Institutes are taking steps midway through the semester to switch to full-fledged offline classes following a dip in Covid cases.
St Xavier’s University, which had started classes in a blended mode (a combination of offline and online classes) in early February, fully switched to in-person classes on Monday.
IIT Kharagpur, which has been holding classes over digital platforms, will start calling the remaining students to the campus from March so in-person classes can be resumed at the earliest.
IIEST Shibpur said on Sunday offline classes would resume at all levels from March 21.
A notice issued by St Xavier’s University read: “In partial modification of the earlier notice dated 7th February, all classes of all semesters… will be in fully physical mode in the university campus with effect from Monday 28th February.”
Ashis Mitra, the registrar said, “Physical classes at all levels have started from Monday at the university.”
While postgraduate classes at the university are being held entirely in the offline mode from February 7, undergraduate classes of the even semester (2, 4 and 6) were being held in a blended mode – classes were held on the campus on two days and on digital platforms on the remaining days of the week.
Vice-chancellor Father Felix Raj had said on Sunday that they had decided to switch fully to in-person classes from Monday because they had not observed any adverse outcome of on-campus activities, which were held in a truncated fashion, and Covid cases had been on the wane across the country.
“Three more months are left in the ongoing semester before exams are held. We are changing the mode of classes mid-semester so teachers could make up for whatever students have missed out on over the past two years through a combination of regular and remedial classes on the campus,” the VC had said.
Tamal Nath, registrar of IIT Kharagpur, said they would start recalling all students in phases from March as part of their plan to resume offline classes.
“We don’t have any plan to launch hybrid classes because all students are going to be called to the campus to enable the start of physical classes,” Nath said.
“All UG & PG and PhD coursework classes shall be held in offline mode from 21st March. The 1st, 4th, 6th, 8th and 10th semester undergraduate and dual degree students, 2nd and 4th semester PG students and the doctoral scholars…. coursework are hereby informed to attend all classes in the offline mode,” says a notice issued by the IIEST.
