IIT Kharagpur has decided to recall all second-year BTech students to the campus from early next year so that they can attend online classes from the WiFi-enabled hostels, said an official of the institute.
The institute had earlier allowed only students who were encountering resource constraints to come to the campus.
But as students outside the ambit of resource constraints are facing trouble in attending classes over digital platforms for factors like unstable connectivity, power outage, they too have been given the option of coming to the campus, the official said.
IIT Kharagpur “does not have the infrastructure to run hybrid classes” — allowing some students to attend the lectures in person, while the others will have the sessions live-streamed to them — and classes will continue to be held online now, the institute had resolved in a special senate meeting recently.
“We have plans to recall BTech second-year students irrespective of whether they are resource constrained from early next year. If they want, they can come according to the time slot they would be provided with and attend online classes while staying at the hostels,” said Dhrubajyoti Sen, the dean of students affairs.
“The students would have to be double vaccinated,” he said.
Five-hundred students, mainly from the second year who were not able to attend online classes because of resource constraints — lacking smart devices or could not afford data packs as the financial condition of their families had worsened because of Covid-induced curbs on economic activities — had been called in batches from August.
Students whose annual income was within Rs 1 lakh were selected then.
But as students outside the income band are too experiencing hindrance in attending online classes because of unstable connectivity or power outage at homes, all have been given the option of coming to the campus.
“We don’t know when we will be able to resume in-person classes on a campus that had to be shut twice over the past 20 months following a spike of cases. Permission is required from the Union education ministry for starting physical classes. But if students are not able to attend
online classes properly, then we have to take steps to redress their grievances,” said the official.
Teachers of IIT Kharag-pur teachers last week had written to the institute’s director V.K. Tewari, seeking reopening of the campus for offline classes from January because they felt that the learning of students was suffering in the online mode and the research output of teachers was being adversely affected.
Another official said the students of the second-year were growing impatient because some of them had already been recalled.
“Let the students now decide who among them wants to come,” he said.
He added that since the institute would be holding the convocation on December 18, the process of recalling has been fixed after this.
At this moment 3,000-odd students — BTech, MTech and PhD put together — which account for 20 per cent of the total strength are present on the campus.
