BIT-Sindri on Tuesday instructed all students to vacate the hostels and simultaneously suspended all academic programmes including the BTech semester exams till April 14 in view of the novel coronavirus threat, institute director Dharmendra Kumar Singh said.

BIT-Sindri is, however, gearing up for online classes.

“The arrangement for online classes have been made as per which special training for the faculty members was conducted so that the digital learning can be carried out during the vacation period also,” said director Singh.

The institute on Tuesday conducted a two-hour training programme for all heads of departments and faculty members on the campus on online teaching using Google Classroom and MyPerfectice platforms. Arvind Kumar, professor in charge, academics, conducted the training session along with BIT Sindri alumnus Gaurav Kumar. Faculty members were coached on things like preparing and uploading notes and video lectures and conducting classes on the virtual platforms.

MyPerfectice is an analytics-based personalised learning platform to enable students to carry out the digital learning and online tests are conducted twice every month on the basis of classroom teaching conducted at the institute.

“We conducted a primary training for digital teaching for the faculty members during which I explained the way of creating classroom using the Google Classroom platform,” Arvind Kumar explained. “Anyone who creates the classroom using Google Classroom can add their respective classes and upload the notes, lecture videos, give assignments and even conduct class tests.

“We will also use the another platform, MyPerfectice, for digital learning which is already in use for the students of the institute for conducting online coaching for various competitive exams, and training for using the platform for conducting online teaching for the course material was conducted by our own alumni Gaurav Kumar, who is associated with Myperfectice,” Kumar added.

Since February 2018, BIT Sindri through a 1987-91-batch-funded project has been carrying out online coaching for BTech students of the institute for various competitive examinations including Graduate Aptitude Test for Engineering (GATE), Common Aptitude Test (CAT) and the Indian Engineering Service.