Students pursuing MBA, MCA, MTech will be in for a surprise in February, when they will be handed over a tablet PC to help them in their work. “There will be no need for students to bring books to classes. It will be given to them by the university,” said Dr H Maheshappa, vice-chancellor, Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU).
“It’s a fantastic tool, since all the information can be accessed on it. Students can carry a pen drive and access information,” he said, adding that since the campus is Wi-Fi enabled, information and e-journals can be accessed as well through EDUSAT. He added that lecturers will also be given tablets.
Aakash comes with a seven-inch resistive touch-screen, which is run on the Android 2.2 (Froyo) operating system. The tablet has a 256-MB of RAM, a 32-GB expandable memory slot, and two USB ports.
A letter has been sent in December to the ministry of human resource development in this regard. “We have asked for five of them initially, after which if comfortable, we will be order another 1,000 tablets. We are trying to find the details of the purchase and other information,” he said. Although there will be no major changes in the examination system, Maheshappa said that ‘online assignments and surprise tests’ would be administered.
Maheshappa added that the university will be procuring the tablet at a cost of Rs1,223 per piece. There are 600 postgraduate students in Belgaum, 200 in Gulbarga, 100 in Bangalore, and 100 in Mysore, who will be benefiting from this.”
