Delhi University's School of Open Learning embraces virtual classes with Teams

Learning uninterrupted

No business, institution, or government had anticipated the dramatic change our world experienced in 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across countries, it impacted socio-economic structures and daily life. Operations of many organizations and entities came to an abrupt halt. Those that leveraged technology were able to connect, collaborate and continue their core operations. 

When the pandemic struck India, a stringent lockdown was announced. The management at the University of Delhi’s School of Open Learning (DU SOL) decided to find a way through this disruption to continue imparting education. Digitization was the only solution to reach students confined to their homes. 

In April 2020, due to the new COVID-19 protocols, holding physical classes in DU SOL’s 25 centers became difficult, with only 10% students allowed to attend. The college tried to address this by uploading recorded lectures to its website and other video platforms. However, this led to asynchronous learning. Also, the shortcomings of this method did not allow the college to meet its academic requirements, of which the most crucial was conducting at least 20 sessions for each course under a program. The management concluded that virtual classrooms would be a far better and effective solution. 

A single platform for instruction and collaboration 

The college decided to adopt Microsoft Teams to reach students virtually. They saw merit in the ability to consolidate several activities like virtual classrooms, collaboration among faculty, and content sharing on a single platform.

DU SOL leveraged Office 365 and expedited the college-wide application of Teams whilst configuring it to manage the high volume of students. 

At the time, 350,000 students were enrolled with DU SOL, with more than a thousand expected to attend one classroom on an average. This posed a challenge for server capacity and accessibility. However, creating accounts for all students and handling high volumes were managed with ease and efficiency. 

DU SOL and Microsoft had regular discussions to address bottlenecks and track progress to smoothly transition both students and faculty members. Microsoft trained the teachers and faculty members on the best ways to optimize Teams and utilize the relevant tools to create a virtual classroom.  

“During such trying times of the global pandemic, Microsoft rose to the occasion by helping our institution serve its objective of uninterrupted learning,” said Prof. U.S. Pandey, Principal, DU SOL. “It is commendable how they lined up their partners to identify and troubleshoot issues with multiple student logins and support the university in flexible ways.”

Harnessing the benefits of virtual education

Course sessions were conducted across 20 to 25 centers. Students spent 60,000 hours attending the sessions from their mobile phones every month. The virtual learning platform introduced a wave of benefits for DU SOL, its faculty and students. Some of these are:

• Even with a large number of student participants, access is hassle-free and does not burden the servers. Teams is built on Azure and has robust security. 
• Managing physical centers is a costly affair, something that DU SOL has not done since the pandemic began. The necessity of physical classes has reduced considerably, resulting in cost savings for the college. Also, the number of teachers hired for online sessions is comparatively lower, because more students per teacher can be reached through the virtual medium. The college also enjoys 300 in man-hour savings. 
• The faculty and students save considerable commute time every month. 
• The sessions are recorded and can be accessed for later reference on Microsoft Stream. This advantage was not available to students earlier.
• Students can interact with each other and with teachers for queries or to share content material with ease.

“Last year we had set a target of reaching 60% to 70% of our enrolments – a very ambitious target,” said Dr. O.P. Sharma, Assistant Registrar PCP, DU SOL. “We still have a long way to go, but the student responses, the feedback of the faculty, and the overall numbers are encouraging. We are moving in the right direction of covering most of our students on Teams.”

Presently, the college conducts 700 virtual sessions per month. The number of students attending these sessions has increased.

The partnership has settled into a complete auto-mode this academic year without the need for meetings to resolve issues or troubleshoot. The number of academic sessions has increased by 40% over the last year. 

Looking ahead

DU SOL expects the future of learning to be hybrid with a blend of physical and virtual lessons. Initially, it is expected to be 70% online and 30% offline with potential rotational options for students. In anticipation of this hybrid model, the institution is working to enhance its bandwidth and device infrastructure. 

Microsoft is currently working to introduce QBot on Teams. The auto-learning bot will answer basic queries of students regarding the courses and sessions and get better at responses with time. This is expected to increase student-university interactions as earlier the students would only meet university faculty during exams. 

For students who are currently not attending online sessions, DU SOL is analyzing the reasons. These range from connectivity challenges to the nuances of academic delivery. The college is also working on tailoring its content to the virtual environment and improving the delivery of lessons through regular faculty training. 

“We are looking at ways we can make the classes more interactive and engaging,” said Mr. Ranjan Kumar Sahoo, Teacher Incharge- Education DU SOL. “Now that we have adopted the virtual medium, we need to adapt to it as well. Techniques on the lines of gamification and animation are being explored, as well as Teams’ use for more after-class purposes.”