ISSUE DATE: July 5, 2021 UPDATED: June 26, 2021 14:28 IST Dr Poonam Verma with her students; Photo by Rajwant Rawat 1.Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, New Delhi 1.Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, New Delhi Guru Speak | Dr Poonam Verma -Principal, Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, New Delhi "The year gone by felt like many years in one. This past year will always be remembered as an unprecedented year for our planet. It forced us to take a detour from our usual norms and move to an entirely different path. Prior to the pandemic, we had primarily been following the conventional format of classroom teaching. However, we did use the blended teaching model from time to time. We quickly responded and adapted to the change from classroom to learning through online teaching. Participating in workshops and training sessions enabled us to better adapt to online teaching. We understood that student engagement online can be challenging as concentration, group tasks, peer-learning suffer in online teaching. Innovative pedagogy like a flipped classroom approach and techniques such as group tasks, class discussions, quizzes and assignments were adopted to promote peer group learning and classroom engagement. The institution took upon itself the task of workshops and training sessions for teachers to enable them to adapt better to online teaching. The college technical staff provided assistance in this. We also offered teachers and students infrastructural support such as laptops to ensure that lack of infrastructure does not become an impediment to the learning process. The teachers used a variety of platforms, such as Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Moodle, to engage with students. In the early phase of the pandemic, regular discussions were held among the faculty to discuss and learn from each other’s experience in online teaching. Since all students do not have access to reliable internet connectivity, recordings of lectures were shared with the students. Students were encouraged to take courses on Coursera for free online certificate programmes. Financially vulnerable students were supported through monetary assistance and access to laptops and library remote online access. With the sudden lockdown, there were initial obstacles in onboarding companies for placements and internships. However, our statistics showed an increment and did not report a decline in spite of the hiring freeze. We took this as an opportunity to inculcate and hone the professional skills of our students. And it paid off, we got 185-plus offers and saw the best placement season in our history.”