The University Grants Commission (UGC) has decided that the internal examinations of the universities could be conducted online from now on, following some guidelines and directions.
The UGC and vice-chancellors of public universities met in an online platform on Thursday to come to the decision. The technical committee has provided guidelines and some instructions for the varsities in this regard.
However, if a university does not want to take the online test or a student not interested to take part in online test, they cannot be compelled to do so. If they think that they would take offline test instead of going online when the situation improves, they are able to do that too.
DrMunaz Ahmed Noor, Vice-Chancellor of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Digital University, told confirming the matter,“A positive decision for universities to take online exams has come out in today’s meeting. Now they will be able to take only academic exams online. The universities have to get the approval of the Academic Council in that case.”
In this context, Ferdous Zaman, Secretary of UGC (additional responsibility) said, “The online examinations will be conducted in accordance with international standards. However, every university must get the approval of their syndicate and academic council at first.”
“Universities have also been asked to adopt all kinds of strategies to ensure transparency of examinations. That's why there has been talk of developing a software,” he said emphasizing more importance on viva or oral examinations.
Educational institutions at all levels, including public universities, have been closed since March 17 last year due to the outbreak of Coronavirus pandemic. As a result, the education system has come to a standstill and many of the universities are to face a long session jam. In order to overcome this crisis, the Ministry of Education has set up two committees at the secondary and higher education levels to decide whether public and academic examinations could be taken online.
Meanwhile, the Deans Committee of Dhaka University has decided on Wednesday (May 5) that if the pandemic situation does not improve, the final examinations of all the years will be taken online from July 1.
However, every student will be given a choice. In this case, the student who does not want to take part in the test online will be able to appear in the test directly later.
