Covid 19: How is PEC dealing with graduating batch

On Tuesday, I posted on different social media a summary of what Senate of PEC has decided regarding the 4th year BTech students. Within a day, there have been more than 1000 likes, a large number of questions, several emails, phone calls, and it is continuing. So I thought of writing the entire thought process behind our decision on this blog.

The best question I faced was whether I recommend the same decision for other institutions. And I want to make it very clear that each institution must take its own decision. We too talked with several academic leaders around the country to see what their thought process was, and in their context what was their decision. And we certainly learned from such discussions. But at the end, we have to take decisions that are best in our context.

Background:

Due to spread of Covid-19, the Institute was closed on 14^th March, 2020. We were the first institute in Chandigarh to announce closure. The decision at that time was that we may be able to open in April, and we will restart from where we left off, complete all lectures, have exams, etc. We would compress the summer vacation, and the next semester will start on time.

However, we always have worked on multiple scenarios simultaneously. So there was this possibility that we may not be able soon, and we may have to go online. We had created a taskforce for online lectures even before we announced closure, on 11th March.

Within a week of closure, it became apparent that we will not open in April, may not even in May, but only in June. It was then felt that in order to not delay the next semester, we will need to compress the current semester. Since we already had started planning for online lectures, Senate took a decision that all remaining lectures shall be delivered online, and students will be given exams when they come back to campus.

Senate announced a new schedule according to which exams were to be held end of June, or beginning of July, and the result was to be announced by 25th July, and the next semester would start on 3rd August, only a week late.

When we reviewed the situation last week, it was felt that we will not be able to conduct exams of all students in June/July. We may be able to conduct exams in July for half the student body with social distancing but not everyone. And even this was optimistic.

When we had announced our last academic schedule, an unwritten goal was to ensure that our final year students graduate around the same time as those from other fine institutions around us, mainly IITs, and NITs. This was to make sure that our students are not disadvantaged in any way in joining the jobs they had secured. Many of these institutions had announced in March/April that they will reopen in June and their students will graduate by July.

But in the last couple of weeks, some of these institutions have decided that they cannot reopen in June. And if they still wanted the final year students to graduate by July, they cannot depend on exams being conducted in campus. And if something else was to be done (like online exams), that may as well be done early and graduation may happen in June itself. Hence, we too had to take steps to complete the 8th semester evaluation by June.

Options for Evaluation:

In our discussion with academic leaders around the country, we came across the following mechanisms that were being considered:

1. Pro-rate marks obtained in continuous evaluation till mid-March. It essentially amounts to considering just those marks and assigning grades based on that.
2. Having an online exam whether MCQ or writing long answers, scanning them and uploading them.
3. Take home exams in which they are allowed to read books, search Internet, but cannot just do copy and paste. Plagiarism is not allowed. They need to write answers in their own words.
4. Asking every student to do a different term-paper or a project in each course, submit that paper/report, and have an online presentation to the instructor.
5. Taking an oral exam through a video-conferencing.

Before we discussed these options, it was agreed that we will not compromise on our academic principles. We wanted to make sure that grades must reflect student learning.There could be some reduction in content. There could be somewhat liberal assignment of grades, but still to a reasonable extent, grades assigned at this time should be comparable to grades assigned in all other semesters and other batches.

An obvious corollary is that the evaluation mechanism should be reasonably fair. It should not allow or encourage unethical practices in which a large number of students may show performance that does not reflect their learning. It should also take into account our specific context in terms of students’ background, availability of Internet and computing devices to them, faculty-student ratio, our infrastructure, etc.

Having an online exam, whether MCQ or long-answer type will be a problem for us with a significant number of students coming from Jammu and Kashmir where government does not allow 4G based Internet (or even 3G). Also, unless we can hire the services of an online proctoring company, it will be very difficult to control unethical practices. And hiring such services is not only time consuming in government, it was impossible for now, as we have not been allowed any non-salary expenditure for now.

Take home exams require setting up of question papers which do not test just recall and do not have questions whose answers are easily available through searching Internet. So some novel exercises would need to be assigned. This is not something that comes to faculty easily. Also, while this would work for students with intermittent Internet access, it would not work if there is no access at all. Also, students have complained that they had left their lecture notes and books in the hostel and do not have any material to prepare for the exams.

Assigning all students a different term paper or a mini-project is a challenge for large classes. And whenever there is an evaluation which is different for each student, there would be perception of unfairness and the student body is unlikely to accept it.

For the same reason, an oral examination over video conferencing will have a strong perception of favoritism even if we can assume that faculty would try to be as fair as possible.

This leaves using the continuous evaluation till mid-March as the only viable option for the final year students. Note that for the other batches, we can still wait for an on-campus examination in July, but if we wish to let the final year students graduate in June, there does not appear to be any other suitable option.

It may be added here that UGC recommendations include an option that marks in courses of this semester could be assigned based on marks received in courses of previous semesters, if exams cannot be conducted this semester. This recommendation essentially means that if we cannot hold an examination for Machine Learning course, we may assign marks in this course based on the marks that the student received in a course in Thermodynamics. It violates our academic principle that the grades must reflect the learning of the student, and hence not been considered as an option.

