Amid Lockdown 6.0, BPUT announces its requirements prior to online exams for Bachelor & PG courses

Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT), is going to conduct online examinations for the final semester of final year students from July 9th. Due to the COVID 19 outbreak, the colleges have been shut down in a hurry without any preparation. Semester examinations of most of the colleges have been cancelled or are scheduled to be held online.

Amid the lockdown 6.0, BPUT has announced to conduct the examination of final year Undergraduate and Postgraduate students online from July 9th, 2020. University has released a notification regarding the requirements to appear for the online examinations. A long list of requirements has been released by the University in this notification in the middle of lockdown 6.0.

Almost 25,00- students are enrolled in various courses under BPUT. Now, these students have been opposing the idea of conducting online examinations, and the demand for evaluating the students on some other basis is increasing at a high rate.

Meanwhile, a new notice regarding the requirements issued by the University has left the students in a state of dilemma. In the notice regarding the online examinations, the University has stated 35 points as guidelines and requirements to conduct the online examinations.

Requirements set by BPUT for Online Examinations

Below is given a list of requirements that is required by final year students to appear in the online examinations:

• Desktop or Laptop with i3 or above processor with Windows OS 7 or above.
• Inbuilt webcam or additional USB based webcam with mic.
• Minimum 2 GB RAM
• 1 Mbps internet bandwidth speed
• Power backup for at least 3 hours
• Up to date software patches in desktop or Laptop

These are some of the requirements that are required by the final year students in order to undertake the online examinations.

Also, the notice released by the University stated that the examination will be terminated in case any student gets genuine disconnection from the server due to power or internet failure and if he or she is unable to login in the next 15 to 20 minutes.

Adding to this, it is being told to the students that those who lack the infrastructure to appear for the online examinations can take help from local educational institutes like ITI, Polytechnic and other technical schools.

BPUT Online Examinations Of Final Year Students: Overview

Let’s take note of some of the features of this online examination to be conducted by BPUT:

• The online examinations will be conducted for final year students from July 9th to July 30th.
• It is compulsory for all the students to appear in the mock test before appearing for the final examination.
• In case an aspirant is not satisfied with the mock test, he or she can wait for offline tests, which can be conducted only after the colleges reopen.
• The mock tests for final year students will be conducted between July 2nd to July 14th.
• The State Government has advised BPUT to declare results tentatively by July 31st, 2020.
• The multiple-choice question based online examination will be of two hours.
• According to this system, a student will be allowed to refer to textbooks during the notified time without leaving his or her seat during the exam period.
• For more information the BPUT Online Exam Dates and schedule, please check here.

Paper Pattern For Online Examinations Of Final Year Students

• The examination will consist of 120 Multiple choice questions of 70 marks and 150 Multiple choice questions of 100 marks.
• Each MCQ will have four choices. Students have to select any one choice among the given four choices and mark their answers.
• The examination duration will be 2 hours. However, an extra 1 hour is given to get a stable internet connection and download and upload the question paper and answer sheets (if required).

Difficulties Faced In Online Examinations by BPUT Final Year Students

There are around 25,000 students enrolled in the final year of UG and PG courses at BPUT who are waiting for the final semester examination. The notice regarding the online examinations has left them in a state of shock. Some of the difficulties faced by these students are given below:

• Hundreds of final year students are staying outside the state of Odisha. Some of them do not have their Laptop or desktop with them and even cannot move to the internet cafes due to state restrictions.
• In such a case, the students are bound to appear for the final semester exams which have no confirmation. Hence, it may lead to the loss of job offers.
• Most of the students are not familiar with online examinations. They even have no idea of the types of questions asked and the pattern of the paper.
• The students who are familiar with the long analytical answers from the last seven semesters may find it difficult to adopt this new method of examination.

The pandemic has left everyone in a state of dilemma, and everyone is going through mental trauma in these days of uncertainty. And with the notice regarding the online and open-book examinations, the students are finding it difficult to adapt to this new method. The demand for the students of BPUT to consider any other method of evaluation may be given weightage and can be considered by the University Officials. We will have to wait for that for the time being.