Kharagpur: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur has developed an e-classroom software,’DEEKSHAK’ for conducting online classes. The software will be of help to teachers who have been facing several difficulties in conducting online classes. The software has been developed by Prof Raja Datta, Department of Electronics & Electrical Communications, and his team of postgraduate students.
The Deekshak platform utilises one-way communication for bandwidth efficiency. Therefore, instead of all students participating in a class as in meeting software, the focus is only on the teacher and the learning materials, reported Data Quest India.
“It is now a single session platform where the teacher would concentrate on the screen with the teaching materials while being able to view queries on a live chat box where each student can send in their queries,” Datta was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.
During the class, students can ‘raise their hand’ to ask a question, which the teacher has to permit to address it. Apart from sharing the documents, the teachers can also update notes on a real-time basis through the platform.
The software has been tested at IIT Kharagpur during the initial phase of social distancing with about 40 hours of classes being conducted with a total of approximately 300 students.
“We need platforms for addressing challenges faced by India and Deekshak is designed to cater to Indian academia, be it the bandwidth issue, or user interface or storage,” said IIT Kharagpur Director, Prof Virendra K Tewari told The Indian Express.
“Deekshak is one step towards that goal through which the teachers would be able to offer more personalised interaction while focusing better on the act of teaching,” the director further added.
IIT Kharagpur has applied for the copyright registration of Deekshak and is in search of a start-up company for its maintainability. It is a low bandwidth web-based software that can be accessed using any computer or even on mobile phones.
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