We should prefer a hybrid model of teaching: Nitin Karmalkar

From Monday onwards, universities and colleges across the state were allowed to reopen for offline classes

From Monday onwards, universities and colleges across the state were allowed to reopen for offline classes. HT spoke to Savitribai Phule Pune University’s (SPPU) vice-chancellor Prof Nitin Karmalkar about restarting SPPU and its affiliated colleges.

HT Image

From today, universities and colleges across the state is reopening for physical classes, how do you look at it?

The decision is welcomed, and it was expected that colleges will now start soon. The teaching in colleges is complete and students are now waiting for examinations. Now, the other newly started courses must begin offline classes, therefore it is a welcome step that after around a year, students will be back on campus. Peer learning is more important than the online learning mode, as you cannot have control over many things in online mode.

What challenges do you expect now while reopening the university and colleges?

There are some challenges, the reason being students coming from the outside state or those who are going to stay at hostels. UGC guidelines suggest that hostels should not be allocated on sharing basis, so that is going to be a big sort of stumbling block in bringing all 100 per cent of students to campus. At the same time, Covid is not yet gone completely so there are some concerns. Parents might hesitate to send their children to campus or to colleges. That is what I have been asking, we should go more or less for a mixed-model or hybrid model of teaching. In this you should not bring 100 per cent students on campus, instead may be in batches and that liberty is given to the colleges as such.

What would your emphasis be from now onwards going forward in this academic year?

Our emphasis would be to bring students initially for practical purposes in batches as the practical portion has been missed out completely during Covid-19. There cannot be a match for practical courses in online mode, therefore initially we should concentrate more on the practical and then bring in students in batches to classroom lectures in batches, maybe of 20 each batch. When things normalise then we can bring in more students to the campus.