Covid 19: PEC announces next semester to be online

Right from the beginning of this pandemic, Punjab Engineering College Chandigarh has been thinking ahead and figuring out the way forward during the pandemic time. More than a month ago, we had felt that opening the campus with all 3300 students would not be possible till November, and we must plan for an online semester. We had a virtual open house meeting with all faculty members where we sought their opinions on how we could conduct an online semester. Those suggestions were collated, discussed further with Heads of Departments from operational/administrative perspective and a final proposal was taken to Senate, which approved the same yesterday.

I am writing about it here so that other institutions who are yet to take a decision may benefit from our thought process. Of course, it must be kept in mind that each institution has its own context and its own constraints. And hence one cannot copy another institutions' formula and implement it as it is.

While a lot of faculty members feel that on-campus education is of higher quality, the problem was that there is no clarity on when we could start online classes. We could have postponed the semester by a few weeks if there was a reasonable assurance that we would be able to open the campus fully in due course. But if we have no assurance, and our own reading of the situation tells us that a fully open campus may not be possible till November (perhaps next year), there is really no point in waiting. We must start our semester at the usual time, which is last week of July, and it will have to be in online mode.

Modes of online courses:

We first defined how online courses could be conducted, and we figured that three models would be appropriate for us, besides a mixed model. They are:

1. Online – External: In this mode, the department announces an external course to be equivalent to a course in our curriculum. Students register for the course with the external agency/platform. These platforms include Swayam, Coursera, edX, Harappa, etc. Note that some platforms offer shorter courses, and therefore, the department may declare a set of 2-3 courses to be equivalent to a PEC course, and the student would have to register for those 2-3 courses. As an aside, UGC and AICTE are pushing for this model in Covid times. They encourage that 20 percent of all curriculum be covered through such courses where the external platform gives a certificate and the institution allows that course under its credit-transfer policy. There is also a possibility that they may increase this limit to 40 percent. We were earlier thinking of considering this mode with credit transfer (that is, the students will only get credit towards graduation requirement, but not any specific grade, and therefore will not count towards computation of CGPA). However, the final Senate decision requires that in courses conducted in this mode, the departments would still carry out an end-semester exam for all those who have received the passing certificate from the platform. And a letter grade will be assigned to the students based on that exam.
2. Flipped Classroom Model: Like the previous mode, the department will find one or more courses as equivalent to a PEC course. However, there is a local instructor, who expects the students to have gone through the material prescribed. And then the instructor will conduct a weekly tutorial or doubt clearing session. The instructor will also give assignments, quizzes, and other forms of evaluations, including mid-semester and end-semester exams. This is likely to emerge as the most common mode of delivering online education.
3. Online – Internal: In this mode, the instructor takes all lectures oneself and takes continuous evaluation throughout the semester. Instructor may use a combination of technologies to deliver online education. These could include recorded lectures or live streaming of lectures. In case of recorded lectures, there would be live sessions for doubt clearing. Lectures could be recorded using webcam of the PC, or could be a usual lecture but in an empty classroom, or a Powerpoint presentation with a voice over. In case of a lecture in the classroom, we can even ensure that there are a couple of token students in such classes given that half our students are from Chandigarh.
4. And finally, there can be mixed models, doing some topics through online – internal model, and other topics through a flipped classroom model.

Since our faculty members will be delivering the online education for the first time, we wanted to make sure that they have enough time to learn new techniques and conduct the course at the same time. And hence the course load needs to reduce. We will offer less courses this semester than what we usually offer, and in particular, expect most courses with small registration to be offered using Online - External model in which only exams will be conducted by PEC for grading purposes.

There will also be training of faculty members in online teaching and learning processes, both in terms of technologies to be used as well as the pedagogy to be used. Also, we will be procuring licenses of any software specifically needed and is not available free.

To minimize the number of courses to be offered, we are asking the departments to allow MTech electives to be offered as electives to BTech students as well. The incoming 4th year batch would not have the option of minor or specializations. Of course, they can use the period to do such courses from various online platforms and build strong credentials in whatever area they are passionate about.

We are also reducing the number of courses to be registered by 3rd semester and 5th semester students by one. We believe that students anyway have additional stress of online, and if we can reduce their load by one course which they can do in a future semester (our curriculum has very low load in the 4th year), that would help tremendously. Each department will decide which course can be postponed. This decision will be taken based on whether a course is per-requisite to many future courses, and whether the course is difficult to teach in an online fashion (many complex lab experiments, say).

