IIT Bhubaneswar has started taking classes in hybrid mode and about 40 per cent students are now attending offline classes. Students can attend both online and offline classes in hybrid mode arrangement. Hybrid classes are being conducted in the newly constructed Pushpagiri Lecture Hall Complex (PLHC) which is equipped with electronic gadgets.
The PLHC was inaugurated by the Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan on August 20 and it aimed at distributing the students in a way that each classroom has less than half the strength and full social distancing is being followed.
Talking about the classes, Professor Raja Kumar, Director said, “for those students who are attending the lectures in person, these are like any modern lecture halls with facilities for multimedia projection, document camera, powerpoint presentations and use of other gadgets like a tablet. Now in order to facilitate live streaming of the lecture, the board work and the faculty member giving the lecture including the interaction, video and audio capturing and streaming facility is used.”
"This will facilitate streaming of the lecture live to a remote student including an interactive or one way streaming session. We use MS Teams running on a laptop for the same. A faculty member can also interact with a remote student in the streaming session. On top of this, the faculty members are encouraged to use their own innovative methods over and above this basic mechanism," he further explained the procedure.
The hybrid classes provide fixed seats to the students which do not allow them to switch seats, class rooms are fully open for the ventilation and students are also provided with the bicycles in the campus to avoid usage of public transport.
