Let us help make the examination process more transparent.
After efforts of three years, GTU is now able to have a web-based e-assessment system1, which works seamlessly . Thousands of Faculty Members of our post-graduate programs and GTU staff have used the system, which has now become quite convenient to use. Now it is being rolled out for all the BE programs and for the first two semesters of all the DE programs
GTU has set up a very robust system of examination. For assessment, GTU’s system is such that every examiner gets a random mixture of answer-books from different colleges. Moreover due to the bar-code, the examiner would not know the identity of the student, whose answer-book he is assessing.
Thus no one can charge our examiners with favouritism or victimization.
What will e-assessment do for the students?: The facility of re-assessment will be available to all the students of 1st-year to 4th year of BE. In addition it will now be possible to provide re-assessment to the 1st and the 2nd semesters of DE also.
This will increase the faith in the assessment system of GTU.
The advantage to the Faculty Members:
Our Faculty Members work hard to set up the question papers for the semester-end exams and for assessing the answer-books well. However whenever a student does not get the marks as expected by him, he may say that he had failed because his answer-book had not been examined properly. Due to the cynicism, prevailing in our society for every organization, the student’s parents and friends may start believing that it was so. When re-assessment is available, the student can use the tool to re-confirm that the marks are correct. In the small number of cases, where some human error had been committed, it would be corrected.
This will contribute to improving the faith that our society has in the Faculty Members. One can learn well only when one has respect for his teachers. Thus the society will be able to get a better learning system.
While GTU will correct any mistake, that may have been committed in the assessment, my request to the GTU community and the media is to take due care in saying that injustice has been done. It is the first time that a technological university is providing the facility of re-assessment for all the four years of its BE program. Many technological universities in the country are following the policies, initiated by GTU, in many areas. Undue criticism and uncontrolled behaviour by the GTU community and the media may lead to a situation, where the systems in other universities may not open up.
Let us celebrate this opening up of the system at GTU and let us all use 
while using and taking advantage of the system. Let us not do anything, which brings down the reputation of our university.
Dr. Akshai Aggarwal
1 Such a system has been developed by a British University, which uses it for examining students in about 60 African countries for teaching English. Teachers of English in many countries of Africa use e-assessment to evaluate the question papers, sent through Internet by the British University.