UPDATED: June 26, 2021 14:27 IST IIMC Director-General Sanjay Dwivedi at the college campus; Photo by Yasir Iqbal 1. Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), New Delhi 1. Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), New Delhi Guru Speak | Professor Sanjay Dwivedi Director General, IIMC, Delhi "This was a year of great learning. In many ways, it changed our perspectives about education, communication, and life in general. The lockdowns and restrictions imposed on our movements because of the pandemic, in fact, enabled us to explore our untapped potential. It helped us to break free from the conventional thought process. This is what has been the legacy of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC)—to set the trend. Of course, like all educational institutes, we also shifted to digital mode of learning almost overnight. Our first major challenge was to conduct the entrance examination as we had to postpone it when Covid-19 first hit the country last year. As most of the competitive examinations were postponed, we also waited and could not start the regular session in August as scheduled. Eventually, instead of conducting the entrance test on our own—as had been done in the past—we approached the National Testing Agency to conduct the online examination in September. We plan to continue with this model of entrance examination this year too. Though the regular session started late—from November—we did not cut short the duration of the programme. The classes were conducted on Google Meet and regular assignments were given to students. In fact, all assessments of students happened based on their performance in completing these assignments. We had planned to do some practical classes in April 2021, especially for broadcast journalism, but had to cancel these plans because of the second wave of the pandemic. If the situation improves, we may think of doing that again. Some teachers faced certain issues in the beginning during the conversion to virtual classrooms, but the students were natural. After all, they were born in the digital era. The pandemic has taught us that the physical classrooms are not the only mode of teaching and learning and periodic examinations are not the only mode of assessment. This has been a great catalyst towards innovating effective methods of imparting communication lessons. In addition, I must admit that we missed students in the campus. The vibrancy of campus life and face-to-face interaction with peers are crucial for overall development of a student, more so for a mass communication student. This batch of students lost out the opportunity to explore the campus life of an illustrious institute like IIMC. That certainly makes me sad. But I would add that this batch got more opportunities to interact with the global media and communication experts.”