Pascal Nunes

We are currently having our sixth semester exams. What are the purpose of exams? I am sure you would agree that they are supposed to test your knowledge of the subject. It is very disapointing that the Mumbai University has promptly forgotten this. They ask the same questions every few years. All the exams need you to memorise and just write out "expected answers". What do I mean by "expected answers"? Well, the situation is such:- Students are well aware of what points the examiners are looking for. You write thsoe in the form that the examiner expects, and you can get good marks. Now don't you dare to experiment here. The answers may be outdated, you may be well aware that the answers are no longer relevant, but don't protest.

What do I mean by answers are no longer valid? Think writing about how a punch card machices. The time when computer programs were stored on punched cards.

Even things that are valid, I do not feel need to be memorised. I cannot see how can writing about things like HTML code for a web-site be important to Web-technology. We do need to know HTML, but needing to know every tag by-heart is not funny. Needing to know all the classes in Java-script, the object structure of the DOM model... Its an exhaustive list Those should ideally be provided in form of a reference.

In my opinion, test should test how much you have understood of a topic. How much can you apply that knowledge to solve problems. Definitely not how well you can memorize some diagram or a standard answer.

Will Mumbai University improve? I don't see that happening in near future. Although I really hate to do this, I have to get through those exams. So I am off to memorise a few things.

--- My Exams ---
So far they have gone well. ADBMS(Advanced Database Management Systems), did not go as well as I would like to too. Yet, I think I can say that all were just fine.