A.1 Students who wished to take up elective courses based on their interests are now bound to take up courses from a predefined list which may not be very relevant to them.
_“The main issue [...] is that many elective courses mentioned in our course structures are often scrapped, forcing us to take other electives which are not relevant to our interests [...] The discontinuation of NPTEL Courses has made the situation even worse. Beyond electives, even some of the core courses are irrelevant.”_ **NOTE:** WO! found out that students in other IITs, such as IIT Kanpur and IIT Kharagpur, cannot take NPTEL courses as their minors. All courses are to be done within the institute coursework.A.2 The decision directly affects the final-year students who had saved their NPTEL courses for their last semester to reduce their time commitment and better focus on reducing their time commitment and better focus on placements. It is also unfair to them as many students already took NPTEL courses in the preceding semesters.
_“NPTEL courses are not allowed in lieu of PEC courses for final year B.Tech students, it should be allowed as many of the students are appearing for placements in their 7th and 8th semester so NPTEL courses should be allowed for them at least.”_A.3 There's also the lack of flexibility in the academic programmes being offered; discontinuing NPTEL courses further aggravates this problem.
_“The institute being rigid in its way of teaching is really problematic. Not having NPTEL or more electives or non-existent inter-branch electives is a direct consequence of this.” ~Pratham Jain,3rd year_ **Note:** Upon talking to the AAO regarding the short notice period in which NPTEL was scrapped, the Acad office clarified that they also learned about the NPTEL notice a night before it was released. Moreover, as a side note, they’ve mentioned that NPTEL on medical grounds will only be allowed for very rare cases, because this threshold is quite flimsy and unreliable. To elaborate, they commented that the method used to cross-check this is to use BTP trail of a student, i.e. if a student also has BTP coming up along with an offer letter, then even that would get hindered on medical grounds. This forms the basis of a cross-check of sorts. Students sometimes have supervisor backing saying the project is Computer based and is allowed remotely. However, that is not always allowed for a BTP. Hence medical grounds are a flimsy reason and lack robustness, which is why the AAO does not consider it. ## B. Second Examination Students applying for the second examination faced major issues, with some finding it irrelevant to involve the DAPC in the second examination application process and others facing difficulty in convincing professors to allow makeup labs on medical grounds. _“Regarding the Second Examination. As per the Rules, I applied for a second examination by writing mail (with attaching Medical certificate also) to DAPC on time. But DAPC did not forward it to the Academic section. When the list of students came, and I didn’t find my name in it, I went to DAPC, but he scolded me like anything, even if it was not my mistake, it was only his mistake [...]”_ _“Professors don't allow makeup labs in some subjects even on medical grounds, leading to academics being poorly affected due to health issues.”_ ## C. Minor Courses Minor Specialisation lectures clash a lot with the usual timetable of students and often include first-year courses. Due to the shifted Academic Calendar of the first year, the end-term exams clash with students' summer internships. A number of students approached the academic affairs office and the concerned departments with their issues. However they were sent back with a series of indifferent responses. _A student commented, “After running from department to department to adjust TT for me to attend (the) minors course, I went to the academic affairs office for the same complaint. Their response was to drop minors and [not to] do a minors degree. ‘We cannot do anything. It's an unresolvable issue for us, too’.”_ #### C.1 General Secretary Academic Affairs Verbatim **WO!:** At times, students have to go from department to department to get their issues like clashing timetables, availability of minor courses and others resolved. Many times these issues are not resolved, and even if they are resolved, there is a lack of a proper mechanism to get these issues resolved. Also there is no record maintained of the problems resolved by the department. **Gensec Acads:** Even we are working on resolving the clashing of minor timetable issues. The hindrance is that we follow an algorithm to generate the timetable, and with the available slots, the huge number of subjects are difficult to accommodate without clashes. I have proposed having a separate slot for minor courses just like Wednesday 4-6 for NCC/NSS/NSO. That might work, hopefully. #### C.2 Academic Affairs Office Verbatim **Acad Office:** The major issue which has led to such inconveniences is the lack of centralisation in timetable making; all departments make their own timetable which is sent to the Acad office near the start of the semester, and thus not many changes can be accommodated. Slots for all common courses of 1st and 2nd year, and minors derived from those are fixed beforehand by the Academic office and sent to all the departments before the semester starts. After this, each department independently decides the slots for PECs offered by them and fits them into a timetable which comes right around the start of the semester. That comes