St Xavier’s College will conduct the final semester undergraduate and postgraduate exams. Students will have to write and upload answers within six hours of the start of the exam.

Questions will be “analytical” that require original thinking of the students as they will not take the test sitting on the campus, Father Dominic Savio, the principal of St Xavier’s College, said.

Question papers will be mailed to students half an hour before the start of the exam. The question papers will have an email address to which students will have to mail back the answers. The email addresses will vary from department to department to avoid disruption when too many students upload answers at the same time, a college official said.

Students can key in answers or write them in A4 sheets. In case any student is unable to upload the answers because of Net connectivity problems, they can courier it to the college.

The college had conducted a survey to find out how many students could find it difficult to take the exams for want of a smart device or because of poor Net connectivity. No student had complained of such problems, the official said.

“The exams are for three hours; students will get another three hours to upload the answers in case they face connectivity problems on the day of examination,” the principal said.

If students type in their answers on a word document, they will have to create a PDF, name it, attach it as a document, and mail it to the address provided in the question paper. If they use pen and paper, they will have to scan the pages “chronologically and sequentially” and convert the pages into a single PDF document and mail it, the principal said.

The exams will carry 80 per cent as is the rule. The remaining 20 per cent is on internal assessments. The question pattern, though, will be different from the usual tests.
Multiple-choice questions have been included in all subjects, along with short and long-answer questions.

“Students will not write the exam on the campus. So, we have decided to bring in some changes in the question pattern. Questions will be set in such a way that they will demand original thinking and analytical ability of students,” Father Savio said.

But the number of alternative questions will be much more this time. The alternative questions have been substantially increased, considering the stressful situation students are going through at present, the principal said.