We have several common courses across all MTech programs. They are in AI/ML, IoT, Maths, etc. These courses are offered by multiple instructors. They are short courses (fractional credits). We are asking the departments to coordinate and find appropriate online courses and offer them in Online-External mode, with one instructor responsible for final exam and grading.

We are also asking all the departments that for major and minor project courses as well as MTech projects, they should consider assigning projects which can have software component, designing, simulation, and other such components which can be more easily done while staying at home.

The labs are an issue in many courses. We are asking each department to look at the virtual labs site and see what all is available that can be used in our courses. Alternatively, there is a hope against hope that we will be allowed to bring in a couple of hundred students at a time to the campus during the semester. If that happens then students come to campus by rotation, and finish their labs in a small period of time. If nothing else works, we will go with just the live demonstrations of labs being video recorded and shared with students.

For the conduct of exams, the current hope is that we would be able to bring in all students to campus in November for on-campus exams. But we will need to conduct mid-semester exams and it is possible that we may have to conduct even final exams online. Also, we will need to conduct many quizzes and other evaluations online. So a committee has been formed to look into technology support for online exams. I may add that in a recent video conferencing session by Coursera CEO with several vice chancellors of India, they had mentioned that if we get into their "Coursera for Campus" program, it would be possible for an instructor to author exams and conduct it with online proctoring and plagiarism check, etc.

In any online education strategy, the most difficult aspect is to take care of students who do not have Internet access at home. We are working with multiple strategies to deal with this. First, if there are Internet cafes or Common Service Centers (CSC) nearby, students can go there to get access to online lectures. We will be making sure that all synchronous learning, exams, tutorials, etc., are as per a schedule announced by the Institute. This will enable the students to plan when to go to a place with Internet access. This, of course, would not satisfy everyone. Some students who belong to financially weak backgrounds and are getting fee waivers from the Institute can get an additional financial support to pay for Internet access (if payment was the only issue, and Internet access was otherwise available). Lastly, we will allow such students to come back to campus and stay in our hostels. We are hoping that 10% of our students can stay back in the hostels due to these reasons and the government guidelines would permit that. These students can use our computing resources as well as Internet access for their online lectures and other materials.

There is a plan to have a lot of online activities by all student clubs and technical societies. They should not feel that the online semester is only for studies. The extra curricular activities should be even more than what we normally have in a semester. And we have the experience. Our students ran a super-active calendar of online activities after we closed the campus in March.

The placement activities will be completely online. We really don't have a choice here as no company wants to travel at this time for campus recruitment, and it fits in very well with our plan for an online semester. Any training of students for placement activities will also be conducted online.

Mental health issues are becoming more serious when we have so much anxiety and uncertainty. To provide support for our students at home, we are looking at options for providers of counseling online and the system will be in place before the semester starts.

The MTech admissions are being done jointly with all NITs, and they are expected to join in the last week of August. The BTech admissions are being done through joint counseling with all NITs and IITs, and as per current schedule expected to join around 1st October. So we will have to plan something special for freshly admitted students in terms of joining online, etc.

There are many other parts of the overall plan, but the plan is also evolving, and we will keep relooking at all our decisions as we know more about the progress of the disease.

Indeed, one of the problems of planning in these uncertain times is that by the time you reach a consensus, the situation on the ground has changed. I remember that when we started planning for the next semester 5 weeks ago, the assumption we started with was that we can bring in about 10% of our students in hostel in August, 20% in September, 30% in October and 40% in November which is our normal state (about 60% students stay off campus). But in these five weeks, we are not so sure of bringing everyone back on campus in November, and indeed, my personal proposal today would be to plan for an entire year to be online for residential institutions.

We would be happy to receive any suggestions from any of you.

Foreign Universities may enter India virtually

Why do a lot of people go abroad for higher education. There are many reasons, and I say them in no specific order.

1. If you have any skills other than doing well in exams, you may not manage admission in any good university in India (and there are only a handful of them). And in such a situation, if you can afford to study abroad, you would go out.

2. Even if you are skilled in taking exams, you may be unlucky on that one day, and you may not get admission in any of the Tier 1 institutions. So you consider studying abroad (typically next year).