Pass/Fail:

However, if we consider only marks obtained till mid-March (and any mini-project or term- paper assigned till then, but submitted/graded later), there is one obvious concern regarding fairness. Several students are likely to claim that they would have performed better in the final exam. And it is indeed the case that many students do quite well in exams and not so much in the continuous evaluation. And it is not just the question of student performance but also of student trust. Students trust examinations more than quizzes, assignments, and any other in-class evaluation. Out of about 40-50 percent evaluation done in different courses, only about 20-25 percent (half) was mid-semester examination. To assign a course grade based on only one mid-semester as the only trusted component will only result in too many complaints.

If there is no satisfactory model of examination that can result in a fair and consistent gradation which can be used for finer grading, the only solution then is to implement coarse grading. And hence it was proposed that for all courses registered by final year students in this semester, the grading will only be in terms of Pass/Fail.

Specifically, based on continuous evaluation done in each course, the instructor will divide the class in three groups: Those who would have certainly passed if the semester had continued without interruption, those who were borderline, and those who would be assigned a Fail grade based on those marks. One possible way to do this would be to use the distribution of marks as if they are the final marks and assign grades as an instructor does every semester. For those who are assigned an A/B/C grade, the instructor will put them in Group 1. For those who are assigned grade ‘D’, the instructor will put them in Group 2. And those who are assigned the grade ‘F’, the instructor will put them in Group 3.

Now, all Group 1 students can be assigned a Pass grade.

Group 2 students are asked to prove additional learning in some way. One way to do that is to ask them to complete an online course from Coursera, for which we have licenses. The instructor can specify what are the relevant online courses corresponding to his/her course. If the student completes such an additional learning within a deadline, they would be assigned a “Pass” grade. Otherwise, they are assigned an “Incomplete” grade, and they can be treated same as Group 3 students for final grade.

Group 3 students should not be assigned a “Fail” grade, as they could have done much better in the end-semester exam. They should be assigned an “Incomplete” grade for now, and they will be asked to come to the campus whenever it is safe to do so. We could organize a couple of doubt clearing sessions between these students and the instructor to help them out, and then give them what would have been the end-semester exam in the normal course. Based on the performance in that exam, they can be then assigned a Pass/Fail grade.

For the project courses, the students may be asked to continue work from home in terms of background literature reading, design, programming, simulation, etc. A report may be prepared by them and submitted by 1st week of June. The departmental committees for BTP evaluation may meet online and students can give their presentation online. If sufficient work has been completed, the committee may assign a “Pass” grade to the students. If it is felt by the committee that more work needs to be done (for example, fabrication, prototyping, which could not be done from home), they should assign an “Incomplete” grade to the students. These students would be allowed to come to campus as soon as it is safe to do so, and given a week or two to complete the project work and then evaluated again for a Pass/Fail grade.

Most students to graduate in June: If we consider the previous years’ grading patterns, it is expected that about 90 percent of students will be able to pass all courses in June and can be given a provisional degree certificate. The remaining students may be able to complete their respective degree requirements in July. Note that for such small numbers, we may not need to wait for the university to open fully, and we can invite them as soon as travel is possible. Each instructor or BTP committee can work with the few students and come up with a mutually acceptable schedule for their evaluation. So even those who have “Incomplete” grades should be able to receive the final grades and hence provisional degree certificates in July (if final grades are all Pass).

No change in CGPA: Assigning Pass/Fail grades to all courses of graduating batch would imply that their CGPA will not change. Whatever was their CGPA at the end of 7^th semester would remain their final CGPA. It was told to us that some organizations require a separate performance evaluation for each semester to be submitted and hence an SGPA for each semester will be needed, we decided to give a letter to each student that their SGPA for the 8th semester may be treated same as their CGPA after 7th semester (which is effectively what Pass/Fail is achieving anyway).

Option to Students:

It is expected that most students would accept this as a desirable solution to the extra-ordinary situation that we find ourselves in. The only possibility of loss to them is if they were confident that they would do better in this semester compared with the previous 7 semesters and that their CGPA would improve. Note that it is unrealistic to assume that a student’s CGPA can increase by more than 0.1. So, if a student has a CGPA of 7.6, the proposed grading will keep it at 7.6, while the usual grading had the possibility of increasing it to 7.7 (along with the possibility of reducing it to 7.5). Given that most students have already received a job, this small possibility of increase is not going to give any advantage to them.

However, if any student insists on regular grading, we allow such a choice to him/her. But this choice cannot be course specific. Either they get Pass/Fail grades in all registered courses, or they get the usual finer grades in all registered courses. And as we have mentioned in the beginning, finer grading is only feasible if there is a proper on-campus evaluation. The choice will be sought before any grading is done in any course.

Therefore, for all such students, there will be an end-semester exam in all courses that they have registered for, with usual weight and other policies announced in each course. Similarly, for the Project course, the usual expectations of work should be considered by the departmental committees and students should be given sufficient time to complete their work before an evaluation takes place.

It may be noted that if many students opt for regular grades, then it may not be possible to conduct their end-semester exams in June/July. When it was about 10 percent students with “Incomplete” grades, we could organize exams on a case to case basis, ensuring only a handful of students come to campus on any given day. But if the number is going to be much larger, we will have to centrally schedule it and do it when it is safer to handle larger groups on campus. And, therefore, such students may not receive their provisional degree certificates in July or even in August.