No.

KTU/ASST6(ACADEMIC)/3536/2020

Dated: 07.08.2020

CIRCULAR

Sub:- Conduct of Online classes during Odd Semester 2020-21

Ref :- ___________

Today we face a very challenging time due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19. Academic
Institutions are unable to deliver their planned teaching schedule in conventional methods.
But technology has improved to a point where anything can be obtained with the snap of a
finger. The University felt that we should leverage this fact to improvise our system of
education. An active initiative must be taken by all the stakeholders. The affiliated colleges and
teachers shall be willing to adapt to this method of teaching in such a way that

Students to learn from home and the teachers/mentors to guide the students from a
remote location
Continue with regular curriculum and lessons remotely without any loss of learning days
Students can submit assignments and assessments from home.

1. SETTING UP/DEVELOPING AN ONLINE LEARNING PLAN FOR THEORY SUBJECTS

1.1 Learning platforms

An online learning plan covers the teaching strategies, communication rules, devices, solutions,
and policies supporting online or blended learning in the educational institutions. A continuity of
learning plan is focused on the transitions of students from one type of learning to another as
their learning context rapidly changes. Continuity of learning plans not only involve the
technologies the college use, but also considers how the students will return to campus after
this situation ends. The required email id should be created for the online classes – preferably
with the unique id (KTU ID) as suffix. The attendance of the students shall be maintained by the
faculty handling the course using the above id. There are two kinds of online learning and
teaching that colleges will need to balance based on their circumstances: synchronous
(happening collaboratively and at the same time with a group of online learners and usually a
teacher) and asynchronous (happening at any time, not necessarily in a group, but with
teacher feedback). Colleges should not assume that synchronous teaching is only required or
even desirable in order to support effective learning.
It may be noted that the maximum time that a faculty can hold the students’ attention is limited,
when they are online. Another challenge is that peer learning will be missing in the online kind of
a model. Hence, online and blended learning provide opportunities for learners to work more
independently, expand their agency, and learn to use tools and strategies that they otherwise
might not have. Faculty can be trained on the flip classroom approach, where the lecture
contents are made available online. Some of it can be recorded by the faculty members and
some of it may be the resources available in NPTEL video. Let the students hear the lecture
according to their convenience. But when they are live with the faculty member, it can be
discussion kind of session. Study materials also can be provided to the students
For the students having issues with internet connectivity, Institutions can assist them / provide
them the resources. Teaching, handling assignments, grading and much more can be easily
done through Learning Management Systems (LMS). The following platforms are
recommended:
#Learn From Home. The Government of Kerala has initiated a project for linking Engineering
Colleges in the State with IT Parks through a Tele-Presence network. This state-of-the-art
technology enabled learning platform will connect 150 Hi-Tech classrooms in the Engineering
colleges in the State of Kerala. #Learn From Home is the Learning Management System (LMS)
under the SDPK platform (Kerala State Information Technology Infrastructure Limited, SDPK
infrastructure team and the LMS team from ICT Academy of Kerala) and can be used to
organize the various learning contents for the Students of APJAKTU. Faculty/student enrollment
to SDPK is through www.sdpk.kerala.gov.in. Faculty/student can consult the SDPK nodal officer
of the institution for more information regarding recording of video tutorials.
Moodle: Moodle is an acronym for "Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment".
It is a free and open-source learning management system under the GNU General Public
License. Moodle is used for blended learning, distance education, flipped classroom and other
e-learning projects in Colleges, Universities, workplaces and other sectors. With customizable
management features, it is used to create private websites with online courses for educators
and trainers to achieve learning goals. Moodle also offers cloud facilities which can also be
used.
Google Classroom: It’s a free web service, developed by Google for educational institutions,
aims to simplify creating, distributing, and grading assignments in a paperless way. The primary
purpose of Google Classroom is to streamline the process of sharing files between teachers
and students. It combines Google Drive for assignment creation and distribution, Google Docs,
Sheets and Slides for writing, gmail for communication, and Google Calendar for scheduling.
Students can be invited to join a class through a private code, or automatically imported from a
College domain. Teachers can monitor the progress for each student, and after being graded,
teachers can return work along with comments.
Piazza: Piazza is a learning management system which allows students to ask questions in a
forum-type format. Instructors are able to moderate the discussion, along with endorsing
accurate answers. Instructors also have the ability to allow students to post anonymously,
encouraging more in-depth discussion. It is also a free service and can be accessed by all. It
also offers a high rate of privacy and has strict policies against copyright infringement.
Open edx: Edx is another important player in the MOOC space. They are using Open edx as a
method to conduct courses. This is a Course management system. Not only can it stream many
subjects at a single time but also simultaneously do other tasks. Most of the cloud suppliers also
support open edx.
Video Conferencing Tools : Zoom Video Communications is an American remote
conferencing services company. Zoom provides a remote conferencing service that combines
video conferencing, online meetings, chat, and mobile collaboration. Zoom offers free video
conferencing for up to 100 participants, with a 40-minute time limit which is a perfect choice for
an online interactive classroom. Paid subscriptions are available to allow more participants,
increase the time limit, and obtain more advanced features. Apart from Zoom, other online
interactive video classroom options are Amazon Chime, Google hangouts and Microsoft
meeting.
Open source tools for recording video tutorials to distribute through LMS: If the teachers want
to use some of the open source tools and record it at their convenience and further distribute
through the LMS, the options available are YouTube, ShareX, OBS Studio, CamStudio,
VirtualDub, Simple Screen Recorder and Freeseer. Popular mobile phone applications in this
regards are VivaVideo, PowerDirector, KineMaster and Screencast-O-Matic.
1.2 Learning Resources
India is in the experimental phase of digital libraries. The majority of libraries provides
bibliographic access and act as metadata platforms that provide information on information. For
example, the National Digital Library of India, set up by the Ministry of Human Resource
Development, is a library of information for learners to find the right resources with minimum
effort. The Health Education Library for People (HELP), Mumbai; Tata Institute of Fundamental
Research (TIFR), Mumbai; Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; and National Center for
Science Information (NCSI), Bengaluru; have all made notable advancements. There are more
and more such outfits springing up.
The National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology
(NMEICT) a flagship initiative of the Ministry of Human Resources Development, aims to
leverage the potential of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in teaching and
learning process by high quality, personalized and interactive knowledge module over the
Internet for all the learners in higher educational institutions in anytime anywhere mode. The
details of the various initiatives under NMEICTE are listed below: SWAYAM: Massive Open
Online Courses, SWAYAMPRABHA, National Digital Library, e-PG Pathshala, Shodhganga: A
reservoir of Indian Theses, e-Shodh Sindhu: ejournals.
2. ASSIGNMENTS AND PERIODIC EVALUATION
Colleges that already use an LMS, ensure that remote logins are enabled, that each student
and teacher has their own login, and that your LMS provider is aware that there may be
increased activity or more licenses required. The students may be asked to submit the
assignment/quiz etc. conducted for the class by email from the same email id used to attend the
online classes to the faculty email id (used for conducting the online class). The assignments
shall be done at home in white sheet (Using a dark black pen), scanned using mobile phone
(Govt. approved apps like iscanner etc. can be used for this). These shall be valued by the
faculty member and the result of evaluation may be intimated to the students. The nature of
questions shall be to test understanding than to test memory. An answer for this cannot be
copied. In many universities, examinations will take the open-book format, and essay-type
questions are set to disappear. Multiple-choice questions, 2-mark questions, short-questions,
situation-driven questions, case studies, and many such changes will take place right at the
graduate/post graduate levels.

