Admiralty University of Nigeria, Ogwashi-Uku-Ibusa, Delta State, has held its matriculation ceremony and begun second semester examination.
The matriculation was held last weekend for all the newly admitted students all over the country via the Zoom application
This was due to the insistence of the university management that academic activities must go on in order not to disrupt the calendar.
The university also began an online semester examination on Monday June 1, 2020.
All the students from the three faculties and 13 departments commenced their examinations from home.
The assessment would be done with the use of software known as ‘Class Marker’ with inbuilt securities against malpractices.
According to the vice chancellor, Prof. Paul Omojo Omaji, “The university decided to deploy the technologies because it needed to ensure that COVID -19 pandemic did not slow down academic pace, plans and destinies of the students.
“Admiralty is the first or second institution in the country to hold virtual matriculation ceremony and examinations because the school wanted to set standards, prove its uniqueness and circumvent the effects of coronavirus.”
“Everyone is at liberty to be concerned that students are going to sit for examinations away from the university, how would you ensure there would be no examination malpractices?
“The software we have chosen, Class Marker, has got so many inbuilt securities, and the questions are structured in such a way that you only open one page at a time.
“One page may contain only two questions, if a foolish student wants to look around to get people to help out, by the time they come to help the page has gone to the next one.
“Secondly, we have what we call invigilation by zoom application. So all the students are going to be on zoom, and there will be examination task force monitoring.
“We have told them that looking left or right while writing the exam would constitute examination malpractice. Everyone is going to be monitored.
“Not many universities have tried this before, we have gone an extra mile, there is a university that conducted exams on-line, it used Zoom. This institution has gone an extra mile to ensure that the integrity of this university is not compromised”, Prof. Omoji added.
Although established by the Nigerian Navy and an international partner, the vice chancellor said the school is a conventional university and open to the general public.
He said the university presently has three faculties namely the faculty of science, management sciences and the faculty of arts and social sciences.
He added that faculties of Engineering, Medicine, Law, Marine Sciences amongst others would takeoff at due time.
