The Cloaked Classroom
25 May 2021 | Priyanka Bagade, Vedant Satav
Professor Rajesh Zele is an alumnus of IITB (B.Tech 1989) who joined IIT Bombay as a professor after 22 years of industry experience. Prof. Zele has received his Ph.D. in ECE from Carnegie Mellon University, MSEE from Oregon State University, and is also a Senior Member of IEEE. Having been a student of IITB, like all of us, he has been through similar ups and downs in his institute life, starting from branch change from chemical engineering to the electrical engineering department (yes branch change did exist 25 years back :)) to building his own identity in the department. He is considered as one of the most approachable professors in the department and is always willing to talk to students and share his own experience.
The entire past year has been a roller-coaster ride for everyone in the world. It was also the first time that IIT Bombay shifted all the semester work to an online format. Although the institute released fairly detailed guidelines towards easing out the online semester process for all the parties involved, it is not a surprise that many hiccups arose that were quite predictably unforeseen. All the various courses had different plans for the online semester. While some backfired, some like those of Prof. Zele was met with a lot of satisfaction from the students. We met up with Prof. Rajesh Zele and to know about his experience of the past semesters and also how the perspective of an online semester is for the other side of the laptop screen.
How would the lockdown experience be if it were in your days of being a student? And how has been the lockdown experience for you till now?
Life was a lot simpler when I was a student. We had only landline phones those days so I am pretty sure that we wouldn’t have any WFH situation. We would have gotten long holidays. I would have made the most of it by reading a lot of books. Everyone is talking about WFH. Sometimes I feel more like P2WFH (Pretend to work from home). I would agree that education in this format is definitely compromised. There is a lot more to education than just attending lectures online. A substantial part of your education happens when you are in your hostel. How you learn and play as a team player is certainly missing. It’s okay hough. I hope this phase will get over soon and you will appreciate every moment when you are back on campus.
During the lockdown, we started working on COVID related project. Hence, I was able to get a few students back to campus as soon as the lockdown was lifted. So, I haven’t seen any drastic change in my daily routine. We worked in our lab most of the time. I was also occupied with preparing the course material for the semester. Enjoyed doing videos/editing etc.
In the end, we cannot be bitter about the circumstances we are in. These are the cards that we have been dealt with. We should take it on our chin and move on gracefully. There is still a lot left for you in the future and you should look forward to it, hoping that this situation doesn’t arise again.
What are your thoughts on the academic integrity of the students this semester? Do you think, given the immense quantity of quizzes and assignments, the students are justified for taking an easy way out to get some personal timeout?
Short cuts are okay only in the short run! Unfortunately, sometimes students don’t realize this. The reputation of IIT Bombay relies on our students as well as us – the teachers. Any missteps by students (when caught) get amplified on social media hurting IIT Bombay in the long run. Human beings take steps to survive (academically). But life is not just about survival. It is about the journey and experience. And it is all those small steps that we take in our journey that are of utmost importance. What you do when nobody is looking defines you as a person. While you are doing an assignment at home, do you refer to the solutions or not is a question that you have to ask yourself. We as teachers put our trust in you. It hurts when we hear students breaking it. I must admit that it has been more of a rare exception in my experience. The class students I have engaged with, have been exceptional.
Society will never move forward if people commit bad things just because others are doing the same and getting away with it. In the bigger scheme of things, your CGPA (Conscience GPA) plays a larger role.
How do you think cases of academic malpractices should be dealt with?
I have mixed feelings about punishments - do we punish for the mistakes or do we reward the correct? I remember this story about a daycare facility that used to close at 5 PM. Parents were supposed to pick up the kids before 5 PM so the employees could go home on time. On a few occasions, a parent would be late for pickup and the staff would be waiting at the door with kids to leave. Getting tired of these incidents, the owner decided to charge money for each minute the parent is late for pickup. Interestingly, the number of defaulters for late pickup increased substantially! I guess the punishment became an acceptable norm after quantification for the latecomers.
We see similar instances all around us. Cricket players committed ball-tampering until they got caught. Apologies, the small-time ban and now they are back in the game. Does punishment prevent anyone from cheating again? I don't think so. It's very complex — the risk of getting caught vs. short term rewards situation. I guess it’s a double-edged sword.
The desire to cheat in the educational setting arises, because we are so infatuated with the CPI or marks. Imagine if we stop publishing CPI and if the companies started hiring students based on technical/non-technical interviews only, we can turn the whole situation on its head.
Can you walk us through how you prepare for your online lectures?
I always like to sit on the other side and imagine what is going through your head. This time, I thought you all must be missing this wonderful place. I had to do something about it. Hence came up with the idea of using various department locations in the background for the lectures. Although towards the end of the semester, I had just run out of places to cover!
Randy Pausch, the late CMU professor, in his last lecture after being diagnosed with cancer, talks extensively about head-fakes. All the tricks, drama, jokes, analogies, and stories I do in my lectures is to cajole you into doing something else — to keep you interested in the course and learn a thing or two. Hope is that you at least return and look at the lectures again. This is my head-fake to get you to learn.
The lecture videos are of my own production. I avoid using any slides. I prefer to write/draw live in class. Just the production time for each lecture would be 6-8 hours, and I haven’t even started about the time it takes to prepare the material! Working in the industry was way easier than this- all we had to do was make chips, sell them and then rewards follow. Right now, I am working harder since I have a short time left to make an impact. I work very closely with my TAs. They are my best critics before the lecture is presented. This semester I am teaching a new class – Mixed-Signal IC design. There is a whole lot of behind the scene planning that went on. We looked at the lectures taught by various instructors from different universities Stanford, Berkeley etc. Reviewed many textbooks. Finally, we created our own script giving it our own flavor. I enjoy the process of unlearning everything and then relearn again from the students’ level of understanding. I spice things up by adding my personal industry experience stories illustrating what students would be expected to do if they work in this area. If you get someone interested at the beginning of the movie, you hope they will see the rest of it and then all the effort for the lecture videos is totally worth it!
How do you manage your time?
I like to make myself think that I have a lot of time. If you think that you don’t have time, you simply don’t know how to manage it properly. I learned this the hard way because I didn’t get to spend much time with my family when I was young. Now I make it a priority to spend time with them as well as my students. My job is to excite the students about what they want to do. Once they are fired up, I get out of their way and let them explore. I need to devote my time to all these activities and managing my time well has helped me out.
Have you thought of some changes you would like to incorporate in an offline semester based on your experience from an online semester?
I compare the online semester to a movie vs the offline semester to a live drama. Teaching a live class on campus gives the teacher instant feedback from the expressions on the face of students. Every chuckle, laugh, question, answer, expression is instant feedback for us. There is a rush of adrenaline for me. I still get butterflies in my stomach before starting a live class. Somehow the online class – even if it is in front of the live online audience – is quite unrewarding for the instructor. I have to work so hard to evoke any response from online students. Most prefer to stay cloaked and invisible. From the students’ point of view, the online lecture is a boon since they can watch it anytime with no skin in the game. Unfortunately, most end up watching only the night before the exam, trying to cram in at the last minute. So, we started doing weekly quizzes using SAFE so that no-one is left behind. This seems to have worked reasonably well although there is quiz fatigue setting in amongst students. We have been very sensitive about the stress students are going through due to this COVID situation. I connect with the students one-on-one on the phone when possible to address their concerns. This is one change I would do in an offline semester – spend more time individually with students to motivate them!