after students have filled in their choices for PECs for the semester. Between this small period, it remains out of the hands of the AAO to make fruitful changes to the timetable as the semester is about to begin. They suggest that in the window provided for the addition/deletion of courses, students should alter their PCC/PECs’ choices and stick with the minor instead of going the other way around to fairly accommodate all of their choices. That is, if a student is voluntarily opting for additional breadth; they must choose the structure compatible with their minor's choice. Moreover, the issue has been noted down; and a centralised portal for the generation of automatic timetables is under formulation. It could, however, take 1-2 semesters to be completely implemented. Regarding the mismatch of calendar between people choosing minors especially ones that follow UG 1Y timetable and their foreign internships. They mentioned that the students should try to get the intern period adjusted or the mode changed to online, since the structure of minors cannot be changed for those few students. And the timetables for 1y would take a year or two to align with the rest of the batches owing to the gap created by COVID. ## D. Query Portal Students pointed out the delays they faced in getting a reply to their queries raised on the query portal. _“Queries on the query portal aren't resolved even in 6 days.”_ #### D.1 General Secretary Academic Affairs Verbatim **GenSec Acads:** Some people are dedicated to resolving AIS portal queries, and they are doing their best. The only problem might be they may miss some queries, or some queries are difficult to answer before doing some groundwork. #### D.2 Academic Affairs Office Verbatim **AAO:** On AIS, the department is dedicated to addressing each query and resolving it in under 4 days. Some periods of the semester may see delays in query resolution as the Acad department has to shift focus to other pressing issues, for example, during the start of the semester. ## E. Curriculum **E.1** Students across the years also feel that their course structure fails to impart the skills that modern-day jobs require, and many courses have lost relevance in today’s age. Many electives mentioned in the course structure aren't even available to be taken up, and students are forced to take electives irrelevant to the field they want to build a career in. _“Personally, I feel minors are introduced very late in our academic schedules, and that makes them kind of pointless as you are not able to explore your minors' field properly before graduation.”_ **E.2** Many students seemed discontent with the 75% attendance system currently in place. Students complained that the attendance system is a brute force method to make them sit in classes while they feel there are better ways to learn the same thing without the compulsion of attending lectures. Students also complained about facing the issue of not being able to track their attendance in a particular course. ## F. Grading System Professors having the discretion to decide the grading process they'll follow for a course leads to a lack of uniformity in the grade distribution[\[1\]](http://aao.iitr.ac.in/ACAD/Notifications/78.6.pdf). In the absence of a transparent procedure, students are often left in the dark with no other alternative but simply to accept the grades they've been given. _“There should at least be a more stringent guideline on what grades are to be given.” ~Pratham Jain, 3rd year_ ## G. Changes Proposed After noting the various grievances faced by students daily during academic hours, as well as student reviews on the current academic structure, a need for change was immensely felt. In the survey conducted by Watch Out! We also asked the students how they would like the structure to be moulded to make academics more student-centric and smooth flowing. The responses were recorded, and some of the most pressing ones are as follows:G.1 It is widely agreed upon that the decision to remove NPTEL courses in the middle of the year by the Acad section did not consider the students’ stance on the issue. Students chose their courses accordingly for the year, keeping the presence of NPTEL choices as an option in mind. But when asked to suddenly compulsorily choose electives, it led to changes in their schedule management and caused confusion and stress among the student body. There was a lack of uniformity as some students from the same batch who had taken NPTEL earlier were at an unfair advantage. NPTEL also helps students take up subjects that are not available in the institute; manage other activities, minors and non-academic courses. It has overall been heralded as a misdirected decision.
Students had a common consensus that NPTEL courses should be brought back as they were highly dynamic and interesting.
As a third year student suggested: “The NPTEL rule should be applied from the joining batch this year onwards, as no one from the batch has had the opportunity to use that until now. Few 3rd, 4th and 5th year students had already used the NPTEL option, which was unfair to their batchmates who didn’t get a chance to do so yet. Secondly, a fixed deadline should be given to the professors for grade delivery, and failure to do so should lead to serious actions. This is similar to the late fee fine that the students have to follow. Additionally, the Acad office should fix a proper slot for the conduction of minor courses, as it does for OECs and HSSMECs. This would also avoid the clashes in the timetable that many have experienced.”
