Examsdeferred:Sonear,yetsofar

After technical glitches forced the postponement of finalyear theory exams of the Institute of Distance and Open Learning (IDOL) under University of Mumbai (MU) of Bachelor of Arts (TYBA) and Commerce (TYBCom) programme scheduled on Tuesday, MU IDOL announced that exams slated for October 7 too had been postponed.

This is the second such incident in five days, as earlier, on October 3, the first day of MU's IDOL exams, some students had faced technical difficulties and had been unable to take the exam. These students were informed by IDOL on the same day that they could take the exam on a later date. When students contacted the MU Helpline, they were asked to wait. Finally, MU IDOL released a notification stating, "Due to technical reasons, online examinations of TYBA/BCom scheduled to be held on October 6, 2020, from 1pm to 2pm are postponed. New date/s will be declared very soon on our official website." Later in the day, MU IDOL notified, "The exams scheduled for October 7 have also been postponed. New dates will be declared soon."

On Tuesday, students said they neither could they access the question paper nor could they log in to the online system. The final exams for arts and commerce were scheduled to be conducted online from 1pm to 2pm. But when students tried to log in to the online exam software, they got messages such as 'exam details not available' or 'no exams scheduled'. For other students, logging was a problem because the server was down.

When students contacted the MU Helpline, they were asked to wait. Finally, MU IDOL released a notification stating, "Due to technical reasons, online examinations of TYBA/BCom scheduled to be held on October 6, 2020 at 1pm to 2pm are postponed. New date/s will be declared very soon on our official website."

A final-year student, requesting anonymity, said, "I managed to log in after several attempts. And when I did, I got a message

on my screen sayng the exam details were not available. I was scared because it was already past the time the paper was to begin at. I hit refresh and logged in again but the message reappeared." Vaibhav Edke, president of the Maharashtra Students Welfare Association (MSWA), said, "Had the university completed exam preparation thoroughly in advance, students would not have to go through this lastminute panic in the middle of an exam. The varsity should take responsibility for this."