From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network
Bengaluru, Apr 10: College students hoping for going on vacation are in for bad news. The State Government has decided that there will be no summer holidays this year in view of the disruption in academic calendar during lockdown on account of Covid pandemic and also conduct all examinations at University level including degree, post-graduate, engineering, diploma and other courses.
Deputy Chief Minister (DCM) Dr C N Ashwath Narayan, who is also the minister of higher education, made it clear on Saturday that none of the examination and academic activities will be stopped on account of COVID-19 and they will be held as per the scheduled time table.
Speaking to reporters after participating in the 8th convocation of Samskrita University, he said, “The examinations at university lever including degree, post-graduation, engineering, diploma and all other courses which come under the department of higher education will be conducted as per the scheduled time table and there will be no changes.’’
The academic activities for the year 2021-22 are already delayed and there should not be further delay in this process. If this gets delayed the cycle of course period, test, results, employment, further studies will get cut, he said.
Measures are taken to ensure that the academic activities for the year 2021-22 are not affected. After the completion of the examinations that are being conducted now, there will be no summer holidays. Functioning of the classes will begin immediately and there will be both offline and online classes. Online classes will be started quite early. It will be mandatory for students either to attend online or offline classes, he said.
Dr Ashwath Narayan said all SOP’s will be made to be strictly followed in the interest of those who attend the physical classes.
“Sanitization of classrooms, maintenance of hygiene, COVID test, maintenance of physical distance and wearing of masks will be compulsory,’’ he explained.
The Integrated Learning Management System (LMS) has already been implemented in view of COVID-19.
Students are facilitated to learn from the locations wherever they are and 2.70 lakh Tablet PCs (1.60 lakh this year plus 1.10 lakh in the previous year) are distributed.
Classrooms are being converted as studios and they are made to become smart classrooms, he said.
Responding to a query with regard to LMS, he said, the glitch in the upload of content will be resolved soon.
The Deputy Chief Minister earlier conferred the D.Lit. honorary degree to Pandit Malagi Jayathirthacharya, senior Sanskrit scholar, and Ph.D. degrees to another 30 persons and M.Phil to 43 graduates. Former Chancellor of Swamy Vivekananda University at Belur in West Bengal Atmapriyananda participated in the function and delivered the lecture from Kolkata in the virtual mode.
Samskrit University Chancellor Prof Devananthan welcomed. Registrar M Koresh and other university staff were present.