Vacation time over, varsity to speed up online evaluation

Teachers will have to focus on checking papers on an immediate basis

As vacation period is over, Mumbai University (MU) aims to expedite online assessment of answer sheets which has been delayed due to the new process. The varsity revealed it had given teachers time till June 8 to return from their vacation and begin the assessment process on immediate basis.

This year, for the first time, MU introduced this On-Screen Marking (OSM) of answer sheets for all its examinations and started the process of scanning and uploading the papers from May. The Free Press Journal had initially reported that the university had stated the reason for the delay to be unavailability of teachers as it was vacation time.

Now, the varsity has revealed that the teachers will have to begin the process as the vacation period is over. Deepak Wasave, Controller of Examinations of MU, said, “First, the OSM process is new and we understand that teachers will take time to study it. Second, teachers were on vacation so we had to wait. But now we will speed up the process as everyone is waiting for the results.”

MU claimed the number of teachers, compared to students for most courses, is less. Thus, the teachers have to check papers for related subjects in different courses which increases the load on them. “In the commerce stream, teachers are assigned to check around 300 to 500 papers because there are over 80,000 students. Also, a teacher who checks a business economics paper of a commerce student has to check similar subjects of other courses like Bachelors in Accounting and Finance (BAF), Management Studies (BMS) or Masters in Commerce (MCom).”

Though the entire process is now majorly dependent on the functioning of the teachers, there is no clear date for the declaration of the results.

A MU senior official said, “We have declared the results of minor courses like masters in one particular language. The major courses like commerce, science, arts or self-financing courses have a large number of answer sheets so this will take time.”