250 Mumbai University law students 'fail' due to moderator's silly mistake

Add one more to the Mumbai University's list of bloopers. This time, it was a silly mistake by a senior law professor whose job it was to moderate 950-odd law papers to ensure the first assessment was right. The exact opposite happened when she confused the box meant for total revised score with the box meant for the number of marks revised. As such, more than 250 of the 950 students who had the misfortune of getting their papers moderated by her have 'failed', scoring in single digits. This has set the result announcement back by three days, and cost the university time and money with the papers having to be moderated one more time.

The blunder comes right after the Onscreen Marking (OSM) debacle, which led to a holdup in releasing results of thousands of students.

OSM — introduced at the insistence of the vice-chancellor who has since been asked to 'take a leave' — caused a number of glitches in the digital marking system.

The professor, who teaches at a suburban college, made the error while moderating papers of Semesters VI and X of three- and five-year LLB courses, respectively. "She entered the marks added to the existing score in the column meant for entering total marks," a varsity official said requesting anonymity. For instance, a student who had got 60 marks after first assessment was given 66 marks post-moderation. But the moderator entered only '6', that is, the increase in marks instead of the total. So the student's score showed 6 marks in that paper.

Papers of 47,356 students of various courses under the law faculty have been evaluated onscreen this year. As a rule, a tenth of the papers in three categories of students — those who get over 60 per cent, those getting below 35 per cent, and those getting pass marks — are moderated after being assessed.

"We got to know of the anomaly after we found that some students scored in single digits in one subject despite scoring well in other subjects, which is unusual. After looking into it, we realised this was a human error by the moderator. Over 950 papers had to be moderated again one by one and it was discovered that more than 250 had been wrongly marked," the official said.

DNA had earlier reported about several law students complaining of having scored poorly despite doing well in the paper. Over the last three days, students affected by the glitch have been queuing up at the university.

Arjun Ghatule, in-charge director, Board of Examinations and Evaluation, confirmed the goof-up. "We scanned over 950 papers and corrected the errors. Revised results of these students would be up on the website by Sunday night. The Board of Examinations would take a call on what action should be taken against the teacher," said Ghatule.