This story is from May 6, 2020

Exam syllabus to be cut 20% for Tamil Nadu engineering students

Final-year BE, B Tech students may have to study one unit less for semester exams as Anna University plans to leave out the portions that were not covered before colleges were shut in TN because of the pandemic. In engineering courses, every subject has five units.
Exam syllabus to be cut 20% for Tamil Nadu engineering students
Colleges were able to complete only 80% of the syllabus before they were closed on March 17
CHENNAI: Final-year BE, B Tech students may have to study one unit less for semester exams as Anna University plans to leave out the portions that were not covered before colleges were shut in TN because of the pandemic. In engineering courses, every subject has five units.
According to sources, engineering colleges including university departments were able to complete only 80% of the syllabus before they were closed on March 17.
Due to the subsequent Covid-19 lockdown, colleges lost 13 working days in the final semester.
In a meeting to plan semester exams post-lockdown, officials on Monday discussed several issues including evaluating thesis of final-year students, conducting exams and loss of working days.
“For the existing eighth-semester students, we will have questions from first four units and we will leave out one unit,” M K Surappa, vice-chancellor, Anna University, said.
Some colleges have tried to complete their lessons through online classes. Since most of the students were from rural areas, university officials were not sure how many of them had access to internet and were able to attend the online classes.
Officials have also decided to conduct the exams in a phased manner.
“The exam schedule is being planned in a way that students belonging to only one semester would be on campus at any given time. The exams would start with final and eighth semester. Then seventh semester and arrears exam for final semester students would be held. It would help us to conduct exams with social distancing norms and also reduce crowd before and after the exams,” officials said. Earlier, the university used to complete all the exams within a month. Now it may take up to 50 days.
“For final-year students, the exam may be conducted within 10 to 12 days. It would take two or three weeks to declare the results. If needed, the university would also consider setting up more evaluation centres to keep social distancing,” officials said. Though UGC suggested conducting of exams from July 1 to 31, the state higher education department is likely to give its nod for conducting exam only after evaluating the Covid-19 situation.
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