2.1 Basic guidelines to design and evaluate online work for authenticity
 Use more formative assessments that are designed to get students to work together and
use online resources.
Have a very clear policy on how to submit work online. Students who are given a precise
procedure are less likely to make mistakes in submissions, which account for many online
learning integrity violations.
Create more assignments that are collaborative. If the teacher is working directly with
groups of students on their work, it is far easier for the teacher to monitor what the
students are doing and to check their understanding.
Use plagiarism checkers whenever students have to submit individual work, and assign
drafts of parts of the work prior to a final submission. Most plagiarism checkers can
accept drafts of assignments to check against final submissions.
Create libraries and pathfinders for students to use as part of assignments, and then ask
students to quote from them as part of their work. This check will show how well they are
able to refer and cite work as well as reduce opportunities for copying the work of others.
Interview students about their work using a synchronous chat with audio or video feeds,
if possible. It is much more difficult to produce spontaneous answers when talking online.
Consider using MOOCs (massive open online courses) for certain topics or units. MOOCs
are designed to create learning experiences that are evaluated using more multiple-
choice and short answer assignments.

3. LABORATORY CLASSES
The Laboratory courses cannot be conducted as described above. Online databases for
resources are available through most library subscriptions. However, the briefing part of the
laboratory course can be done online. The Virtual Laboratory VLAB facility of MHRD (vlab.co.in)
(or VLABs of IITs) can be used for virtually conducting the experiments. The virtual laboratory
simulates a physical laboratory. A student can have simple 2D animations that can be viewed
on desktops, and advanced 3D experiences that he can view in VR headsets.

Virtual Labs project is an initiative of MHRD, under the aegis of National Mission on Education
through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT). This project is a consortium
activity of twelve participating institutes and IIT Delhi is coordinating institute. It is mentioned that
Virtual Lab implementation is a no cost process and will not create any financial burden to the
University/Institutions, as it is completely free and funded by MHRD. The coordinator, NIT,
Suratkal, Karnataka has requested the University to encourage and motivate the affiliated
colleges under APJAKTU to enroll as nodal centers of Virtual Labs. Based on the discussion the
University decided to proceed as follows:

The affiliated colleges shall sign the EoI in the prescribed format with one faculty as nodal
officer for the college.
A workshop will be arranged by the University for the CC/BOS conveners of
entire programs along with two/three faculty members of each CC/BOS. The coordinator,
NIT, Suratkal, Karnataka will lead the workshop.
The above members of CC/BOS are to map the available contents of VLAB according to
their curriculum and to identify the gaps/missing experiments.
They should train the faculty members of other Institutions for their respective programs.

