Amid COVID-19 pandemic, Maharashtra Universities to prepare fresh exam schedule

With the widespread of Covid-19 pandemic and national lockdown, the annual examination session has been disturbed. However, in order to calm the nerves of the students Maharshtra minister for higher and technical education, Uday Samant interacted with the VCs of all state universities through a video call.

“The minister urged all heads of universities to release a fresh exam schedule, as plan B for whenever the lockdown is lifted. This means we have to keep more than one exam schedule ready, for, if the lockdown does not end on April 14, then we need another schedule for the examination,” said one of the officials attending the virtual meeting on Monday.

Keeping in mind that curriculum is still pending in some universities he also inquired about techniques being used by the universities to complete the pending syllabus. “We put together a set of mobile and computer applications that could be used by all polytechnic and technical institutes in order to ensure that students are not at loss and their education is not affected. The application also checks attendance of teachers and teaching content everyday for transparency purposes,” said Abhay Wagh, director, state Directorate of Technical Education (DTE).

The minister also asked the universities to set up think-tank labs in their universities and help government in solving COVID-19 crisis anyway possible.“University of Mumbai recently launched a helpline for their students and the minister has urged more universities to follow suit and reach out to more students in these times of crisis,” said another official.