IIEST Shibpur Scrapped Online Written Tests; Alumnus gifts digital hub for Seamless Classes

From the time, a nationwide lockdown was called out due to COVID-19 pandemic, IIEST Shibpur campus was closed down for students.

As a fact, the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur have been conducting online classes, with hundreds of students missing owing to poor internet connectivity.

Students have reached their hometown, where do not have the same bandwidth as their college provided. This affected their class attendance and disrupted study patterns.

Check: IIEST Shibpur Admission 2020

Earlier, IIEST Shibpur had cancelled online written tests for previous semester exams, as 20% were recorded, unable to access sound internet facility. 

Finding an alternative, the institute chose to conduct online viva-voce to assess the performances of students. Despite this relaxation, students had to walk an extra mile or head to cafes nearest to their towns for better internet facility. 

As such disheartening news reached Sunandan Narayan Basu, an alumnus of IIEST Shibpur, immediately extended his helping hand.

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On August 15, 2020 (Saturday), IIEST Shibpur was being gifted a Digital Hub that marked the celebration for Independence Day in the campus.

“I can call it the freedom to learning and I am happy that the beginning could happen on the day that the country is celebrating freedom,” Basu said.

This hub will have all lectures and laboratory sessions recorded in a repository, which students can retrieve whenever required, in case they cannot attend live lectures.

In a way, this will help students to go batch to previous lectures and continue their studies, uninterruptedly. As lab activities will be recorded, students can now do practicals from home until the time they are back on campus.

The estimated total cost of the digital hub is INR 1 Crore out of which Mr Basu has already paid INR 50 lakhs, the remaining to be paid in instalments. He has been an alumnus of the Civil Engineering Department (Batch of 1956).

Faculty member Kanika Das Bhattacharya, who coordinated the project with Basu elaborated, “Attending digital lectures is the new norm and we realize that both faculty and students will have to adjust to this now. 

The problem that they faced in the previous semester should not be repeated. With the digital hub functioning now, our students will be able to access all study material at their leisure now, from wherever they are.” 

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Even students who cannot attend live classes because of internships they have to complete can access the hub. The institute has initiated a survey, first leg of which says 20% of students could not attend online lectures. The survey is still underway.