More than 96% of students connected to NITK’s online classes: Director

More than 96 per cent of the students of National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK) are now taking online classes of the institute, according to the instituition’s Director, K Umamaheshwara Rao.

Speaking at the ‘Distinguished Alumni Awards’ ceremony, which was conducted on a virtual platform, he said NITK had taken a decision not to change its academic calendar while closing the institution due to Covid pandemic on March 15.

Recently, the institute began the new semester through ‘Virtual Flipped Classroom’ model. In this model, the students are provided with pre-recorded video lectures from the course instructor, and are expected to participate in live interactions after watching the video lecture recordings.

Rao said NITK has started online classes effectively trying to reach out to every single student. “We haven’t started just like that. We made a survey of all the students,” he said, adding that more than 90 per cent of the students had given their consent that they would be able to connect to NITK’s classes.

Today more than 96 per cent of students are connected and are appreciating the initiative.

Not even a single day is disturbed in the academic calendar, he said.

NITK, positioned at 21 in the NIRF ranking in 2019, jumped eight positions to reach the 13th position in the 2020 NIRF ranking, he said.

On the different research projects taken up by the institute, Rao said NITK was able to acquire a funded project for electric mobility. The project was floated by the Department of Heavy Industries.

ISRO has set up a regional academic centre for space at NITK at an annual outlay of ₹2 crore. This centre will be pursuing advanced research in the areas of relevance in the future technologies of Indian space programmes, he said.