Coronavirus impact | Staggered classes, no hand holding & masks: Here’s how college life could change in 2020

Entering college in 2020? If you are a movie buff and are dreaming about love at first sight at the campus, holding hands with your partner or eating lunch with your crush, your plans could get shattered. While amidst the coronavirus outbreak, the academic sessions for 2020 may begin by July 2020. But college life won’t be the same.

Social distancing would have become a new norm, so hanging out with friends in the campus could be restricted to some extent. Masks and gloves (in some research-led roles) would become the new normal.

Institutes across India told Moneycontrol that no student will be allowed to take off their masks during their time in the campus nor will shaking hands and hugging be allowed.

A lockdown to minimise COVID-19 spread has led to a delay in the academic schedules across campuses. This includes examinations, admissions as well as research submissions. The disruptions are expected to continue for the next three to six months.

What about examinations?

Be it the large institutes such as the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) or other colleges, how academics and campuses function could see a change.

“A few IITs may have to cancel semester examinations to minimise the virus spread. When it comes to Ph.D. candidates, the viva or oral assessments could be held using video conferencing tools,” said a senior IIT professor.

Mahadeo Jaiswal, professor and director of IIM Sambalpur told Moneycontrol that the institute is among the first IIMs of the country to have conducted the remaining of their MBA 2020 admission process online which included the written exam and personal interview.

“While the written examination was conducted through a third-party online proctoring system where students could login and write their answers in 300 words limit within 20-minute slot, the Personal Interview are being conducted directly by IIM Sambalpur through Zoom video conferencing VC,” he added.

IIM Sambalpur had more than 400 students who appeared for the written exams online while sitting at their homes. The answer scripts are currently being evaluated by the faculty members of IIM Sambalpur.

How will cheating be curbed?

Here, the third-party online proctoring portal served only as platform for the students to appear and give the examination. Jaiswal said that the online proctoring system allowed each student to be monitored and invigilated through an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based tool so that they did not receive any external help for writing their answers.

The interface also captured the retina movement of the prospective candidates. The exam disrupts even if an examinee attends a phone call. The recording of the student’s writing their exam along with the answer script were then sent to IIM Sambalpur for scrutiny.

Keeping internet disruption in mind, this institute allowed students a 30 minute buffer time for the exam as well. In case a student was unable to attend the exam due to internet connectivity issues for long hours, they would have been allowed to appear for the exam in an alternative slot. However, the questions in each slot would have been completely different as it is randomly allotted.

Riding on the heels of the success of this process, Jaiswal said that IIM Sambalpur decided to conduct the end term examinations of first year students online as well. The batch of 2019-2021 had to leave campus and return home before their examination started due to the lockdown.

"We will now have 100 students appearing for the end term exam of 10-12 subjects through the same online proctoring system while sitting at home from different parts of the country," he added.

This will be the first-of-its-kind initiative taken by any IIM across the country.

Also Read: Live updates from COVID-19 pandemic in India

Similarly, IIT Gandhinagar told Moneycontrol in an emailed response that while it has no plans to cancel semester evaluations, the norms for social distancing are being discussed and a final decision would be taken.

At IIM Ahmedabad, the spokesperson said that the mid-term examinations for the postgraduate programme in management will be postponed since the institute will only commence the academic year in July 2020.

Will there be delays due to exam result postponement?

Across college campuses, there could be a delay of anywhere between one to three months for the new academic year to begin. There could also be dropouts if exam results are delayed.

“All institutes are offering only provisional admissions. If there is a delay in getting the mark sheet or if the candidate has failed in the previous examination, their admission would be revoked. So there could be cases where students may find their friends missing from college after a few months because of this reason,” said the head of admissions at a Mumbai-based technology institute.

Though some flexibility would be provided in submission of mark sheets, delays post September 2020 would not be acceptable in most colleges across India.

For smaller institutes that do not require competitive examinations, COVID-19 would also led to shrinking of the class strength. The director of a West Bengal-based commerce college said that social distancing within the classroom would mean that the number of students admitted in 2020 would reduce by 20-25 percent.

"Our campus is small and each class has about 100 people. We cannot hold multiple lecture sessions in a day for the same subject/module so the idea is to cut down the class size," he added.

Opening up in stages

IIT Madras spokesperson told Moneycontrol that the decision on semester examinations is unclear right now and it will depend on when public transport is opened up across India.

“Our plan is to open up in stages, starting with the final-year students and research scholars who are about to submit their theses,” they added.

Further, the institute spokesperson said that if the final-year students are able to successfully return and complete their requirements, it will give IIT Madras the learning and confidence to ask the students and scholars from other years to return in batches.

Across 993 Universities, 39,931 colleges and 10,725 standalone institutes in India, a similar rule is expected to be followed.

A phase-wise opening up of college campuses would mean that educational institutes would be able to gauge student response and also minimise risks from the virus. For instance, if only one batch comes in and a student tests positive, other batches would not be impacted by it.

Maintain a safe distance

While the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry has advised educational institutions to not neglect social distancing even if the COVID-19 spread is minimised, each institute can decide on what guidelines would follow.

Moneycontrol spoke to eight different institutes, in the areas of humanities, engineering, management, commerce and design, to understand what would be the proposed changes.

At IIT Madras, the spokesperson said that since the institute is planning to open first with only the about-to-graduate students, the students completing projects will be dispersed across the hundreds of labs in the departments and will be able to maintain adequate social distancing. Everyone will be wearing cloth masks.

“The first and foremost is to operate the hostels and messes at a small fraction of full capacity so that no one shares rooms, only a fraction of the rooms are occupied, mess tables are sparsely occupied at any time. The number of students taking exams at any given time will be small and we will seat them few and far apart. We are also equipping restrooms with hands-free taps and soap dispensers,” said the institute.

At IIM Sambalpur, Jaiswal said that the temperature of every student, faculty and other members will be screened regularly. However, he said that social distancing in classrooms may not be possible as the institute cannot reduce the number of students attending a class. But, the institute will limit frequent visitors to the campus and restrict going in and out of the campus.

Another Delhi-based college known for its arts curriculum is planning a staggered lunch break depending on the student profile.

“The idea is to not crowd the cafeteria. Hence, lunch breaks would be spread across in such a way that students sit apart. No hand-holding or sitting next to each other may be permitted for the next six to eight months. Sharing plates and food would also be discouraged. But this would also mean lunch breaks get shorter,” said the chief administrative officer at the college quoted above.

This institute is planning to seek help from the Delhi government to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) for the canteen staff as well as the gymnasium and sports room administrators.

Across the institutes, it is likely that the lecture timings could get longer to make up for the lost time. A regular review would be done every month to evaluate if the processes are working smoothly.

Amidst this, if any student tests positive, the colleges have also decided that they would shift to e-classes for the next two to three weeks till the campus is completely sanitised and close contacts are quarantined.

Cultural activities and fests where students have an opportunity to meet fellows from other colleges are likely to be suspended for the next six months in anticipation of crowding in campuses.

For now, COVID-19 would have made college campuses turn into 'all work and no play' zones.