ISSUE DATE: July 5, 2021 UPDATED: June 26, 2021 14:23 IST Dr Fr Abraham Vettiyankal Mani, Vice Chancellor, with students at Christ; Photo by Sandesh RaviKumar 1.Department of Computer Science, Christ (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru 1.Department of Computer Science, Christ (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru Guru Speak | Ashok Immanuel V. Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, Christ (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru Ashok Immanuel V, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, Christ (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru; Photo by Sandesh RaviKumar "When the pandemic led to the closure of colleges for the 2020-21 academic year, firstly, our IT department trained our faculty in using platforms such as Webex, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. We gave teachers freedom to choose whichever platform they were comfortable with. While Webex is preferred for the classroom, we depend highly on Google Meet for interviews. For students, we adopted synchronous and asynchronous modes of teaching. Since students cannot be glued to the system for very long, we introduced asynchronous mode where a lot of reading material was transferred to them to study by themselves. This was followed by a summary hour for discussions. We had 75 per cent theory classes and almost 25 per cent were in asynchronous mode. Even though we had artificial intelligence and human proctoring, to eliminate dissatisfaction, we introduced the viva component, which we don’t usually have in the semester pattern. For this, we reduced the time for the writing component. We have been constantly deliberating on how we can evolve. We just finished a faculty development programme (FDP) where the focus was on mindfulness. As of date, whatever we have done for the past academic year still holds good and we are trying to see whether a little more continuous internal assessment (CIA) by holding class tests every month across papers would help to strengthen the evaluation process. Since there is no end-semester exam, the cumulative of all these CIA marks put together will be their grade. This year, we have come up with lots of programmes specifically to keep the wellness of the minds of students as well as the teachers.”