Thousand students affected by Nestor malfunction (UPDATE)

Seven out of twelve exams cancelled

Thousand students affected by Nestor malfunction (UPDATE)

Due to technical problems, Nestor shut down on Monday afternoon while approximately a thousand students were sitting their exams or were just about to start. Twelve exams were affected, seven were cancelled.
By Şilan Çelebi
2 November om 18:10 uur.
Laatst gewijzigd op 22 November 2020
om 16:22 uur.
November 2 at 18:10 PM.
Last modified on November 22, 2020
at 16:22 PM.

Five exams could still take place once the problems were resolved. This is the third time in a few weeks that Nestor has malfunctioned. Last Monday, Nestor was down for half an hour when approximately 1,400 students were taking their exams.

‘We’re very sorry this has happened’, the UG says in a statement. ‘If you’re all set for an exam and it’s cancelled last minute, it will have a major impact on you.’

Reboot

The university tried to fix the problems on Monday by rebooting the servers, but that did not help. ‘The load on the system immediately increased again.’ Nestor was updated overnight to increase its capacity.

That seems to be working for the time being. Exams taken on Tuesday morning are going well, according to the university. The cause of the problem is still being looked into, however. The faculties are to ensure that the cancelled exams are rescheduled as soon as possible and that students are kept informed.

Cancelled

Among others, approximately fifty students who were about to take the international human rights law exam were affected by the down time. They were unable to enter the test environment for the first thirty minutes and when they finally made it through to the first question, they were told the exam had been cancelled. 

The international business exam for first year economics and business economics students was also cancelled, as was the asset pricing exam. 

How to proceed?

Student union GSb is furious that this has happened again. ‘This is the foundation of online education and even that is not going well. What will happen if the university wants to continue its focus on online education after the corona crisis?’ says GSb chairman Marinus Jongman.

According to the GSb, preventing malfunctions during online exams is paramount and worrying about cheating can wait. Several faculties have sent an urgent letter to the UG board about the rise in cheating cases over the past months.

The UG and the GSb’s reactions were added after the article was first published.

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