Tirupati: Good response from students, staff to Inter online classes

Tirupati: The Board of Intermediate Education has initiated online classes for senior Intermediate students to get the syllabus covered. In fact, during normal course, junior colleges start functioning from June 1st week every year.

However, due to the coronavirus pandemic no schools or colleges were opened till now.

The private colleges have started online classes for their students already and are way ahead in completing the syllabus. As colleges have to remain closed for another 3-4 weeks, the BIE has directed the staff to start online classes which commenced on last Monday. The response for the online classes from the faculty as well as students so far was quite encouraging to the officials.

These classes are also being held in all the government junior colleges in the State. The staff have to attend the colleges duly following the Covid-19 protocols. They will draw up weekly timetables for online classes with each class running for 40 minutes to one hour. The classes will be conducted through the Zoom app.The class teacher concerned has to collect the Android mobile phone numbers of all students in the class and form a WhatsApp group in which the staff and Principal will also be included. Every day, messages will be sent on the next day's schedule of classes through this group. The other staff members like librarians and PETs will monitor students' attendance and see that all of them take part in the programme. It was learnt that the attendance was very poor in the beginning, but it has been increasing gradually with each passing day.

Chittoor District Vocational Education Officer M Viswanath Naik told The Hans India that for every three days the attendance report has to be submitted to the Intermediate Board to take further steps. "We have been suggesting to the students who do not have Android mobile phones to go to their friends' houses and take part in the classes. The staff are showing enthusiasm in taking part in the classes to keep pace with the private lecturers," he maintained.

The DVEO also said that the textbooks were already sent to colleges except 3-4 titles and students are collecting them by visiting the colleges. To a question, he said that the syllabus was reduced by 30 per cent by removing some lessons in some chapters.