- to the final-year, he said. “Even if
10 of the 40 theory papers are transferred to online examination
mode, we will end up reducing the assessment burden by
1/4th,” said Wani.
He pointed out that each engineering student appears for
five subjects and there are around 50,000 students sitting
for examinations each year.
The multiplying effect results in huge volumes for assessment,
which is a repetitive work and can be taken care of by
computerbased systems, said Wani.
The online exam for the two theory papers would involve
setting of papers, students giving the exam online and
evaluation processes, he said, adding, a 50-mark section
from each of the two papers of total 100 marks, will be
conducted online.
The UoP has made budgetary provision of Rs 10 lakh for
these online examinations and a seven-member core committee
from the engineering faculty is monitoring the initiative.
The UoP’s dean of the engineering faculty Prakash
Wani is an ardent advocate of online exams.
|
|
|
|
