Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent directive from the IIT Kharagpur administration, all teaching and learning has been moved online. At the same time, a certain level of flexibility remains with the teachers to adopt the mode of teaching and the structure of learning best suited for a particular subject given each subject’s unique needs.
The following is a description of the mode and structure for Mechanics of Solids:
Important disclaimer: The instructors will try their best to stick to the mode and structure as described in the following. However, given the changing situation and the special needs that may arise at any given point once the semester starts, the instructors reserve the right to adapt and change some mode and structure. Should such a situation arise, the instructors will take care to cause minimum disruption and to help students.
Unlike previous years, there will be no division of the students into sections. The three instructors of the subject will teach different parts of the subject to the whole batch of students.
There will be 8 weeks in the semester. If the length of the semester changes due to any reason, appropriate changes will be made in the overall policies (see above disclaimer).
The total number of contact hours prescribed for a 4-credit course like Mechanics of Solids is approximately 6 per week.
Each week, a certain number of pre-recorded lectures will be prescribed as required viewing. The duration spanning this required viewing will be counted within the contact hours. The rest of the contact hours time will be covered through live online classes. For instance, if the required viewing for a particular week spans 3 hours, then the live online classes will be (6-3=)3 hours. Of course, in practice, certain deviations from this structure will be inevitable.
The live online classes will take place via the meeting feature of Microsoft Teams. All students will be “enrolled” into Microsoft Teams using their institute email id (no open ids like gmail, yahoo, etc. is allowed inside Microsoft Teams!)
The content of the discussions in the live online classes will follow the sequence in which the pre-recorded lectures are shared with the students.
While the live online classes will be, by design, somewhat open-ended in scope but at the same time, each class will have an overall agenda and plan to cover important milestones to push ahead with the coverage of the syllabus.
After viewing the pre-recorded lectures, the students will naturally have some doubts. They will post these doubts in a discussion forum. Some of the smaller doubts can be resolved by the instructors/TAs through replies in the discussion forum itself. However, the more important doubts will be collected by the instructors and discussed during the live online classes.
The discussion forum/channel feature is embedded in Microsoft Teams.
As per institute-wide policy, there shall be no Mid-Semester Examination and no End-Semester Examination. Rather, there will be continuous assessment throughout the semester.
The modes of assessment for Mechanics of Solids will be as follows (all percentage values mentioned below represent contributions towards the total 100 used for final grading):
The attendance will be taken through an automated feature of Microsoft Teams during the live online classes.
It is to be expected that at the very moment that this attendance is taken, someone may become offline due to some net connection problem. Proper care will therefore be taken to buffer out the effect of such glitches.
A student who is genuinely attending the classes over the entire semester should have nothing to be concerned about.
A few days’ time will be provided between the release of the assignment sheet and the deadline of the submission.
Students will solve the problems by hand on paper, sign and scan/photograph the pages, and upload a single combined PDF file strictly within the deadline.
Students who have access to a pen tablet and would prefer to use it to do their assignments are allowed to do so. They are encouraged to use an app that allows different pages. Submissions MUST be made as a single PDF file.
Further details regarding each assignment will be provided within each assignment sheet.
There will be three online tests to be tentatively held on Week 4, 6 and 8. Each test will be held approximately at the conclusion of the part of the syllabus covered by an instructor (three instructor: three tests).
The tests will be held online through Moodle platform.
The questions in a test will be double shuffled where possible. This means that the order in which the questions appear to different students will be different. Additionally, for multiple-choice questions, the order of the choices themselves will be shuffled.
Important Disclaimer: If there are fresh directives from the institute regarding grading policies, the following guidelines and policies will be superseded by those new directives.
The assignment and test submissions must be made in a neat and clean fashion.
For assignments as well as tests, the solution steps must be clearly explained. Just writing some formulae and presenting an answer after a messy derivation/working out will be severely penalised.
It is not the responsibility of the grader to extract meaning out of the student’s work. It is the responsibility of the student to present everything clearly. Clear communication of one’s ideas is an essential part of training to be an engineer.
The cut-off for P grade will be set between 30 and 35.
The cut-off for EX grade is usually 90. However, depending on the difficulty level of the tests, this cut-off may be slightly relaxed. As mandated by the institute, “even the best student of any class needs to be good enough to be awarded the ‘EX’ grade.”
Cut-offs for grades A to D will be decided based on the overall performance of the class. There will be no limits to the number of students who may obtain a particular grade.
If a student truly thinks that a particular question has been unfairly marked, then s/he may request for rechecking. But note that in such a case, the entire question will be thoroughly rechecked. If a genuine mistake in the marking is found then again appropriate modifications in the mark will be made. The students are asked to be very careful before requesting for a recheck because it may also result in reduction of marks.
Requests to “discuss” grades will be summarily ignored. Please do NOT send such emails. Please do NOT approach the faculty for such discussions.
If a student receives F grade, then the student must understand that s/he is missing the cut-off for P grade by a non-negligible margin. Therefore, no request for changing F grade to P grade will be entertained. The student with the F grade must wait till the Supplementary Examination.
It is expected that certain students may face some issues with the online nature of the teaching and learning due to restricted bandwidth or mobile data restrictions. It is exactly keeping in mind the requirements of these students, that pre-recorded lectures are being provided.
In the extreme event that even such pre-recorded lectures cannot be accessed, there should not be any difficulty in accessing simple text-based notifications or small-sized PDF documents containing the course announcements and lecture contents.
All students facing such difficulties should notify the instructors at the beginning of the semester itself describing their specific issue. This will enable the instructors to decide on appropriate alternative measures to the extent possible to aid in the learning of the student.
In the unfortunate event that the student’s learning is suddenly and completely disrupted due to a COVID-19 emergency in the family and/or any other medical emergency, the student must notify the instructors immediately so that appropriate measures can be taken in compliance with institute policies. It can be expected that to implement the measures, the student will be asked to provide appropriate medical documents.
In the event that a student suffers a complete and prolonged disruption in net connection in the midst of a test, s/he should inform the instructors immediately. To handle such situations, emergency phone numbers will be provided.
In the event that one instructor is incapacitated due to a COVID-19 emergency, the other two instructors will share the teaching and assessment load to prevent disruption to the progress of the course.