Pritam Babu Sharma is an Indian academician and Vice-Chancellor of Amity University, Gurgaon and ex Vice-Chancellor of Delhi Technological University. Currently, he is heading the Association of Indian Universities as the President. Sharma has a career spanning 44 years of experience in teaching and research, which includes 12 years at IIT Delhi, where he was a Professor of mechanical engineering before taking over as Principal of Delhi College of Engineering (now Delhi Technological University) in 1990. He led Delhi College of Engineering till 2009 and was then appointed the founder Vice-Chancellor of Delhi Technological University (DTU) when Delhi College of Engineering was upgraded to Delhi Technological University through Delhi Act 6 of 2009. He is also the founding Vice-Chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi Technical University, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh
The nationwide lockdown due to Pandemic Covid-19 has initially thrown higher education in deep crisis but the universities and very many colleges in India have been able to adopt Online teaching from home. It is all the more gratifying that the young students have found Online Classes both interesting and greatly satisfying.
At Amity University the use of technology in education was already well integrated in our education innovations and almost the entire academic management was on IT savvy Amity Intranet *Amizone* that is the backbone of Amity academic and administrative e-governance.
Further, the Amity University has a long experience of online classes that were going on years for a great many African Countries live from its e-education studio at Amity University Noida.
The IT team of Amity has made excellent arrangements for conduction online classes in all its Amity Universities across India utilizing Microsoft Teams, Microsoft LMS, Zoom meetings of HoIs and faculty and also trained its faculty in all the Amity Universities for use of e-platforms and the LMS system.
This prior preparation came quite handy to smoothly switch over to conduct Online Classes from home, the minute the university was closed ever since March 14th.
As per the online reports being received from various institutions in Amity University Gurugram, the attendance of students in online classes is almost 90-95%, more so because of the attendance of students. The timely conduct of online classes as per schedule is automatically recorded thus and leaves no room for alteration later on.
The Online Classes have become a great savior for higher education in India during the present Pandemic Covid-19 Crisis and have paved the way for more effective integration of online and offline teaching-learning environment that the UGC and MHRD have been trying to create for some time.
Online Classes are also providing a great learning experience both for the students and the faculty. At Amity University Gurgaon, we have also asked our faculty to record as many classes as possible and thus create and upload online e-resources for further use by students.
As a Vice-Chancellor of AUH, I feel so satisfied that despite the threat of disruption of higher education caused by the Pandemic Covid-19 virus crisis our faculty has been able to cover fully even semester syllabi and also conduct Online tests for internal continuous assessment.
The challenge now is to prepare for Online Conduct of End Semester Examinations if the lockdown continues beyond the 21 days ending on April 14th.
I am also very happy to note that my fellow Vice-Chancellors across the country have taken up the task of keeping their academic activities going on online systems. For us besides the safety and protection from Pandemic Virus, the protection of the academic and professional interests of our students is of paramount importance.
I express my deep sense of gratitude to my Heads of Institutions and the learned faculty members for their excellent cooperation in making online teaching-learning environment so enriching and highly successful.
In line with the vision of the Founder President of Amity Education Group, Dr. Ashok K Chauhan, we are fully committed to empower each one of our students of Amity with the world quality education and research and innovation acumen and also to make our faculty deeply engaged in society and Industry relevant R&D.