Pune (Maharashtra) [India] Apr 1 (/Hunk Golden and Media): FLAME University, the pioneer of liberal education in India has successfully moved to online classes for over 200 courses, including those as diverse as calculus, psychology, finance, economics, cinematography, music and visual art. Over 100 faculty members have been seamlessly conducting their classes as of March 31, 2020.
"The coronavirus pandemic is a serious and alarming situation. Our first priority is health and well-being of our stakeholders, but that has not held us back from providing the best to our students. We are working in coordination with our faculty to give everyone the best support during this time. It is definitely a challenging situation but we have adapted well", said Dr Dishan Kamdar, Vice-Chancellor.
A Digital Learning Task Force was formed to train and support faculty members to transition to conducting courses online. G-Suite products and Google Meet was chosen to centralize class scheduling and for providing tutorial support for faculty members and students. Two temporary studios were set up on campus as well.
"When I received a communication from the Vice-Chancellor about conducting online classes, I got a little worried because my course is hands-on and I thought it would be challenging for me to teach my course online. However, we adapted with some new techniques to keep multilateral communication and feedback intact. For example, I included a question after each slide of my online course. This approach worked well as it kept students engaged", said Professor Hoshiar Mal, Assistant Professor.
For assessments, many faculty members leveraged FLAME University's Learning Management System, to create online quizzes to engage students remotely. The FLAME University library is also digitized, which makes it possible for students and faculty to access all subscribed databases and digital resources from off-campus locations.
"FLAME University's virtual class room operations are brilliant. I belong to the same education sector and I am aware of the concept of delivering educational services online but it used to be a supplement to class room activity in schools and colleges in our country. FLAME rose to the challenge of lockdown and executed it as a mainstream delivery mechsm within just a couple of days. Delivering what's being planned is not easy. Observing my daughter's participation I can endorse that it's engaging, intense and sustainable even on full day schedules like the real campus day. I sincerely thank the faculty, support staff and the students who made learning effective this way. Well done FLAME", said Polkampally Sameer Kumar, Parent of PolkampallySarayu, undergraduate student at FLAME University.
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( With inputs from ANI )