Academics - ICT Tools & Resources

ICT enabled tools including Online Resources for effective Teaching and Learning process

ICT tools are in great use by both the students and teachers. Sona has been developing and using the digital platform for teaching since 2005. Our campus has been enabled with digital technologies for education. Training of the teachers in ICT is conducted in the college to update their ICT skills and enable them to use latest technology, thereby enhancing their competence and skill in handling of the ICT tools. We have been using Moodle and Black board as learning management systems (LMS). The platform is being used for content management and assessments. Vlab facility has been configured in Moodle. The following summarizes the tools for teaching and assessments purposes:

1. Blackboard (BB) – LMS –Learning and assessment – Teachers use this platform for uploading all the class materials and assessing assignments. The BB is integrated with LCS.
2. Lecture capturing system (LCS) – videos are recorded live from classrooms and are available through portal. Students can watch the videos anytime anywhere. This solution is particularly useful for students during preparation for examination. If a student was absent for a day, he/she can watch the videos of those missed classes.
3. HireMee – online proctored platform – students were using the platform for placement based assessments.

The following activities are adapted to actively engage students in the online platform:

1. The ICT tools such as edpuzzle.com, wordwall.net, mentee.com are used to increase the inclusivity in the learning process
2. Breakout rooms in Microsoft teams are used for discussions
3. Quizziz.com is used for giving quizzes every 15 minutes in every class
4. Other topics are discussed to make them interactive and interested
5. Chatbox is used for question answering
6. Instant online search is given as activity for removing the diversions and distractions
7. To emulating physical classroom situation – switch on the video of the teacher taking the class. Teach them with hand gestures and facial expressions. Include small videos and embed at least 2 gaming based quizzes
8. To improve the online teaching-learning process and quality of faculty, webinar series, workshop or training sessions were organized.
9. Workshop sessions on Teaching and Learning with ICT tools, Andragogy of Online Education, Swotting of Digital tools on Effective Online Teaching were conducted to introduce educational tools, research tools, assessment tools and tools to handle practical sessions like Edmodo, Google Classroom, Microsoft team, google meet, Blackboard, quizziz, hot potatoes, whiteboard, End Note, Mendeley, virtual lab etc.
10. To teach courses dealing with problems the following is adopted: interactive pads/boards are used; problems are worked out on white boards and streamed as video, problems are worked out on paper with webcam focusing on it.

The above methods are beneficial to both teachers and students in the following aspects:

1. Inclusivity of students
2. Continuous engagement
3. Teachers’ attention to students
4. Increase of attention span of students

The students are already trained in different platforms and therefore while pandemic started during March 2020, we seamlessly transformed our teaching and learning process online. Since our students were using the aforementioned digital platforms even while they were attending the physical classrooms, they quickly embraced the transformation.

Apart from LCS, Blackboard and Moodle, we use the following platforms for teaching and learning process:
MIS: Sona has developed an extensive ERP system called Sona MIS for recording all the activities related to students and faculty members. It has different modules such as Fee collection, faculty details, publications, placement data, marks entry, attendance entry and so on.

SWAYAM and NPTEL: Students take up courses in Swayam and NPTEL platforms. We also facilitate credit transfer for one of the courses.

Teams: During pandemic lock down, classes were conducted through Teams platform. Proctored assessments were also conducted.

e-library: Students can use the digital library software, which comprises of full text databases, e-journals and e-books from publishers such as Science direct, Springer, IEEE, EBSCO, NATURE, Taylor and Francis etc.

Turnitin: We have subscription with Turnitin for checking the percentage of plagiarism in scientific articles. Students and faculty members extensively use this tool before submitting an article to a conference or journal.

Whatsapp group is created with students and parents to disseminate all information.

1. Many experiments of practical courses of different disciplines are conducted with the help of virtual laboratory, a facility available in NIT Suratkal funded by MHRD.
2. For CSE and IT related courses, we have platforms such as Hackerrank, through which the exercises are posted. The progress is monitored and the completion is ensured.
3. For the remaining exercises of different practical courses, the teachers took the video of how to operate the equipment and how to take readings. Along with those videos, the concept and working of the experiments are taught.
4. The assessments are done through two modes:
   1. Objective test which tests the understanding of the concept of the experiments and a viva voce to test the understanding of the working principle of the experiments
   2. virtual laboratory – to take readings virtually and the students arrived at the result or through virtual programming environment for programming related courses.