Coronavirus Lockdown: OU students urge varsity to conduct traditional classes before examination

Osmania University engineering students have asked varsity administration and colleges to conduct traditional classes before doing any examination based on the online classes, once the lockdown period is over.

The engineering students at Osmania University have requested the varsity administration and colleges to come up with a plan for conducting traditional classes, immediately after the lockdown is uplifted, before conducting internal, laboratory and external exams.

While responding to the online classes in an email to the Governor and Chancellor of the State universities, Tamilisai Soundarajan, engineering student, Osmania University said that the online classes are not serving the purpose and before conducting any exam there should be at least 20 days of traditional classroom teaching.

“Unlike foreign universities, who swiftly switched to online classes, there is no proper structure for conducting the online classes here. Engineering studies have a vast theory and are very technical and mostly based on problem-solving, circuit diagrams, derivations, and analysis of graphs; and there is no proper communication channel for transferring such knowledge to the students. Such studies, which require a step-by-step explanation of every topic, can only possibly be beneficial to students in traditional chalk-and-talk classes,” the students said in the email.

With the online classes, the knowledge is being limited to whatever is available on the screen. These classes through online mode are just turning out to be a collective document reading apps using virtual apps like Zoom, Google Meet, etc.

"While the faculty us trying there best to solve queries and problems of the students, there is a huge gap in the delivery of knowledge as the faculty is unable to get whether students are able to follow it or not. They are good at teaching in traditional classes and are trying to best efforts to fulfill the orders from higher authorities. It is just that it is not working out due to the lack of proper channels for communicating engineering studies,” the students said.

Leaving the decision on whether to continue the online classes further or not to the officials, the students said “We strongly urge to allow 20 days of usual classwork before any exam so that students can get the grip of subjects and fill the gaps. If still, the university decides to continue with its current plan of completing the syllabus in online classes only and then conducting exams immediately after reopening, that would be strongly condemned by all the students.”

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