ALERT from MINISTRY! Online education in IISc, IITs, IIITs, IISERs and NITs

Union Minister of Education Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ chaired a meeting with the Directors of India’s top educational institutions to review the status of online education and virtual laboratory courses by these Institutes, a government release said. 

The meeting was held via video conferencing in which Directors of Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIITs), Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISERs) and National Institute Of Technology (NITs) were present.

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The Directors of the institutes today apprised the minister of online teaching, which the institutes have been undertaking since the commencement of initial lockdown in March 2020, the release said. 

Some institutions have also developed their own app for online teaching and evaluation, the release said. In order to deal with the problems of connectivity, lecture contents were made available even for later use which could be download from anywhere and studied, the release said quoting the heads of these institutes.  

“Teachers have interacted through online classes with their students and guided them,” the release said. 

The union minister also stressed on the need on maintaining the quality of education in these Institutes of “National Importance” apart from taking adequate safety measures for managing COVID-19 situation.   

The status of COVID cases in the campus of these institutions and handling of situation arising thereon by these Institutes was also discussed. 

The meeting was also attended by Minister of State (MoS) for Education Sanjay Dhotre and Higher Education Secretary Amit Khare. 

The Institutes also gave details about their COVID-19 management strategy and vaccination drive being undertaken for the campus residents. 

In the meeting, discussion was also done on the research undertaken by these institutions in tackling Covid-19 situation.  

The Minister commended the institutes in developing low cost RT-PCR machines, kits, ventilators, mathematical modelling of predicting the trend of COVID-19 and successfully placing them at the disposal of State Health Departments.  

Many research products have been commercialised through the Incubation Cells and start-ups set up by these Institutes, the release claimed. 

In line with the National Education Policy 2020, many institutions have also started new department and multi- disciplinary programmes, the release said. IISc Bangalore and IIT Kharagpur are soon to start courses in Medical sciences.