G.2 Department and inter-departmental courses should be introduced from the second year itself, allowing students to shape their career as they want to; whilst also providing them with incentives to maintain a good CGPA to be offered their preferred courses each semester. Another suggestion was to introduce more HSS-MEC courses in 2nd year, as the few provided usually force students to choose the one which gets them grades easily, as opposed to the ones they’re actually interested in.
For example, due to a lack of effective choices, students from the Economics branch took up HSS-01 as their preferred choice, despite being taught similar course contents in a more advanced manner in previous semesters. This made it a redundant course for the students of the Economics branch as well as unfair for students of other departments taking this up for the first time and facing relative grading with others. The limitation of choices is a very real issue which must be resolved soon. Appendix-A contains the conversation WO! had with IITK and IITKGP in this regard.
G.3 “During the chaos that followed the NPTEL and minor selection time, what was apparent was the stringent nature of the Acad department and their unapproachability.” It was noted by many students that the academic section does listen to their grievances but there are no real efforts made to change it so that the students are at their convenience; and it often feels like they’re unreceptive to the students’ needs.
“The academic section should be more flexible and more receptive to students' grievances instead of taking a stance that students should handle all this themselves.” ~ Pratham Jain,3rd year
More efficient communication between departments, within the academic section, between the admin and departments and within the department is necessary to avoid the many, many cases of timetable clashes that were seen. If, due to unavoidable reasons, clashes do occur, students should be allowed online alternatives for certain courses, especially important ones like minors and electives, which would help students to cover up material at one's own convenient time. “More flexibility in course structure, an approachable POC between students and Acad office is needed.”
**NOTE:** A snippet of the conversation with GenSec Acads regarding this matter: **WO!:** A lot of students complained about there being no point of contact between the Acad department and students. As the GenSec Acads, why do you think this problem still exists in spite of the existence of elected student representatives such as the DAPCs and the Gensec? GenSec: Certain things in the Acad department take some time to process because there are specified paperwork and even protocols to be followed, due to which students might feel there aren't any updates. But the people who approached me or even some other student DAPCs have often got their issues resolved or clarified. ## H. Miscellaneous Suggestions Some miscellaneous suggestions regarding commonly faced issues within the academic structure: 1. A notable instance was when professors mentioned the need for sliding blackboards for classroom teaching. LHC-GB has no such infrastructure in place, which must be rectified asap. The issue is not pushed as much because many professors opt for teaching via slides. Blackboard teaching leads to content delivery becoming concise and intuitive for students. 2. If attendance is made compulsory, it is necessary to cater to students who are interested in pursuing a field of study other than their branch. Providing notes/slides (exclusively for home study) is a good answer that assists both sets of students. 3. It is necessary that updated software and present-day technology are added to labs and coursework to make them more relevant. It often happens that the practical aspect of a course exists, but the lab is in such a dilapidated state that it is almost unusable. This leads to both the lab assistants and the students wasting time and effort trying to keep up with the experiments. _“More practically applicable teachings to be imparted. Skills sets like communication to clients etc. Should also be covered within the course structure.”_ 4. Uniform grade distribution has become rare if a large enough pool of professors is taken, and that is concerning. Students are left with unanswered questions as to why they’re receiving grades lower than 7 when they’re well above the aggregate class scores (given the professor has announced relative grading). Such incidents, however small, do multiply in effect, causing a severe divide and mistrust between professors and students. 5. Moreover, there should be an open choice of minor courses instead of selecting from a pool of 6/7 courses, as well as more departmental elective courses that are offered. Along with it, compulsory attendance in Minors should be scrapped. 6. A more mathematics-intensive CSE curriculum is seen as necessary. (A detailed review on this is mentioned in **Appendix-B**) This article aimed to bring the grievances faced by students daily under convergence and address them efficiently. From the responses we received in the survey, we have mentioned the changes students think should bring about a difference in their daily academic interactions. Moreover, we also talked to the academic office to dig deeper into the root cause of the problems pointed out. We got some great insights and found out valid reasons for some of the inconveniences; whilst also noticing a need for immediate change in certain areas.