It was Divya Malik's first online Open Book Examination on August 11. A III year Bachelor of Management Studies student at the University of Delhi, her exam began at 11.30 in the morning. It was supposed to end at 3.30 pm.
All was well, until 2 pm when the power went off. Like every other student, she panicked. Divya's home did not have backup power. She was dependent on the WiFi to download question paper and upload answer sheets. The mobile network there is also quite poor, she says. Owing to this, she called us over WhatsApp to narrate this incident.
"There was no way for me to write my exams. It was pitch dark," she says. "So, my sister stood behind me, holding her mobile's flashlight on, pointing it to the paper on which I wrote my answers," says Divya. The power was finally back by 3.25 PM. Barely five minutes were left to upload the answer sheets on the university's portal.
While the other students complained about the portal crashing at 3.15 P M, Divya did not have to face that issue. "I was done uploading my answer sheets by 3.40 PM and was successful in doing so. However, students usually get an acknowledgment email if they do so, which I did not get. This got me worried," she says. At 2.30 AM the next day, she got an email saying that her answer sheets were not successfully uploaded.
Divya's next exam is on the 14th. She does not know what to do if a similar situation comes up again. "I don't have places nearby where I can go to write my exam," she says. However, she is now adamant that she won't use the university's portal to upload the answer sheets. "I will only email it from now on," she says.