3. You want to emigrate to a country where you think you will lead a more comfortable life. Indeed, this is a common reason as the number of students to a country varies drastically as they change their immigration policies.

4. You want to study a subject not so popular in India, or a combination that is not available in India.

What is clear is that students or families have to be either very rich or they have to take loans and to repay those loans you need to be able to work in that country after your graduation. Some universities do have need-blind admissions, and they do provide some scholarships to enable students from places like India to study, but such scholarships are very few, particularly at the under-graduate level.

The online degrees are slowly changing that. Now, there is an option for Indian students to study "abroad" at a lower cost and even if one takes loans for those costs, the loan can be repaid with Indian salaries. However, before Covid, an online degree, particularly at the UG level, was not in demand. There were student doing Masters online, but a UG degree sitting at home is considered low-quality, both from the perspective of poor learning of academic content (no peer learning, no direct contact with professor, etc), as well as from the perspective of lack of campus life (sports, other extra-curricular, learning about different cultures).

But Covid is changing those perceptions and business models. With all the US universities forced to teach online for half a semester, the online education no longer appears to be poor quality. If MITs and Stanfords of the world can teach online, even as an emergency measure, there must be something good about it. (Actually, they have been teaching online for a long time. They have been live telecasting their classes, and/or recording their lectures and making them available for later viewing.)

But what about the campus life. And this too is about to happen. Campus life within your country while you study online from a far away university.

The universities abroad are facing a problem. They offered admission to international students, but can't let them join in the coming semester. Either the university is not opening up and plans to have an online semester, or even if they open, there are going to be travel and other restrictions because of which the student cannot join. They can offer a deferred admission to the student, but they fear that the student may look for other options.

So one of the ideas on the table is this: Contact a good university in the country from where you have admitted many students. Have a deal with them that they will host your students for a semester only for the campus experience. So they stay in the hostel, eat in the mess, use all the sports facilities, sit in the library, use WiFi network, and interact with so many other students around them. The education will be completely online directly from the foreign university. (May be they can have a deal to use some labs too, or the deal may include proctoring exams.) Not exactly the experience these students were looking for, but better than learning from home or doing nothing for a semester or two.

And if this idea works, that is, if the students like this model, this can quickly gain a lot of traction. And that would enable a large scale virtual-entry of foreign universities in India. That is, they can have a large number of Indian students, do all the academic activities online, and hence have no physical presence in India. So no regulatory hurdles. No need for any permissions. And some enterprising campuses offer "campus support" within India. These could be campuses of existing institutions who could build more hostels. Or these could be campuses of institutions that are closing down. They would be happy to have such a business opportunity.

The foreign universities, particularly those, who are beginning to offer online degree programs, would welcome such a combination as it allows them to increase the admissions substantially while retaining their focus on education and not having to worry about campus services.

What is happening is unbundling of university services as I mentioned in my previous blog and that is making these new options available to students. Students may not want to be on the same campus for all 8 semesters. They may want to spend a semester or two in the university campus abroad. They may want to work for some semester(s) while studying online. All those combinations can be served easily in the unbundled world.

Is this a good thing for the country, or should we be concerned.

My take is that we should be concerned. If such a degree takes root in the popular imagination, and industry accepts these graduates (which is likely, industry will only worry about your skills and knowledge), the numbers could be large. If 50,000 additional students (over and above those who are going abroad today) take up these programs, it would impact quality of admissions in our Tier 2 institutions. Our Tier 1 institutions will not see any impact in foreseeable future as face to face classes in top colleges (that too at hugely subsidized tuition) will continue to be preferred over online education.

Unbundling of Higher Education

Before I start, let me make it clear that I am only stating what I am sensing as unbundling of higher education. Any such transformation will have positive and negative impacts, and the impact will depend on the context. As of now, I don't understand in what contexts, what kind of unbundling may be positive or negative. With these, let us begin.

30 years ago, who would have believed that an airline ticket would not include some refreshments, some luggage being checked in, and a few other services. But over a period of time, we have seen the "extras" being stripped off and sold separately. Can the same thing happen to university education. What would it be like to have an unbundled university.

