[Lt_Apple]

Marks scandal rocks Anna University - The New Indian Express

A thriving exam marks racket involving some faculty members and officials has come to light in the premier Anna University in Chennai.
The racket has helped children of influential parents who failed in semester examinations to pass with flying colours in two of the university’s four renowned campuses — the College of Engineering in Guindy (CEG) and the Madras Institute of Technology (MIT) in Chromepet.

Rumours about the shocking academic malpractice that flourished through pseudo revaluation exercises were widely doing the rounds for the past three years. However, for the first time, evidence has emerged in black and white.

A couple of junior faculty members have over the past month admitted that they revalued the answer papers of some failed students and gave them pass marks on the instructions of an university Examination Department official. The official has since been moved out, but not as punishment.

One of the assistant professors in the Dept of Computer Technology at the MIT campus has addressed his letter, in the form of a confession, to the Chief Minister’s Cell. For some strange reason, the other assistant professor at the Ramanujan Computing Centre in CEG has addressed his letter to an official of a quasi-government body who is well-versed with the state of affairs.

Naming a university official who abused his position in the Examination Department, the MIT assistant professor has said that the former “gave me the papers and asked me to give pass mark for some of the papers. I have been given the subjects from their first semester and other semesters.”

Alarmingly, in April, the official had given him answer papers of subjects which have nothing do with the evaluator’s expertise. The assistant professor, whose specialisation is in computers, has said he was asked to evaluate among others Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics papers and “many more subjects which I do not remember.”

Similarly, the faculty member at the CEG has said he gave pass marks to students in six subjects during Nov-Dec 2009 and April-May 2010. “In future, I cannot do this kind of mistakes where it affects the brand of my university (sic),” he said in the letter.

On March 5, 2011, Express had published a report ‘Revaluation route helps influential students excel’ highlighting how senior professors had rued that VVIP kids who were irregular to classes mysteriously passed with flying colours. Even HoDs were unaware of how the weakest students cleared their examinations.

[Lillie_Steins]

dear sir !
by advent of exam .cooking up of marks became relevant.that is why most of the educationists advice continuous assessment method instead of judging a student on a single day exam.just like cricket,who ever is smart on exam date will be getting high marks even though he is an average student. the continuous assessment also has its disadvantage since it is used as tool to threaten the student community &curb his individual thinking and questioning the real doubts. the affluent section get the necessary question paper,internal marks etc. and less privileged get step motherly treatment.The younger generation is laughing at us when we say them that they should excel in exam. they say only recommendation do wonders .if the father is not finding a person to recommend,he is useless
guruvayurappan

[S.T.D.]

dear sir !
by advent of exam .cooking up of marks became relevant.that is why most of the educationists advice continuous assessment method instead of judging a student on a single day exam.just like cricket,who ever is smart on exam date will be getting high marks even though he is an average student. the continuous assessment also has its disadvantage since it is used as tool to threaten the student community &curb his individual thinking and questioning the real doubts. the affluent section get the necessary question paper,internal marks etc. and less privileged get step motherly treatment.The younger generation is laughing at us when we say them that they should excel in exam. they say only recommendation do wonders .if the father is not finding a person to recommend,he is useless
guruvayurappan

Do you really blame the younger generation for coming to that conclusion? Has our generation done anything to dispel that opinion?

[Ifroham4]

....
that is why most of the educationists advice continuous assessment method instead of judging a student on a single day exam.just like cricket,who ever is smart on exam date will be getting high marks even though he is an average student. the continuous assessment also has its disadvantage since it is used as tool to threaten the student community &curb his individual thinking and questioning the real doubts. the affluent section get the necessary question paper,internal marks etc. and less privileged get step motherly treatment.guruvayurappan

The continuous assessment method while somewhat better than a single-day assessment also leads to partitioned learning. You take a quiz on a given day on a few topics and then forget that section completely. If the final grade is determined by apportioning different weightage to quizzes, mid-term exams, and final exam where the lowest score is dropped and the rest averaged (as in the US system) then again it produces a deficiency in learning since the emphasis is on grade. I have taught here in the US university system where the students do not want to learn the difficult topics and want certain portions they studied be deleted from final exam. If you insist on learning then the students evaluate you as "unsatisfactory". Those who live to get tenure must cater to the students if they want to survive in the system. But the vast majority of such students end up in ordinary jobs anyway. I have had a few bright students in the class who gave me "A" for good teaching. It is such good students who carry the rest of the population by making advances in various fields.

Single day exam, although detrimental to many average students, is good for those who are good at rote learning. If these also happened to be good students who learn while studying they are the ones who will shine in higher studies and professional life.