Our response to Covid-19 at IIAS
May 21, 2020
Since the day we foresaw the pall of gloom that Covid-19 was about to cast on our nation, IIAS had only one concern behind all steps taken so far – health and safety of the students, the team and our community at large – along with, of course, the continuation of the Learning process for the students.
Our response to Lockdown
IIAS has been one of the leaders in rapid transformation of the learning delivery process. Within less than a week of the nationwide lockdown being announced, a virtual timetable was put in place, and the teachers worked through sleepless nights to plan their lessons for a virtual platform. The IT team, smartly and efficiently, made available one of the safest virtual platforms in the world for the convergence of the students and teachers, in a virtual world – kudos to our students and teachers for readily embracing the technology shift, which was the need of the hour, with such zest and gusto.
E-Learning and Virtual Sessions
The classes have been, generally, well attended, with attendance reaching as high as 98% which, even in the days prior to the lockdown, would be considered to be pretty good. Not forgetting about the students residing in remote localities where internet connectivity remains disturbed, the IT team facilitated the recording of each class and uploading it to the Google Classroom, along with all presentations and tests, for them to enter the class at their convenience and ‘attend’ it without missing anything. While the classes and tests, along with weekly Webinars attended by leaders from the industry, have continued over the last two months, we have also utilised this time to deliberate on and firm up measures, before reopening the campus for our students. We understand that the road back to normalcy would not be easy as we would need to create a ‘new normal’ for months to come.
Preparing for a New Normal
We have, with a ‘safety first’ approach, created a series of protocol for all concerned – students, staff and visitors. A number of SOPs have been put in place for additional, and mandatory, sanitisation of the premises. Right from temperature checks, health declarations and full-body sanitisation at the entrance, to staggered classes and breaks to ensure physical distancing, we shall look forward to the joint effort of the students and staff for implementing every such measure for creating a safe and healthy environment at IIAS.
The Way Forward
We have taken this time to also consider the practicability and efficacy of certain preventive measures to ensure ‘complete safety and protection’ of our students and staff. Towards that, we are seriously considering the continuation of online Theory sessions for some classes during the odd semester, while conducting the Practical classes on premises in small batches. However, all such measures will be intimated to all concerned well before the commencement of the semester.
It is heartening to note that daily deep cleaning and appropriate sanitisation of the whole premises have already begun and we have made it possible to open our offices for staff and visitors – this being a small but confident step forward.
Our response to this vicious pandemic will continue relentlessly and we are ready to accept the challenges that lie ahead – we have complete faith in the resilience of our students, our team and our extended communities.
When, sometime in the future, we take a pause to look back and reflect on these days, we shall have every reason to believe that We succeeded together as IIASers.
Continue to stay safe, stay healthy – we are going to meet soon!
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Angshuman Chatterjee
Director