The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Iit-delhi lends hand to students: Support panel, campus stay with kin for some
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TO EASE pressure on students struggling with studies, which in extreme cases has resulted in suicides, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi has formed a panel of teachers and students to help its undergraduate students with a “poor academic record”, and in “exceptional cases” has also permitted a few students to stay with a
family member on campus, The Indian Express has learned.
“In a few exceptional cases, the departments have identified at least three such students who they believe require additional support and must stay with a family member. In such cases, the student is allowed to live with a family member on campus and advised not to live alone in the hostel. Students in such cases can use the premises of a hostel we have on campus which also has the facility to cook food,” a member of the panel — Academic Progress Group (APG) — told The Indian Express.
According to documents accessed by The Indian Express through the Right to Information Act, the APG has so far identified 192 undergraduate students at the institute as “academically adrift”, emphasising that these students need academic help.
The APG was formed in September last year, soon after the death of a student, Anil Kumar, who died by suicide in his hostel room. Kumar hailed from Uttar Pradesh’s Banda district and was pursuing B Tech in Mathematics.
This year, there have been five student suicides at the IITS across India — two at Iit-kanpur and one each in Delhi, Roorkee and BHU.
An official notification on the formation of the panel said: “It (APG) will be empowered to interface with academic units and hostels and intervene as required. It will also suggest policy changes that may be needed.”
According to official records, the constitution of the APG was revised on March 5 with the inclusion of two student members in the eight-member panel.
The APG has so far analysed the academic records of undergraduate students on probation and backlog, held discussions with several students and provided recommendations for changes at the institute.
The recommendations are classified into two categories: “Immediate Implementation” and for “Broader Discussion”.
For immediate implementation,the a pg has identified that“a major cause of backlog students not being able to complete their degree requirements is the nonavailability of hostel accommodation beyond nine semesters”.
“It is recommended that 30 hostel seats be reserved for backlog students beyond nine semesters. The accommodation will be provided subject to 75% attendance in lectures, tutorials and laboratory sessions. The recommendations for hostel accommodation will be made by the APG,” it has said.
The APG has also recommended increasing the effectiveness of the existing tutoring system run by the Board of Student Welfare (BSW) and the Dean of Students.
The BSW primarily consists of student representatives from each
hostel and a few faculty members. According to the institute's website, the BSW'S motive of the academic mentorship programme is “to help undergraduate first-year students in their academics via hostel sessions conducted by academically strong second-year students”.
In order to strengthen this, the A pg said ,“an online portal should be developed to help needy students identify tutors. Tutors should be available for fourth-and fifth-year students as well. the incentives to the tutors should be enhanced to improve student participation.”“several students have reached out for personal tutoring. We have provided these students with individual tutors,” the APG member, who did not want to be named, said.
Among other recommendations is one to fix the institute’s attendance system, as the APG “observed that several students are exploiting loopholes in the Timble attendance system, which eventually affects their academic performance”.
Timble is an end-to-end system to mark paperless attendance in classrooms. Essentially, there is a Timble Device in the vicinity of each classroom, which interacts with all smartphones wirelessly, allowing students to mark attendance in the proximity of their respective classrooms.
“Sometimes, students tend to mark the attendance but skip the classes,” the APG member said.
A major cause of delayed graduation is failure in one or more first-year undergraduate courses. While some first-year courses are being run during the summer semester, the APG has suggested that “efforts should be made to facilitate running all such courses with significant backlog. Moreover, steps should be taken to ensure that backlog students register for the summer courses...” to ensure timely graduation of those lagging.
Under recommendations for “Broader discussion ”, the a pg has suggested several policy changes in the way students at the institute are being currently graded.
For instance, the panel had suggested removal of the Degree Grade Point Average (DGPA), which is the calculated GPA of all courses.
Currently, a minimum DGPA of 5 is required for the award of a B Tech degree at an IIT, but the pass grade for each course is AD (which is 4 out of 10 points).
According to the APG’S suggestion, if a student is scoring a minimum of 4 out of 10 in each course, passing each individually, but the DGPA does not add up to 5, the student should still be declared as pass and should be awarded her degree.
The recommendations related to academic affairs have to be discussed and passed by the institute’s Senate, which is responsible for maintenance of standards of instruction, education and examinations at the institute.
Theindianexpress reached-out to IIT Delhi for comments on this matter but received no response.