By the end of March 2020 more than 160 countries have partially or completely closed schools and universities, which affected over 1.5 billion learners and 60.2 million teachers worldwide. In the current circumstances, the education system faces an unprecedented challenge to organize quality distance learning for all in the shortest possible time.
Poornaprajna Institute of Management has started embracing the virtual mode of education as the Covid-19 pandemic disrupts the education calendar and there is no certainty when things will become normal.
In this connection, Google has enabled PIM to use advanced Hangouts to impart online teaching to students. This platform is available to those institutions like PIM which implemented G Suite for Education.
Dr. Bharathi Karanth who commenced the First Online Class to the students today. Dr. Sureshramana Mayya, the Dean, also participated in the First online class delivered by Dr. Bharathi Karanth to students. It was a wonderful experience to watch many students participating in the class by sitting at their home using laptops or cell phone and interacting with Madam. The voice is crystal clear, image, chat session, PowerPoint slides presented by madam, the image of all the participating students, their voice – are all very clear. It is interesting to see that students are reluctant to leave the online portal after the session. The recording of the entire session facility, the exhibiting of captions of whatever said by madam are all premium features provided by Advanced Hangout. Till September 30, PIM can get all these advanced features without any additional cost. Google extended the availability of Google Meet advanced features to all the G Suite Customers till September 30, 2020 (Earlier it was till July 2020) to ensure educational institutions continue their work during this crisis. On April 9, 2020, Google made this announcement. At the same time, they decided to drop “Hangouts” from Google Meet name. Work and learning are increasingly done from a distance, maintaining security and control across our organisation and all the information is safe. All the advanced features are available to our students.
As schools and colleges are shut across India, every house is a school, and we have to keep in touch with them with appropriate technology, that is google hangouts, which may be integrated with our google classroom, google calendar, google drive and all other apps provided to you all. All PIM Faculty and students are given G Suite Account facilities and password. All faculty will engage in online classes from this week.
Attached a snapshot of class conducted by Dr. Bharathi Karanth. To browse the full video, please click here.
You can also see, how it looks to faculty, faculty can click a particular student and communicate with him, you can see here without audio.
You may browse here a glimpse of lecture series on Compensation Management by Dr Mayya. (You have to install adobe flash to browse. There are also some more lectures on Agriculture (Indian Business Environment) by Mayya. Apart from Google Classroom interaction, Some other links include – On Dissatisfaction on compensation, Presentation on G Suite for Education, class on Government Intervention in Business, Indian Constitution, about google classroom, quiz on compensation management, brief details about PIM Digital Library.
Care has taken to reduce the file size so that our students can download the LMS quickly, some of them are SCORM compliant. There is no campus activity, but faculty have started working from home to develop teaching-learning content to be directly delivered on the smartphones of students. “We must reduce the hardship caused to our PIM Students. Most of our faculty have already started working from home, all other faculty will commence working from home shortly, by using different platforms, the online content and video will be available to all students, who have missed out on classes and are at home. It is a wonderful opportunity for us to change our teaching methods to benefit both to faculty and students. As per UGC Guidelines, our high NAAC grading permit us to start online courses”, said Dr. Bharath V, Director of Poornaprajna Institute of Management. “ We have made all the necessary arrangements for live streaming, but those students who miss it due to internet bandwidth or other problems, will get link of recorded contents through their phone and on our website”, said Dr. Sureshramana Mayya, Dean, Poornaprajna Institute of Management. All the faculty have been using Google Classroom since two years.PIM students are familiar with this platform.