Mumbai: In order to help engineering students who are quarantined at home, professors of technical fields have started free online classes in Data Science, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) programming.
This voluntary initiative aims to help engineering students at a time when institutes and colleges have suspended practical classes along with online education due to the coronavirus pandemic. Students can check the website https://shala2020.github.io/ which displays courses such as Data Science including setting up python and key libraries, basis of DS, plots, statistics, tableau, Machine Learning including Bayesian decision theory, linear models, Deep Learning for images comprising of convolutional and pooling layers, semantic segmentation, Deep Learning for Natural Language Processing with explanations to word embeddings, language modelling and practical implementation of ML models. Students will be first provided with basic explanations of concepts, tests and interactive assignments.
Amit Sethi, a professor of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay) who has started this initiative, said, "We have curated basic explanations of all concepts so that students can read information and watch videos to understand better.
We will then conduct interactive tests, assignments and doubt solving sessions so that students can raise queries, ask questions and understand concepts in a better way."
These free classes require students to spend time in self-study in order to learn and understand concepts, Sethi added.
He said, "Students need to put in several hours of work daily for two to three months. This course will be beneficial for those who practise self-study because there will be several hours of self-study, interactive video sessions, and programming assignments each week."
This initiative is a voluntary effort by a team of professors, industry professionals and students to offer a free but interactive and rigorous course to students of engineering colleges. It is an effort to provide community service during the lockdown as institutes have suspended classes.
IIT Bombay has declared an early summer as all classes have been suspended and students have been asked to vacate campus hostels. Vikrant Desai, a student said, "Our teachers have not started online classes. We are just sitting at home and waiting for further directions."
