Governor of Bihar Directs Institutes Stream Online Education for a Longer Period, Read Why

Governor-cum-Chancellor of the Universities Phagu Chouhan on Thursday directed the Universities to streamline online education for a longer period of time, as the Universities and Colleges of Bihar would only open after the decision of the Central Government and the Bihar Government had been taken in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chouhan's Directive, which has been forwarded to all VCs of the State through a supplementary secretary, Raj Bhawan, Ram Anugrah Narayan Singh, clearly states that universities and colleges need to plan their academic activities in such a way that "online education continues to be complementary and complementary to offline education even when educational institutions open after the closure."

The suggestion is clear that higher learning institutions should be prepared for a long time to come. Last month, he had directed the VCs to coordinate with the district authorities concerned with a thorough sanitization of the campuses prior to the start of classes or examinations, but now this seems unlikely.

He asked the universities to organize interactive online classes, and the information on them should be made mandatory in advance on the official websites of the universities and colleges, along with the links through which the students would be able to access them.

At present, universities and colleges claim that they are running online classes and uploading e-content, but how many students are actually able to access it is not always known.

"Students may also receive information about classes separately through e-mail groups, social media groups, etc.

It has been noted that the mechanism of interactive online classes has not been sufficiently used by the institutions to date.

Subject-wise and theme-wise video lectures should be uploaded either to the respective websites or to other channels, such as Youtube, Facebook, etc., with links available on the websites, "said Chouhan.

Apparently dissatisfied with the way online education has gone and the growing need for it in the coming days, he also asked universities and colleges to upload subject-and thematic study material to websites or cloud services, with links available on the websites for the convenience of students.

"The content of the VCs should be evaluated by an expert committee and graded so that quality can be maintained," he added. Earlier, he suggested that a study team be set up to learn good practices for online education from better-equipped universities in other countries.

The Chancellor asked the VCs to send the best quality e-content to Raj Bhawan and to share it with other universities so that they could be used to teach online education. "If some e-content is found to be below standard, steps may be taken to revise or upgrade it," he said, seeking regular weekly progress reports on online education every Wednesday.