But no clarity on online assessment

We will decide on the mode of assessment to be used in a couple of days .

Even as thousands of Bcom students appeared for their semester examinations on Monday, the University of Mumbai is yet to appoint a service provider for online assessment of answer sheets.

The university decided to digitalise the process to cut down malpractices during assessment.

The plan was to have an ‘on-screen assessment’ that would involve scanning of answer booklets and their assessment on computer, completely doing away with the penand-paper format of evaluation. Currently, the method is used only for assessment of engineering examinations.

Vice-chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh had announced that the university will introduce online assessment for all courses starting this semester. But, some officials and teachers said it was impossible for the university to put in place a system in time for the assessment, which usually begins a few days after the examination starts.

“We will decide on the mode of assessment to be used in a couple of days,” said ST Gadade, faculty coordinator for commerce at MU.

The university had earlier floated a tender inviting bids to put in place the software and net working system for scanning and assessing papers.

But, with only one company showing interest, the university extended the deadline and relaxed some of the tender condi tions.

According to MA Khan, the university is yet to open the financial bids. “A technical com mittee is scrutinising the techni cal bids. They will submit the report,” he adds.

A source from the university said that the process of finalising a service provider and installing the necessary infrastructure may take months, implying that online assessment is unlikely to start this semester.

The teachers are also clueless “I have been hearing about online assessment, but it won’t be very easy for many of us. The teachers will have to be techni cally sound and there’s the risk of cyber security breach. There has been no training from the university,” said Khoj Agarwal a visiting professor at Reena Mehta College, Bhayander.