With the final exam season nearing closer each day, the University of South Africa (Unisa) is reinforcing its student examination rules, particularly for its upcoming October/November 2022 online exams.
The University has implemented and stabilized its official examination submission platform, where students must submit their answers to the exam questions.
Students are granted 30 minutes to upload their answers on the platform, which up until recently, had been working well.
However, students have claimed to be experiencing technical challenges while submitting their examination answers via the official submission platform on myExams. This has been acknowledged by the institution and an alternative submission link has been created.
Unfortunately, the university has noted that some students are "abusing" the alternative link, which remains open for longer than 30 minutes to accommodate those who may experience technical challenges while submitting.
"The submission logs show us that some students come onto the official submission platform late, are unable to submit via the myExams platform and subsequently use the alternative link to submit their late examination answers scripts. Late coming is not acceptable and students risk not being able to submit their answer scripts before the due time," reads an announcement posted on Unisa's website.
The university strongly reminds students that once the 30 minutes have passed, they are to stop writing immediately, stating that the provided half an hour is to deal with whatever technical challenges may arise while students are uploading.
"Due to the stability of the myExams platform and our students' familiarity with the platform, submissions from the alternative link will only be accepted for those experiencing technical challenges. For this reason, acceptance of submissions made on the alternative link will strictly be applied after checking student logs," says Unisa.
The University has also been made aware of and strongly condemns the use of strong and "abusive" language used by students when communicating with university staff members, which goes against the Student Disciplinary Code. The institution further elaborates that "such communication may subject students to disciplinary proceedings."
The alternative submission link will only be made available to students for 30 minutes for the uploading of their exam submissions. Queries received after the 30 minutes of the official examination duration time will thus not be attended to.
Submissions made after the official examination time will be rejected and will not be marked, concludes Unisa's announcement.
Students experiencing loadshedding should note this announcement on myUnisa.
