The next course of action about projects, labs and so on have been halted for now: Sushmanth, SASTRA

These are first-hand student accounts on how our young population is managing to keep their exam prep or college course work going from the confines of their homes. In case you want to share your lockdown study experience, write to us at publish@shiksha.com.

Due to the outbreak of corona pandemic, my college Sastra Deemed to be university declared holidays on March 18 and for travelling, they have provided bus service for girls around Chennai. Initially, the holidays were declared till March 30. Our college has initiated online classes through Google Classroom. A timetable has been set-up for the designated branches and online sessions of four hours are being conducted in which students can ask their doubts regarding the subjects and discuss the same with the faculty.

These four hours classes are not sufficient to cover the syllabus. The teachers are recording the videos of their lectures but the quality of the audio and video is not good to understand the concept. The ongoing projects have been halted, and the next course of action about our projects, labs, and practical sessions have not been decided by the management.

College Application Process

One can apply to college through online and the application is available on the college website. One has to pay Rs 600 for the application to be submitted and the soft copy of the application can also be acquired by paying a demand draft of Rs 650 in favour of Sastra Deemed to be University Thanjavur. There are two streams of the counselling - Stream One and Stream Two. Stream One is based upon the JEE Main percentile and intermediate marks and Stream Two is completely based upon the intermediate marks. Once the rank list is released, the students are informed about the date of counselling.

The counselling begins in the first week of July. Stream One and Stream Two counselling are supposed to be done on the same date. As most of the application process is online nothing will be much disturbed by the pandemic but the dates may be changed as the JEE Main exam is being postponed. All the information is available only the Sastra website. The applicants are suggested to daily visit the Sastra website for updates.

Online Classes vs Offline Classes

In case a choice is given between online and offline classes, I would prefer offline classes because there is a direct interaction between the faculty and the students and also, the explanation process is quite easier than online classes. In some rural areas, the availability of internet services is not of high quality due to which the students cannot attend online classes and their syllabus cannot be completed on time.

Some of the colleges are also conducting online exams and it would be difficult for most of the students as they cannot access the internet properly. The students can utilise this time by reading books and spending time with their family as most of the students are living in the hostels.

• Due to this lockdown, there will a long-term impact on the Education sector as all the competitive exams are being postponed
• Also, the semester exams are being affected so the whole academic year is disturbed
• To bring the physical environment in the online classes the videos which are posted must be of the same faculty and also the material which is provided must be good and attractive
• The colleges should not continue the online classes even after lifting the lockdown because the offline classes are better for students in terms of interactive learning

About the Author:

Pulvarthi Sushmanth is pursuing BTech from SASTRA (Deemed to be University).