Online exams confirmed by many universities across Pakistan. Many universities and colleges across the country have now decided to heed the demands of students across the country and allowed the students to give their exams online.
Students demanded to give their exams online saying that of they took their classes online, they should give their exams online as well. Higher Education Commission (HEC) announced on Wednesday that universities across the country are now allowed to hold online examinations after students protested for days against the sit-in examinations.
More Universities Announce Online Examination
After Education Minster Shafqat Mahmood announced that he was happy that HEC allowed universities to offer online examination option to their students. In a wave of new universities announcing their decision to hold online exams, Islamabad’s biggest university National University of Modern Languages (NUML) has announced that they will hold their end-of-the-semester exams online.
Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood took this a positive sign and stated in his tweet, “This paves the way for them to devise the right procedures quickly to do so. Education standards must be kept up. Work hard students and wish you the best.”
HEC’s Statement Regarding Online Exams
According to the press release sent out by High Education Commission that announced the Online exams confirmed, it stated that online examination was “up to the universities to decide whether they wanted to conduct in-person or online exams.” So, it is clearly up to the universities to decide if they are willing to take year-end and semester-end exams online or not.
Higher Education Commission further said, “The apprehensions of students were reviewed carefully in consultation with the vice-chancellors of all the provinces and regions, keeping in view the difficulties brought about by the pandemic and opening of universities from February 01, 2021.”
Higher Educations Commission has warned the universities to keep an eye on the cheating instances after they announced that they have now Online exams confirmed. They are further advised by Higher Education Commission to use tools such as Turnitin to detect plagiarism and to see if “the similarity index with web and the answers of other students.”
Along with that, Higher Education Commission has also warned the universities to comply with the protocols set by Higher Education Commission and the Health Minister to make sure the on-campus exams are safe for the students and the university staff.
With Online exams confirmed, the universities are being advised to comply with strict COVID-19 protocols to make sure no new cases spike after these on-campus exams as well.
