Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent directive from the IIT Kharagpur administration, all teaching and learning shall be 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.
The students shall be divided into two sections. Students whose roll numbers have an odd digit at the end will be in Section 1 and the rest will be in Section 2.
There will be, tentatively, 14 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 4 hours per week. As per requirement, the instructors may add an hour in certain weeks (to the extent possible such measures will be avoided).
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):
4% of the total weigtage is kept for attendance and engagement during class discussions as well as discussions through the forums.
The attendance will be taken through an automated feature of Microsoft Teams during the live online classes.
A student who is genuinely attending the classes and engaging in the discussions over the entire semester should have nothing to be concerned about.
The assignments will be in hybrid mode, i.e. through a combination of Moodle and written-scanned submission.
A few problems will be released in Moodle and some of these problems will be marked for written-scanned submission.
The submissions through Moodle will carry lower total marks than the written-scanned submissions.
The main purpose of the Moodle submissions is to keep the students familiar with the nature of the questions they will face during the online tests which will be completely online through Moodle.
For the written-scanned submissions, 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.
The written-scanned submissions will carry the bulk of the assignment marks.
There will be part marking in the written-scanned submissions. However, the checking will be done very strictly.
The written-scanned assignment submissions must be made in a neat and clean fashion.
The solution steps must be clearly explained. Just writing some formulae and presenting an answer after a messy derivation/working out will be very 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 written-scanned submissions are being incorporated to cultivate the culture of presenting the working out of a solution in a professional manner, something which the online nature of teaching has unfortunately hampered. Therefore, students are highly encouraged to invest strong efforts towards these written-scanned submissions.
There will be three online tests.
The tests will be held online through Moodle platform.
There will be no free navigation within the tests, i.e. once students submit the answer to a particular question, they cannot go back to it.
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 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.
The grading for both sections will be done in a combined way.
If a student truly thinks that a particular question has been unfairly marked, then s/he may request for rechecking. If a genuine mistake in the marking is found then again appropriate modifications in the mark will be made.
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.
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.