PANAJI: Given the spike in Covid cases, BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus, Zuarinagar, has for now decided to continue conducting its current semester online. It is also considering the possibility of continuing this up to January 2021, maybe even beyond if the need arises. The institute commenced the first semester for the academic year 2020-21 online on August 17.
Director G Raghurama said that the institute had been using Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) even before the pandemic and so it was easy for teachers and students to make the shift entirely to the online mode in a very short time. Classes for all courses were held live using Google Classroom and Google Meet.
By mid-March, students across programmes were asked to vacate hostels. Most students continue to be off-campus, barring a few PhD students who need to access laboratories to conduct critical experimental studies as part of their research.
The director said that whenever students have to return on campus, it is the remaining PhD students who are likely to be allowed first, possibly around December 2020. On the other hand, students of BE, MSc and ME programmes will not be back on campus till December end, he said.
“As of now, we are evaluating the possibility of getting them back to campus by January. If the situation improves, the campus may reopen for physical classes by January 2021. However, looking at the current spike in Covid cases across the country, we are preparing ourselves to look at the possibility of online classes continuing for some more months after January,” said Raghurama.
He said that a final decision in this regard is expected to be taken around October or November.
Raghurama said that one of the challenges in conducting off-campus classes has been managing courses with laboratory components. To overcome this challenge, a combination of simulations, virtual laboratories, video demonstration and assignments are used to conduct the experimental sessions.
The institute ensured that students who were in the final year did not face undue delay in their graduation during the pandemic.
“Faculty members first focused on students who were graduating and conducted their final evaluations in May. The online evaluations held were in the form of viva, take home assignments and presentations. Since most of them were either doing a thesis or undergoing internship in industries, they were already being assessed on a continuous basis,” said Raghurama.
He said that as BITS places emphasis on continuous learning and evaluation, the weightage for the ‘final component’ was in any case less than 30% or so, even before the pandemic.