Online classes not enough: 

Students Urge OU administration to hold at least 20 days of traditional classroom teaching ahead of exams

Even when faculty is trying to solve a problem using paper and streaming it, there is a huge gap in delivery of knowledge — Student

City Bureau  Hyderabad  19.04.2020

Osmania University engineering students urged the varsity administration and colleges to reconsider the plan of conducting internal, laboratory and external exams immediately on reopening of the colleges when the lockdown is lifted.

Giving feedback on online classes in an email to Governor and Chancellor of the State universities Tamilisai Soundararajan, students said that the intention of conducting online classes was not serving the purpose for them. They wanted at least 20 days of classroom teaching before the conduct of any exam after reopening of the colleges.

“Unlike foreign universities, which swiftly switched to online classes, there is no proper structure for conducting the online classes here. As you know, engineering studies have a vast theory and are very technical and mostly based on problem-solving, circuit diagrams, derivations and analysis of graphs, and there is no proper communication channel for transferring such knowledge. Such studies, which require a step-by-step explanation of every topic, can only possibly be beneficial to students in traditional chalk-and-talk classes,” the students said in the email. Stating that online classes are turning out to be just collective document reading using apps like Zoom, Google Meet, they said knowledge is being limited to just whatever there is on screen. “Even when the faculty is trying to solve a problem using pen and paper and streaming it through a camera, there is a huge gap in the delivery of knowledge as the faculty is unable to get whether students are able to follow it or not. And it is not a fault on the part of faculty, who are usually well versed and best at teaching in traditional classes, as they are definitely putting their best efforts to fulfill the orders from higher authorities. It is just that it is not working out due to the lack of proper channels for communicating engineering studies,” the students said.

Leaving the decision on whether to continue the online classes further or not to the officials, the students said “We strongly urge to allow 20 days of usual classwork before any exam so that students can get the grip of subjects and fill the gaps. If still, the university decides to continue with its current plan of completing the syllabus in online classes only and then conducting exams immediately after reopening, that would be strongly condemned by all the students.”