Some faculty members may be responsible for all components of a course, while others may be responsible only for, say, the tutorial or practical components. Courses in which multiple faculty members are involved in instruction have a designated course coordinator. The coordinator maintains a uniform policy, manages exams and grading, and manages the administration of the course. Many courses also have PG students (and some exceptional UG students in some cases) assigned as teaching assistants. TAs for a course are assigned mainly by the academic unit (Head) that offers that course. These TAs can help with the administration. TAs do not teach and may only have a limited role in grading under supervision. As examples, TAs can help invigilate, mark objective-type questions, tabulate marks, assist with practicals, etc. TAs can also be good conduits to students, particularly ones that are less comfortable approaching the instructor. It is also useful to seek help from STIC (student teacher interaction council), which even supports informal outings of faculty with students. (Contact the office of Dean of Student Affairs - https://dos.iitd.ac.in/ )

Courses can be core for a program (meaning all students in that program are required to pass that course) or elective (meaning the students elect to take that course). Each course is identified by a label, aka its course number, that indicates the academic unit that offers it and the level of the course.

Courses’ pattern-

Course numbers follow the following general pattern:

• 100-400 level courses: Core and elective courses for UG programs. These courses are not open to any PG student.

• 500 level courses: Courses for M.Sc. programs. These courses are not open to other PG students.

• 600 level courses: Preparatory/introductory courses for M.Tech. programs. These courses are normally not open to UG students.

• 700 - 800 level courses: Core and elective courses for M.Tech., M.Des., M.B.A., M.S (Research) and Ph.D. programmes. Usually, 800 level courses are advanced courses for PG students. UG students can take these courses if they satisfy certain GPA / credit requirements.

Slotting

Each course is offered in a designated time-table slot. (See slotting pattern). Some lecture slots are an hour long and others are an hour and a half long. Using standard slots eases the scheduling of courses and exams by the time-table committee of the institute. The timetable website is where the room assignments are listed for lectures, tutorials and exams. Any lab-work is scheduled in designated labs within the academic units. The time-table website also links to the semester’s academic calendar. Note that IIT Delhi has a tradition of redesignating certain days of the week. For example, a Wednesday may run Tuesday’s schedule. This ensures that a semester has exactly 14 functional days of each weekday.

Lecture hall complex

Most lectures are held in lecture hall complex. The institute time table lists the room number and time. Lecture halls are well equipped with whiteboards and A/V support equipment. In case of any issue with classroom facility, support staff is onsite at LHC (call 011 2659 7135). IIT Delhi also uses a system called Timble for attendance. Usually, it requires little intervention by instructors, and students should be directed to the Timble support team. Instructors may view the attendance record at any time. Students are required to isntall the app ‘Timble Paperless Attendance’ from playstore.

Practicum

In pursuit of excellence in education and training of engineers, IIT Delhi established the Educational Technology Services Centre in 1987. The major activities of ETSC include providing support for enhancement of teaching-learning process; developing media-based instructional resources; conducting academic and applied research and undertaking consultancy and sponsored research projects. ETSC is responsible also for maintaining the classroom teaching aids. Contact details of ETSC are here.

As an instructor, your role is to understand the syllabus and learning objectives of a course, decide how to pace the material, determine how to help an oft-diverse population of students learn, design evaluation methodologies, and finally grade the students. IIT Delhi courses have three scheduled tests: Minor 1, Minor 2, and Major. Their schedule is driven by the timetable committee, and classes are suspended during the examination period. Other than these, instructors may prescribe additional tests, quizzes, term-papers, assignments, etc. Institute supports Moodle, a web based tool to communicate with students, which also allows assignment submission and online quizzes. Moodle is integrated with Impartus a platform for live and asynchronous lectures, and Microsoft Teams (platform for teaching, meetings and collaboration) Institute has also subscribed to Office 365 suite with 1 TB personal storage space for Microsoft applications and Onedrive storage. External tools like Turnitin and Moss are available for plagiarism detection. Links are present on Library website, for Turnitin registrations you can write email to sysadm@cc.iitd.ac.in. Other tools like Piazza are useful to foster outside class discussions and Gradescope for examination and grading. The course administration and policies should be announced at the beginning of the course and also posted at a location that they remain available during the semester. Such a post could be on a course website or Moodle. A summary should also be posted on the course ERP. The course ERP is also the place to find the list of students registered for a course, and to enter the final grades at the end of all evaluations. ERP also contains the information about courses floated in a particular semester. Note that academic units hold a grade moderation meeting at the end of each semester. The final grades should be submitted on ERP after the moderation. Once the head accepts the submission, a hard copy of grade-sheet is also to be submitted as a backup record.

IIT Delhi has zero tolerance for plagiarism and cheating. Still, cases do occur. It is the instructor’s responsibility to create an environment that discourages unfair means, and to help adjudicate cases when they do occur. It is important to set strict policies and reiterate them in class. Bring defaulters to the department-level and institute-level disciplinary committees so appropriate penalties may be handed out and repeat offenders identified.

Separate from lecture-based courses, most programs require projects. These are listed as courses with 0-0-X structure. Each faculty member usually supervises several student projects each semester. The evaluation of these project courses is done by committees within each academic unit constituted for this purpose. These projects courses are often good vehicles for research.

Course Feedback

Students are asked to provide their anonymous feedback for each course they take twice in a semester.

1. Mid-term feedback – This feedback is sought in the middle of the semester to provide an opportunity for the instructor to adjust any part of the course delivery. This feedback is on Moodle. Dean (Academics) sends a mail reminding instructors to set this up for their courses. The instructors may customize the feedback questions as necessary. Instructors can view the feedback at the end of the feedback period and address them accordingly.

2. End-term feedback - This feedback is sought after the semester ends. This feedback is designed to inform the course-delivery in later semesters. This feedback is available to instructors in ERP at the end of feedback period.

Here are the samples of the mid-term and end-term feedbacks.