IITK101: Academics

Academics are one of the most important aspects of a student’s life at IIT Kanpur. Here, we will try to explain the structure of the academic curriculum of IITK briefly (however complex it may have seemed :P). After that, we shall take a quick peek at the overall academic environment, and end by drawing a parallel between an offline lecture in L20 and a Zoom class. So without wasting any time let’s dive into the third lecture of IITK101

Template

The academic structure for every program is dictated by a departmental template. The template lists down the courses to be done in a semester-wise fashion, such that the minimum graduation requirements for the concerned degree are met. The template also considers the prerequisites of different courses, and the courses are scheduled accordingly. But the template is not binding on the students, and they have the freedom to schedule courses according to their own volition. Detailed guidelines regarding course templates can be found on the DoAA website.[1]

Types of courses

Each UG program requires the students to complete minimum credits from different sets of courses. Different categories are listed and summarized below:

1. Institute Core (IC) Courses:  The IC courses are common and compulsory for all the UG students. These courses cover the fundamentals of various topics, ranging from basic sciences such as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, to core engineering subjects such as manufacturing, electronics, and computing. The IC courses populate the 1st and 2nd-year template arrangements.

2. Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Courses: The minimum graduation requirements for UG students include a total of 5 courses (further classified into 2 Level-1 courses and 3 Level-2 courses) from a basket of courses from the discipline of Humanities and Social Sciences. A natural question that arises is “Why HSS courses in a technology institute?”. While engineering and science courses help us gain better insights into the world’s technological and scientific aspects, HSS courses complement this learning by focusing on various social, cultural, and moral issues. Apart from developing one’s critical thinking ability, these courses also broaden one’s perspective of the world and life in general. Ultimately, these courses contribute towards sensitizing students and helping them become better human beings.

3. Department Compulsory (DC) Courses: As the name indicates, these DC are mandatory for students belonging to a specific department. The courses aim to engulf the essential topics related to the department. Many DC courses also form prerequisites for other departmental courses.

4. Department Elective (DE) Courses: Students have the option to choose from a wide array of courses from their parent discipline, which are offered as DE courses. DE courses are typically present from 5th-sem onwards in most departmental templates. The minimum credit requirement for DE courses varies across programs.

5. Open Elective (OE) Courses: All UG students are required to complete around 54 credits, which translates to roughly 6 courses (for some departments, it is 63 credits/7 courses), as Open Electives. These are courses that students may take from any department/program in the Institute. OEs offer students an opportunity to explore diverse topics beyond their parent discipline. These courses are one of the significant aspects that provide the IITK Academic curriculum the flexibility it is renowned for.

6. (Engineering) Science Options (ESOs/SOs): ESO/SO courses are electives offered by different departments concerned with some specific but fundamental science/engineering topics. In total, the students have to complete around 40 credits of ESO/SO courses. Departmental templates have a few compulsory ESO/SOs, while the rest are electives.

The detailed rules and procedures regarding the academic curriculum including information on branch change, double major, minor, etc. can be found in the UG manual on the DoAA website.[2]

Academic Environment

IIT Kanpur is renowned for having one of the most flexible and unique academic curricula around the world. This flexibility promotes interaction between students across departments and batches. It also encourages students to explore a broad spectrum of topics, which proves beneficial not only in academia but also in industry. These interactions and opportunities are aimed at creating a healthy academic environment and furnish students with an enriching learning experience. 

The campus’s academic facilities are also world-class, with fully air-conditioned lecture halls, state-of-the-art labs, a vast library, and excellent places to study peacefully, such as the Student’s lounge, New Core Labs(NCL), etc. With the covid situation incorporating a new lease of learning, it’s understandable that things won’t remain the same in the course curriculum, yet the learning through the first-hand experience, provided by the labs, brimming with students during a regular semester, have their own tales to be told.

Studying at home has its own set of distractions, yet the ones experienced on campus have a more vast genre which at times needs to be dealt smartly for one’s own benefit. One being the group of people around you, during quizzes, midsems, or endsems,  representing the study environment which may tend to either bolster your preparation with their help and revision notes or may demotivate one’s hard work and preparation by the feeling of competitiveness among the peer, so here the choice lies in your hands to judge whether this environment around you may be toxic or not. At campus, there is no dearth of study rooms, right from the most sought after the library, where you see students stamping their bags in the tables or chairs, during peak times (which generally includes end/mid sem, but one of the most influencing factors of their occupancy is generally the “enthu” of the incoming batch), there to safeguard their seats.

Or one could use the cozy environment of CCD with comfortable chairs and adjustable round-tables where people visit more for studying over having a cup of coffee, or at the student lounge, where even a small nap could be achieved on the sofa present with the warmth to take away your all your stress(provided you don’t grab the attention of the working SIS guard :P). And the best part, where even the administration acknowledges the irregular routine of the students, is that CCD, library, student’s lounge along with the Computer Centre present in the NCL labs are open round the clock(24*7) for the whole duration of the exams

The late-night ‘chai’ or maggie or any other snack for that matter in DoAA’s canteen, which has its doors open for campus residents even at 5 AM, gives a sense of lightness in the mind. After all, good hours of study couldn’t be topped off by a little self treat with light “bulla” with your friends.

The 1st-year IC courses lectures are held in L20, which is a massive hall with a seating capacity of about 600 students. But L20 is not just a lecture hall; it is a collection of diverse groups of individuals from across the batch. The typical antics of these varied groups characterize every lecture in L20. A crowd of Maggus populating the front rows, asking doubts enthusiastically during and after every lecture hour; a couple of late-comers trying to sneak into the lecture hall without catching the eye of the instructor; the occasional hooting and laughter when these dawdlers get caught in the act and invite a sarcastic remark from the instructor’s end; a set of hungry souls continually checking the clock, waiting for the class to get over so that they can rush back to the hall canteen; a bunch of impatient fellows on the lookout for the attendance machine, waiting to mark their attendance and sneak away in the middle of the class; an enthusiastic clan of gamers occupying the last few rows, testing the best angles to conceal their mobile phones from the strict instructors; an avid reader seated in a distant corner of the lecture hall, deeply engrossed in a novel, cut off from the rest of the material world; and a horde of sleepy individuals, dozing off between lectures, trying to make up for the sleep they lost due to last night’s bulla session.

Cut to 2020.

The crowd of Maggus is trying their level best to show enthusiasm (and gain some participation marks) by spamming the chat-box; the late-comers are stuck in the waiting room, pinging their peers to remind the instructor to let them in; the random conversations from the end of the poor chap who forgot to turn off his mic cracks everyone up at their desk; the occasional Zoom-bombing prompts the instructor to mute everyone; the set of hungry souls are busy having lunch during the classes; the multi-tasking gamers have minimized Zoom, and are busy playing the latest multiplayer game to viral, and the sleepy individuals have muted the meeting and have fallen into a deep slumber.

Everything has changed, but nothing has changed.

Mark Hamill

Writing Credits – Aayush Priyadarshi, Sandipan Mitra
Editor – Milind Nigam

References:
[1] https://www.iitk.ac.in/doaa/data/Course-Template-B.Tech-BS.pdf
[2] https://www.iitk.ac.in/doaa/data/UG-Manual.pdf

Photograph Credits:- Arindam Kar