Maharaja Sayajirao University has decided to conduct the terminal exams of its students in online mode for this year.

This makes MS University, the first publicly funded university in Gujarat to adopt such an approach. The exams will be conducted on the university's own portal in the Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) format for two hours duration.

The committee meeting held in the past month decided to conduct MSU Exams 2020 only for final semester students of both undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

About 17,666 final semester students from courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels have enrolled to take exams this year. 

The exams are yet to begin from 20 July 2020 and in case students are unable to attend the exams would be given a second chance to take online exams. Earlier, it decided upon declaring results on their exam portal. 

KM Chudasama, In-Charge Registrar, MSU said, "We were already going to conduct online exams for foreign students and students from outside Gujarat. 

Parents of students from outside Vadodara had requested us to explore ways through which we can reduce the chances of infection of their wards, who are not based in Vadodara.

By appearing for exams online, students will not face the risk of getting infected while travelling to Vadodara or while appearing at the exam centres”.

He further said, "We will be informing students in advance about the schedule of the exams. If for any reason, they face technical issues like power-cut or loss of connectivity, they will be compensated with additional time.”

For examinations to be held on the university campus, it would require to schedule exams in three shifts. In such cases, sanitising hundreds of classrooms would be difficult to achieve. Also, there are qualms of thermal scanning all students and ensure everyone wears a mask within the campus.