THIRUVANANTHAPURAM Engineering colleges in Kerala are planning phased resumption of offline classes by year end. APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University has prepared a draft schedule that slightly modifies the ongoing academic semester to accommodate a window for contact classes.
The university’s academic council, which met a few days ago, proposed an extension of the regular classes to provide facility for contact classes, including practical sessions, internal assessments and discussion on crucial theory topics in each engineering stream.
Students are likely to be permitted to the campus, one semester at a time, to adhere to the COVID-19 guideline of physical distancing. The end-semester examination will be conducted semester wise to prevent crowding.
The draft schedule envisages concluding the online classes of MBA (4th semester), BTech (3rd, 5th and 7th semesters), MTech (3rd semester), BArch (3rd, 5th and 9th semesters), MArch (3rd semester), MCA (3rd and 5th semesters), Integrated MCA (3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th semesters), MPlan (3rd semester), BHMCT (3rd, 5th semester) and BDes (3rd semester) courses on December 18.
Those of MBA (1st semester), BTech LeT (3rd semester), BArch (7th semester), and first semester PG and UG courses are also likely to come to a close on January 23, 31, February 15, 20 and 27 respectively.
Online revision
The contact classes for 7th semester BTech and 9th semester BArch will be held from December 28 to January 9. While online revision will be held from January 10 to 31, the examinations for the semesters will be conducted from February 15 to March 1.
Likewise, the contact classes for 3rd semester MTech, MArch and MPlan, 5th semester MCA and 9th semester Integrated MCA will also begin on December 28, while that of 5th semester BTech, BHMCT, BArch, 5th and 7th semesters Integrated MCA will resume on January 11. The resumption of offline classes of the 1st semester MBA (January 25), 3rd semester BTech, BHMCT, BDes, BArch, BTech LeT (February 1), 1st semester PG courses (February 22) and 1st semester UG courses (March 1) has also been planned.
The commencement of the next semester will be staggered with that of some courses slated for March 1 and others on April 1. The university will stick to the conventional pen-and-paper mode for its end-semester examinations.
According to official sources, the schedule of the contact classes is subject to the government’s approval. The university Syndicate will take the recommendations of the academic council for discussion next week.
