Headquartered in Hyderabad, Telangana, Coempt EduTeck Pvt. Ltd., (COEMPT) (estd.  2000) is a part of the Manipal Group and has been providing technology-based solutions to the education sector over the past 20 years. The company is especially active in the e-learning and end-to-end examination solutions space. In light of the COVID-19 situation, the company has offered homebound engineering students a three month free access beginning April to all of COEMPT’s engineering e-learning courseware covering a majority of first to fourth year syllabuses of technology universities. VSN Raju, CEO, COEMPT talks about the need for tech-intervention to overcome these stressed times.

How are engineering students and engineering institutions going to be impacted in light of the current pandemic?

The current pandemic COVID-19 has impacted all sections of students and educational institutions. While postponement of examination and pre-mature termination traditional classroom based teaching-learning activities etc. are unfortunate, the situation became dire because neither academic institutions nor students had time to plan and implement any alternatives.

We foresee a concerning 12-18 months for the students and institutions due to the situations imposed by the pandemic until the vaccine for COVID-19 is invented. While students are stressed about their academics and futures, institutions are uncertain about the dynamic situations they might have to face in implementing changed norms of social distancing, avoidance of large gathering in delivering traditional classroom-based teaching-learning.

What pre-emptive action can the government take to tackle likely issues engineering students will face over the next few months?

Fortunately, India is tech savvy nation with the world’s cheapest data charges and is also the second largest e-learning market after the United States of America. In light of the above stated the government needs evolve and mandate new policies pertaining to using ICT interventions in teaching-learning-evaluation. These polices need to recognise the use of e-learning, online assessments/examination and onscreen evaluations in regular course of academics which could be effective in combating the current pandemic or any similar further situations. This will also ensure that students use the available ICT infrastructure and data efficiently and diligently for their betterment and growth without being stressed.

Tell us about the e-learning interventions that COEMPT is offering to engineering students?

As part of our corporate social responsibility (CSR) we are offering students free access to all our engineering e-learning courseware for three month beginning April. This will cover over 165 subjects and more than 700 practical e-lab experiments through various multimedia components such as animation, voiceover, text and pictures. Our courseware covers majority of first to fourth year syllabuses of technology universities offering BE/B.Tech courses related to computer science, information technology, mechanical, civil, electrical and electronics, including common first year subjects. 

Please throw some light on COEMPT’s examination solutions?

Apart from providing learning solutions we have been providing online assessment/examination solutions, customized end-to-end examination solutions, and onscreen evaluation solutions to over 15 plus universities that includes technology universities, medical and general universities. We were the technology partner of NASSCOM to deliver ‘NAC. Test’ their online assessment for entry level position with BPM companies. Students can access the courseware by logging into Coempt’s learning portal, www.EduLib.in and registering themselves.