Many BUET students not ready to sit for term final exams online
Many of the students of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) are worried as the university authority has decided to take the term-final examinations of its undergraduate students online this year, reports UNB.
The students said final exams online cannot be a good option as most students reside in rural areas and face frequent electricity disruption and also a big portion of students haven't got enough logistical support to sit for final exams online.
The decision of holding the exam online came from the academic council meeting of the university held on 28 July.
The exams will be taken through LMS and virtual meeting software (Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Moodle) and students will be provided letter grade based on both term-final examination and continuous assessment.
The duration of each exam will be two hours and students will have to submit their answer sheets online through LMS software within 15 minutes of the end of the exam.
Exams will be taken, forming a group of up to 35 students for each test room (online meeting app) and two teachers will act as invigilators for each group or team.
Students were asked to use two devices during the exam: one device for video monitoring and another to be used for exam purposes. Students will have to open cameras during the examination.
However, the students said most of them cannot manage two devices for exams and they would face problems due to internet connection disruption in the rural areas. Therefore, the authorities should consider offline exams after ensuring speedy vaccination of all students.
Seeking anonymity, a BUET student of chemical engineering (ChE) department, said, "We have been long demanding offline exams maintaining health guidelines.The authority also assured us of this before, but now they suddenly announced to hold online exam citing the country's deteriorating Covid situation."
"Term final exam is an important exam for grading. We thought authority would consider our problems and demands. We are not ready for the online exam," he added.
A survey by some BUET students has found that a number of students are not ready for online exams. Around 2,500 BUET students participated in the survey. A copy of the survey was provided to the authority.
A fourth-year BUET student said, "Load-shedding is a common experience for those who reside in villages or rural areas. In the last online exam, we saw a number of students struggling to get a proper internet connection. They had to go outside for the connection, while some even couldn't participate in the exam."
"I live in Dhaka. So I am not worried about Internet connection but I am not supporting the idea of an online exam when my classmates are not ready yet," Sadia Farhana, a third-year student said.
There is no clear instruction in the notice regarding what to do if anyone fails to sit in the exam for obvious reasons like being infected with Covid.
"If any of us cannot attend the exam for obvious reasons, what will be next? Authority should be clear as we are running through an emergency situation," one of the students said on condition of anonymity.
On the other hand, some students said they agreed to sit in the term final exam online, but authorities should increase exam time from two hours to three hours.
"Online exam is logical in this pandemic situation as Bangladesh sees sudden spike in Covid cases, but university authorities should consider exam time," a third-year student said, requesting not to be mentioned.