Bhubaneswar: About 40% of the students of IIT Bhubaneswar are now on campus and attending classes in hybrid mode i.e. simultaneously for both, a class in‐person and virtual mode.
In the virtual mode, students can access live stream of the lecture. The mechanism has been enabled with the newly constructed Pushpagiri Lecture Hall Complex (PLHC) with electronic
gadgets.
Minister of Education, Dharmendra Pradhan, had inaugurated PLHC last month.
Speaking on the initiative, Prof Raja Kumar, Director said, “For those students who are
attending the lectures in person, these are like any modern lecture halls with facilities for
multimedia projection, document camera, PowerPoint presentations and use of other
gadgets like a tablet. Now in order to facilitate live streaming of the lecture, the board work
and the faculty member giving the lecture including the interaction, video and audio capturing
and streaming facility is used. This will facilitate streaming of the lecture live to a remote
student including on an interactive or one way streaming session. We use MS Teams running
on a laptop for the same. A faculty member can also interact with a remote student in the
streaming session. On top of this, the faculty members are encouraged to use own innovative
methods over and above this basic mechanism.”
Apart from SOPs, which needs classroom seating as per the social distancing norms and wearing of a mask, the institute adopted the following additional mechanisms for safety:
i) Students have fixed seats and are discouraged from exchanging.
ii) All the windows and doors of the lecture hall are open for full ventilation.
iii) Students are encouraged to avoid public transport like buses and use own
bicycles on the campus.
A large class is split into two-three groups occupying different halls. A faculty member gives a lecture physically in the hall of one group and the same is replicated live in the other
groups. A faculty member divides his/her physical presence taking turns across the
groups.