IIEST has set a slew of conditions so students could be brought under invigilation during the semester exams from Monday, which the Shibpur institute will conduct through a digital platform.

“During the entire period of examination, camera of your (students’) device (webcam or mobile camera) has to be kept on and audio to be kept off and you shall be proctored by the faculty members. Adoption of any unfair means shall be dealt with as per institute rules and practices,” read a notice issued by the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST) on Friday.

Proctored examinations are timed exams during which the faculty monitors the examinees’ computers and webcam video and audio through a platform called Google Meet. Through the monitoring the institute wants to ensure that the students do not consult books or online articles or take help from others while writing the answers.

“The audio of the device has to be muted so that an examinee does not get to speak to anyone else. On Google Meet the provisions like switching on the camera, muting the audio are available. As we don’t let the examinees talk to each other while they write the test sitting in a hall, we won’t allow them to talk to each other during the exam on a digital platform,” said an IIEST official.

“Sharing and copying answers, or part thereof, shall be treated as unfair means. Examinees adopting such means can have their papers cancelled. The examinees shall not communicate with each other during the examination,” said deputy registrar (academic) Nirmalya Bhattacharya, who signed the notice.

Metro had on December 10 reported that IIEST had initially wanted to hold the semester exams on the campus to ensure the process remained fair and transparent. But the proposal had to be dropped because a large number of students declined to enter the campus amid the pandemic.

“We have introduced a slew of mechanisms so that the tests being held on digital platforms could involve invigilation and be conducted in a transparent manner,” IIEST director Parthasarathi Chakrabarti said.

The notice issued by the deputy registrar (academic) stated that a Google Classroom would be created for the tests and the examinees would be added to it. “The examinees have to join the Google Classroom at least 10 minutes before the start of the day’s exam,” said an IIEST official.

“Fifteen minutes will be given after the end of each day’s test for the examinees to upload scanned copies of their answer scripts on the Google Classroom, failing which the answers will not be evaluated.”

Kurukshetra University, in Haryana, had in September decided to get the invigilation done through Google Meet and WhatsApp video call during online exams.

A member of the IIEST Senate said that since the final-year BTech students had last month written the final-semester supplementary exams on the campus, the institute was exploring the possibility of holding the mid-semester exams (the ones that will start on Monday) in the same way.

But while only 59 students had written the supplementary exams, held on November 11 and 12, over 3,000 will write the mid-semester tests, to be held over December and January.