BUTA demands ouster of officials responsible for fiasco

Vadodara: Baroda University Teachers Association (BUTA) has demanded immediate removal of director of computer centre and all the officials who were responsible for the fiasco of online mock test at M S University. In a major embarrassment to the university and much to the nightmare of students, last Saturday, the portal developed by the university crashed as nearly 4,000 students made an attempt to appear for the first online mock test that was organised ahead of the semester-end exams that were scheduled to begin on August 5.
Terming the incidents as inefficiency of director of computer centre, conveners and co-coordinators who designed and planned the MCQ examination, BUTA has pointed out technical issues which they claimed were ignored by the officials.
“Each paper contains 70 MCQ questions containing 350 images which occupies minimum 0.35GB to maximum of 0.75GB. If 1,000 question papers are loaded in the server more than 50 TB space is used. Due to this, data servers are overloaded. Each fibre optical cable can take a load of 1,000 video channels. However, officials involved in the MCQ examinations allowed 4,000 students video login facility,” BUTA’s representation to MSU officials states. “The system of submitting five images for each MCQ question itself is wrong. There are platforms on payment per examination which could have been explored. If the officers involved would have considered such options, the university could have avoided such embarrassment,” said BUTA president Dr K V R Murthy.