After students of National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli (NIT-T) began an online protest against their end-semester exams being held online, the Students' Council held meetings with the administration to resolve the issue. While the students argued that not enough online classes were conducted and that most of their books and other study materials were left in their hostel rooms that they had to leave before the lockdown, the administration, led by Director Dr Mini Shaji Thomas, says that they have uploaded requisite study material and have conducted online sessions to clear doubts all through June.
Speaking about it, NIT-T Students' Council President Snehith Galla says, "Before the protests, we had sent a mail to the Director and Dean listing all our problems, including that the material being uploaded on the online portal was insufficient and several departments hadn't uploaded enough material to study, after conducting a survey among the students. The Students' Council had requested the faculty to conduct online classes instead of just uploading notes, after which the number of classes were increased." Snehith is a fourth year Mechanical Engineering student who just appeared for his final exams online.
However, several students have said that materials of only some subjects were uploaded on the institute's online portal and they have been left to their own devices to figure out how to appear for the exams. "PDFs of only two courses in our syllabus for this semester have been uploaded on the portal. How do we study the rest? In some departments even 50% of the syllabus wasn't completed during the two months we had classes, before the lockdown," said a student, on conditions of anonymity. This student sent us screenshots of the portal showing the same.
Another student cites a survey that was conducted to determine whether students wanted to appear for online exams. "The survey, which was conducted among 2,161 students and almost 2,000 said they don't think exams will be a good idea," said the student, on conditions of anonymity. A copy of the survey result is available with Edex and it states that 704 first years, 621 second years and 592 third year students are against the online examinations.
Snehith, who spent the entire lockdown on campus, says, "We are now discussing with the administration whether it is possible to send the study material in the students' rooms through courier." Snehith adds, "The administration doesn't want the students to get less grades due to the COVID crisis and suffer when they go for interviews in the future. But on the other hand, several first years don't have laptops and some come from really underprivileged families — there are students who came after attending Anand Kumar's Super 30 classes."
