RGPV: Technical Glitch, Wrong Timing Plague First Day of Online Open Book Exam

Content Curator

Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya (RGPV) began the online open book exam for technical courses with basic issues and technical glitches plaguing the first day of exams.

Basics like logins took much time and wasted about 45 minutes of the exam duration. As scores of complaints from RGPV students began to surge up, the university announced within a few hours, that students who could not complete papers due to technical error will be given an additional opportunity.

About 34,667 registered for the exams while only 30,609 students appeared for it. Exams for the first paper were arranged in four shifts. However, maximum students that is, 10,600 appeared in second shift while the least (5,123) attended morning shift.

As per schedule, the exams were supposed to start at 8:45 AM in the morning. Even though students remained prepared before their laptop or mobile phone screens, to utter dismay, they were unable to log in for the next 45 minutes.

Earlier, RGPV informed students of beginning final year exams from July 27 for engineering and other online technical courses. Students were required to record taking the exam themselves to check the possibility of cheating and other unfair means.

However, the exams were postponed in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. Around 4000 students from different states reached Bhopal to take exams.

These were supposed to be organized from June 23, only to realize that the state government has postponed the exams at the eleventh hour. This further postponement left RGPV students in confusion.

A student of RGPV said, “It was a very tense situation for everyone. I had to ring my friends and they were too said they were facing the same problem.”

Another student said, “When I logged in, the timer displayed that I was ahead of the time. As it was ahead as per the time I stopped moving further.”

Several other students complained as they logged in, the paper got submitted automatically and they could not complete their exams. “I am worried about my result as the exam completed before I could attempt other questions.”

On this, RGPV’s PRO Shashi Ranjan Akela commented, “The exam was deliberately delayed by 45 minutes so that students could set themselves properly. It was noticed during the mock test that several students were not able to log in as per the given time.”

As of now, final year students of technical courses like engineering and pharmacy are yet to take the open book exams in online mode. Question papers of open bok exams only have multiple-choice questions.

A total of 48,765 students from the final year will take the exams but the university received registrations of 44,930 students. Meanwhile, RGPV also conducted a few mock tests before the open book exams began. About 40,944 students appeared in mock tests.