HEC Pakistan has made an announcement about online examination today on its official Twitter account. HEC Pakistan advised universities to conduct exams based on their capacity and need for their assessment rules. Higher Education Commission has taken notice about the concerns raised by students of some universities about their examination should be conducted online or offline mode. HEC Pakistan has already laid down policy guidelines about online assessments and examinations due to covid-19 in May 2020. Higher Education Commission has clearly mentioned in the online assessment and examination policy laid down for University examination in this pandemic situation that no promotion will be given to the students without any assessment it. Here are the key features of HEC Pakistan assessment guideline for online examination and assessments set previously in May 2020.
HEC Policy for Assessment and Online Examination
No semester will be wasted for the students may be asked to consider pass fail option if there is a prevailing situation of covid-19 there must be strong mechanism for prevention of cheating an permitted collaboration and plagiarism previously HEC has announced that open book exams open book exams with time window and open book exam without timed window in online mode can be conducted. HEC also has laid laid down examination policy that research paper type exercises can also be given to the students and oral exam and presentation must be conducted ad in this pandemic situation. Now this is latest announcement made on official HEC Pakistan Twitter.
The apprehensions of students were reviewed carefully in consultation with the Vice Chancellors of all the provinces and regions, keeping in view the difficulties brought about by the pandemic and opening of universities from February 01, 2021.
HEC Guidance on Examinations is available. In this policy, HEC already allowed universities to use their discretion to conduct exams, either on-campus or online as long as the chosen mode provides a fair assessment of students’ performance.
Universities should take stock of their “exam readiness”, i.e., technological readiness, managerial capacity, and the announced policy, and choose the best possible mode of assessment. Online exams either can be used if the universities administer ‘Open Book Exams’ or establish an invigilation system in a supervised environment. In this mode, universities will also have to use Turnitin to check similarity index with Web and the answers of other students. Further, viva/oral exam may be integrated in the assessment where necessary. On-campus exams can be used only under strict compliance with all Covid-19 health and safety protocols. Universities may also have to organize make-up classes for two weeks in case students consider the course coverage to be deficient.
Assessment of all courses requiring psychomotor skills, such as medicine, engineering, subjects involving lab/studio work must be held on campus. All students in a single course will be examined in the same mode i.e., either on-line or on-campus. Since March 2020, HEC has been continuously monitoring the pandemic situation and coordinated with the universities to minimize academic disruption and continue online education with quality safeguards.
The HEC Guidance on Online Readiness (#5) and Assessments and Examinations (#6) are available on HEC website and provide the requirements and minimum standards to be observed by universities.
