Mumbai University issues guidelines for MCQ papers, suggests 25 to 40 questions to be answered in one hour

The Mumbai University has released a new circular that carries instructions for conducting the final year exams for various programmes for colleges affiliated to the university. In the circular sent out on Monday, the varsity outlined some rules regarding the formulation of multiple-choice questions (MCQs) for the exams. The notice signed by Vinod Patil, the controller of examination, said that the MCQs should be drafted to cover part of the syllabus taught in colleges until 13 March, 2020, reported The Hindustan Times. Nothing outside of that should come in the exams. However, repeat candidates must appear for the entire portion. The notice also explained the vision behind the formation of the group of colleges or a cluster. It said that the aim was to bring together “a group of affiliated colleges in a given geographical region offering similar programs and facilitate the synchronisation and coordination with respect to the execution of various academic and examination work”. The lead and affiliated colleges in this system are required to coordinate to form the question papers for the 2020 final year exams. The varsity has instructed there should be 25 to 40 MCQs in each paper. The one-hour exam will be of maximum 50 marks. According to Times of India, these in-depth guidelines were released by the varsity as lead colleges across clusters were coming up with varied plans. Preparing a question back of about 250 questions was proving to be difficult as the teachers lacked any back-paper material. Stating that teachers should make sure the other alternatives other than the correct option is absolutely wrong, the circular banned the usage of certain alternative types. The alternatives such as ‘All of the above’, ‘None of these’ or ‘None of the above’, ‘Other than those given as options’, ‘true/false’ and ‘a and b’ cannot be used in the MU exams. The circular also states that mock tests should be conducted to provide practice and feel of online MCQ examinations to students. Colleges have also been asked to prepare sample MCQs and provide these to students.

As per the Hindustan Times report, practical exams for repeater candidates are slated to begin on 15 September and theory exams will start from 25 September. Exams for new candidates will take place between 1 and 15 October.