CBSE circular regarding Open Text-based Assessment (OTBA)

Further to the circular Circular No. Acad. 78/10.12.2013, the following may please be noted with regard to the conduct of Open Text-based Assessment (OTBA) in the subjects of Geography, Economics and Biology of Class XI:

1. The schools will be provided the questions along with the relevant theme/text already provided by the CBSE.
2. Thetext and the question/s will be providedto schools through E-mail on their registered email-ids.
3. The text and question/s will be mailed in the first week of February 2014. Their Marking Scheme will follow soon.
4. The schools are compulsorily required to use the OTBA Questions provided by the CBSE though email (to be inserted in the Question Paper prepared by the school)
5. Schools are not allowed to completely change the OTBA question provided by the Board. However the schools can make minor modification in the OTBA question to the extent of factual errors, grammatical mistakes, etc.
6. Due care has been taken by the CBSE while preparing these questions and under no circumstance; the question should be replaced by the one of a different difficulty level/testing objective.
7. Please ensure that the relevant text with questions is also provided to the students..

Note to the teacher:

Teachers may also note that the questions based on the OTBA are open-ended. The objective of these questions is to allow students to present their perspective on the given question/swith reference to the OTBA material, concepts learnt during the teaching-learning session in Class XI, discussions held in the classroom and their own awareness of the given theme/text.

It is important that a student must be able to present his/her arguments logically, coherently and cogently. Hence while teachers are correcting their answers, it is important to be open minded about the students' views. The answers included in the Marking Scheme supplied give only a few indicative points to a particular question. Due credit should be given to the relevance of the content, analysis, logical presentation of arguments and conclusions drawn in the answer. This may be brought to the notice of concerned teachers.

We would love to hear your opinion and views on this in the comments below.