College managements are now using online media to attract students to attend classes. Gadag district received a poor response as students have a plethora of problems. Colleges in the whole district received poor attendance both on the first and second days. Many students escaped after seeing Covid testing vans in their campuses. Hence many colleges are using Whatsapp groups calls, messages, video calling and sending mails to convince parents and students to attend classes. The college staff are now sending the documents of Standard Operating Procedure sent by the Government.
Some teachers are sending WhatsApp group messages asking the students to come to the college. Gadag district has 10 aided, 9 government colleges and among them, nearly 3500 students are now in the third year degree and a total of 1000 students are in the last semester of engineering in the whole Gadag district.
The teachers opine that virtual classes can be taken online but virtual practical sessions will be difficult to some extent and hence they want students to come and attend for science and engineering students. Now teachers are on a mission to get the students back to their classes and reduce the number of online learning students. Lakshmeshwar's SKSVMACET Engineering college has a group counsellors to check the status of students' academic progress. They have a special counsellor for every 12 students after the lockdown.
Now, these counsellors are sending emails and contacting through WhatsApp groups to encourage students to attend classes. Gadag's Kanakadas Shikshan Samiti staff is offering sweets to those who came to the college to attend the classes. Lakshmeshwar SKSVMACET college principal Udaykumar Hampannavar said, "It is just the second day and the students are slowly coming to the college. We are also contacting each and every student through our counsellor teams and we have also arranged buses from Hubballi, Gadag and Savanur to those who are ready to attend the classes with their parents' permission".
KSS college staff said, "We are giving pedha to all who came to college after a couple of months. Some students were fearing to go for COVID test and tried to escape from the campus, but our staff called them and convinced them by offering pedha and asked them to call other classmates to attend classes".
