Online education: Pune University developing AI-based system to analyse active participation of students

Pune: Students leaving session in between... some joining in late... poor internet connectivity resulting in interruptions... students not asking questions... inattentiveness of students. These are common problems faced by teachers and educational institutes while they are running online classes for students during the coronavirus pandemic. To overcome these issues, the Savitribai Phule Pune University is developing an Artificial Intelligence-based Online Management System to analyse the active participation of students during the online education sessions.

Due to the continuously evolving COVID-19 situation, it is unclear yet when the lectures in colleges and university will start. The university has announced that except first year, classes for all other students will be starting online. The idea of hybrid education – a combination of online and offline education – is also being considered where some students will attend classes in institutes and some students will attend the same lecture online. Presently, the university has roped in experts to develop the AI-based platform and asked its faculty to prepare interactive content for online education.

SPPU officials said, “The platform being developed by SPPU will ensure that the students attending online sessions will be completely engrossed in the teaching. Students should ask questions to teachers, make sure their queries are resolved and also inquire whether the answers given by them are correct or not. This will give a ‘feel of the classroom’ to students.”

The platform will analyse how much time students have spent watching the videos. It will also help to know whether the student has asked questions and how much time the student was actively involved during the session.

Dr Nitin Karmalkar, Vice-Chancellor of SPPU said, “The online content for education should be interactive. We are using artificial intelligence technology to analyse how much students have understood. We can have a better knowledge of which content the students have understood or they have any difficulty with. We are also considering the poor internet connectivity problems in rural areas and preparing the platform to address this issue too.”