The syllabus for Intermediate second-year students will be reduced to 70% for the academic year 2021-22 with the Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) deciding to conduct physical classes on alternate days from July 1 when the colleges will be open.
If classes are held on alternate days for first year and second-year students respectively due to Covid-19 restrictions, the BIE fears that it may not meet the 220 mandatory instruction days. The instruction days will be effectively reduced to 110 and the syllabus also has to be reduced accordingly.
A circular of the BIE sent to the college managements said that “Since there is an uncertainty about the number of working days, 70% of the syllabus may be continued for teaching as well as for Intermediate Public Examination (lPE-2022) for the time being until there is clarity from the government or CBSE.”
The BIE doesn’t seem to expect an overwhelming response for physical classes from parents and realising this it has asked the colleges and teachers to use technology and social media platforms for effective teaching. It asked the colleges to create WhatsApp groups with junior lecturers and students subject-wise and group-wise both for first year and second year students separately.
To make the online class interesting and effective the BIE suggested to the lecturers to integrate their lessons with the freely available educational resources such as “Phet” simulations, “Desmos” graphing tools and freely available “animations” on the web.
The groups shouldn’t be static and inactive and they must be dynamic in the sense that the principal, lecturers and students must actively engage in clearing the doubts or announcing the TV lesson schedules and online schedules. The groups should be utilised not only for doubt-clearing sessions but also to elicit feedback from the students. Students should be instructed to create email ids so that lecturers can send the feedback forms or assignments.
Though the mandatory attendance of 75% will not be insisted this year the colleges must record the attendance saving the screenshot of the participants. The BIE also asked the colleges to follow all the SOPs of Covid-19 on physical-distance, masks, sanitisation in the college and among students.