All colleges can make use of VLAB for programs for which lab experiments are available in the
package. For experiments not available in the package, the faculty members of the Institutions
can prepare a video demo with the help of the technical staff and can upload through any
media. They can discuss with experts in the nearby colleges and can share the resources.
Students can utilize this facility as interim arrangement for doing their labs and the
faculty/technical staff can assist them for any clarifications.

4. ACADEMIC MONITORING

Based on the guidelines issued from the University, all colleges and faculty members are taking
maximum effort in this direction for ensuring proper academic delivery. However, there are
some complaints received individually from students as well from student organizations stating
that classes are/were neither conducted in few places nor is/was effective in some other
colleges. In view of this, the University decided to monitor the academic activities going to take
place for the next odd semester in all Institutions through its quality assurance cell. The head of
the department should monitor the academic activities in the department on a regular basis.

The University proposes internal e-audit instead of regular academic audit in this period of
COVID Pandemic. Internal e-audit to be carried out under the supervision of IQAC of the
college. IQAC coordinator should constitute suitable teams for each department. One team
should comprise 3 faculty members - one professor, one associate professor and
one assistant professor (may not be IQAC members). The frequency of internal e-audit will be 3
times in this semester, once every 1.5 month. This shall be done to trimester programmes
also. This e-audit shall verify the following documents:

Minutes of advisory meetings conducted online

Course Diary for all courses (softcopy)
Internal assessment details
Series test question paper, scheme of evaluation and sample answer scripts
List of students reported having connectivity issues and measures taken
Details of course materials uploaded
NPTEL/SWAYAM course materials recommended
Conduct of laboratory classes with relevant details
Regular assessment details of laboratory classes
Project (Mini project/Design project/Final semester project) progress review reports
Details of faculty evaluation done online and action taken on it
Details of MOOC courses taken by UG/PG students
Minutes of student’s grievances and appeal committee meetings
IQAC meeting minutes
Internal audit report verified and approved by the Principal

The audit team can also interact online with few students in each class through respective
advisers and get the following details:

Syllabus coverage
Conduct of labs
Approach of the college in addressing students grievances
 Availability of Faculty for all subjects
Any other remarks

5. GUIDELINES TO INSTITUTIONS

All Institutions are to follow the academic calendar and its schedule. As all of us are aware, due
to COVID-19 pandemic, we were/are forced to move in online mode with effect from April 2020.
As a standard operating procedure, all colleges are requested to adhere to the following
guidelines:

Set up a Learning Management System (as listed above)

Schedule academic activities as per the academic calendar
Ensure that the periodic assessments are systematically carried out
Conduct series tests covering the specified portions with a proper question paper
Ensure that all evaluations are done in time and assessment details are handed over to
students through online
Internal e-audit to be carried out as detailed above
Maintain the report about the curriculum transfer. The report should contain the portions
covered, details of assignments given, periodic assessments, feedback from students at
regular intervals for each subject (once in two weeks), documents regarding conduct of
test papers, conduct of practical classes and its regular assessment, online courses
recommended by the faculty member, etc. This report should be endorsed by the
respective HoDs and approved by the Principal.
The report of the e-audit is to be consolidated by the IQAC coordinator of the college and
should be presented before the IQAC meeting of the college. The copy of the approved
report along with the action taken report may be sent to the IQAC coordinator of the
University. The report of e-audit should be maintained by the IQAC coordinator of the
college.
Provide access to the IQAC coordinator of the University to the Teaching Learning
Platform to periodically monitor that the colleges are seriously conducting online classes
and evaluations and the internal e-audit.
Provide the provision for students/faculty to make their grievances independently. Such
grievances and its redresses shall be mailed to the University in time
Maintain regular contact/feedback with IQAC coordinator of the University by the IQAC
coordinator of all Institutions

6. ACTION PLAN: PHASE 1 (For existing students of all the UG/PG programmes)
An action plan is proposed for uniformity of academic delivery in all colleges as follows:
No. of
Sl. No Date Activity
working days
1 17/8/20 1 Commencement of classes and registration
Course selection registration and mapping
2 21/8/20 5
begins
4 27/8/20 9 1 module completed
 6 28/8/20 to 6/9/20 ONAM HOLIDAYS Assignment/Quiz/Viva based on first module
7 7/9/20 10 Reopens after Onam holidays
5 9/9/20 12 Course selection registration and mapping ends
8 18/9/20 18 Assignment/Quiz/Viva based on second module
9 25/9/20 22 Assignment/Quiz/Viva based on second module
Exam registration begins/ More than 2 modules
10 30/9/20 25
completed
First test paper based on first 2 modules (time 1 hour):
11 3/10/20 to 7/10/20
Maximum 50 % students at a time
12 7/10/20 29

Bijukumar R *
Director(Academic)

* This is a computer system (Digital File) generated letter. Hence there is no need for a physical
signature.