A university is arguably the most complex entity in terms of the range of services it provides. Besides delivering education (which as we will see below is itself a bundled service), doing research, providing consultancy to industry, it provides student residences, food services, additionally runs cafes and restaurants, reading rooms, libraries, entertainment options, a large sports system, transport, medical care, counseling, guest houses/hotels, placement services, and so on. In India, they may even have a full township with residential colonies for faculty and staff, with all municipal functions being carried out by the university.

Why does a university provide so many complex services and not focus on its core strengths. Why should it not ask the students to rent an apartment outside the campus, and live on their own. Why would it not ask the students to depend on medical care available in the city. Every such service can be justified by saying that it helps improve learning. If a lot of students live together and eat together, they will interact with each other and more peer-to-peer learning will take place. If students don't have to go far for medical help, they can spend more time on studies, will have less stress, etc. But surely, some of these services add lesser value at higher cost. Why shouldn't a university look at each service as how much does it cost, and how much it adds to the quality of education. Or at the very least, unbundle the charges, and give flexibility to students to pay for some services and not for the other. Of course, all universities have unbundled residential and food services. But all other services are part of tuition or compulsory fees.

The universities do this bundling for a couple of reasons. One is to ensure that they tightly control the quality of every related service. Further, bundling allows a service provider to increase charges by an amount higher than the cost of that incremental service (but only if the service provider has some market control,which the top ranked universities do). On the other hand, when we look at government supported universities, often the argument is that if the university will not provide all the services in a subsidized bundle, the poor will not be able to afford it.

But things are changing. Even if we look at the most basic function of a university - providing education - that itself is facing unbundling. If you look at online service providers, for example, the basic service of learning a course through online recorded lectures and a bunch of exercises, completely computer based and no human intervention, could come to you for free or at a very low cost. You want a certificate of successful completion. Well, they will throw in some limited form of evaluation, usually computer graded, some limited form of identity check (just taking a picture before the exam and password for logging in), charge you extra for it, and you get the certificate. Even our own Swayam, charges Rs. 1000 for the evaluation, while learning is free. You prefer interaction with other students and teaching assistants, you can pay a bit more for that access. You prefer that the certificate is signed not just by the platform but by a university, you go through some additional exams, this time proctored online through some AI based software, and you pay more. You want access to the faculty for some synchronous sessions, contact him/her during some "office hours",you further pay more. So, even the most basic function of a university is being unbundled with the result that the learning is available to everyone free or at a very low cost.

Unbundling in education is happening in other ways as well. A lot of students in US are doing basic courses at a community college who provide education without any bells and whistles at a very low cost, and then transfer those credits to regular universities, thereby spending less number of semesters at regular universities thereby reducing costs.

Online education is causing unbundling in other interesting ways. Can we unbundle campus services. Can I be a student of a university in US, but use campus services provided by some other entity in India. So I would register for all courses in the US university, obviously all lectures online, submit assignments, and have all academic activities being directly provided by this US university. But I need campus services. I want to interact with other students face to face. I want sports, culture, entertainment. I want the experience of living in a hostel. Can I check into a campus who will provide me all this for a cost. Believe it or not, it is starting to happen. I can then choose which "campus" to stay in which semester. May be some semesters, I will save cost and stay at home itself. Universities can then have some relationships with these providers of "campus" services, and see if they can also provide some academic support like labs, or face to face advising, etc.

Other forms of unbundling are more obvious. Do I need to seek admission for a "degree" program or can I just seek to do an odd course or a few courses. Again, online courses are allowing for such unbundling easily. In an on-campus face to face classes, it was too much of an overhead to have an "admission" process for just one course. If employers have an independent way of judging my skills and knowledge and I don't need a university degree for getting their attention, it will result in more and more people doing a few courses from diverse places and collecting course-wise certificates rather than a degree. Universities must consider this as an opportunity and not a threat, since this also encourages older people coming back to university for courses to upgrade their knowledge and skills.

I foresee that in future, even for a degree program, a university may not have any content of its own, or any other infrastructure. It will pick and choose from vast number of courses available online and ask its students to select from those. It will have agreements with service providers who can provide campus like services in different parts of the country/world. In fact, students can stay in different parts of the world in different semesters and what a great learning experience it will be. (Minerva Institute already does that - let students spend different semesters in different countries.) So without owning any content and without owning any infrastructure, it would be able to provide quality education and degrees to students.

This future is exciting, though there are too many unknowns and hence a bit scary as well.