Corona 2020

The year 2020 started with  corona virus (COVID19) outbreak originating from Wuhan, China in the Dec 2019, it transformed into a pandemic in March 2020, followed by lockdown and cessation of all activities in the country and in the world. This resulted in indefinite closure of the educational institutions from 18th March 2020, insisting the faculty to work from home, we carried out the regular teaching-learning through online mode, the period extended till September 2020, as in that month only I re-entered to college to facilitate the conductance of the term end semester examination.

I want to recollect here the motivational achievement of Ramanujan College, New Delhi, they have provided different types of consultant services through online courses that educated faculty of our country on the ways and means to handle the online classes and improvement of teaching-learning in higher educational institutions, by these activities they have earned more than 90 lakhs (March – September 2020).  

Here I m providing the transcript of productive activities performed by me individually or collaborative during the lockdown period in addition to regular online teaching-learning activities.

Training programmes attended

The following are the list of training programmes I have undergone during this covid19 lockdown period 

  1. Successfully completed one-week faculty development programme on the topic “Open source tools for research” sponsored by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching (PMMMNMTT), organized from 08-06-2020 to 14-06-2020 by Teaching Learning Centre, Ramanujan College, University of Delhi.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
  2. Successfully completed two week faculty development programme on the topic “Managing online classes and co-creating MOOCS” sponsored by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching (PMMMNMTT), organized from 18-05-2020 to 03-06-2020 by Teaching Learning Centre, Ramanujan College, University of Delhi.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
  3. Participated on a one-week online workshop on Interactive E content organized by the Women’s polytechnic, Pondicherry from 04-05-2020 to 08-05-2020.                                                                                                   
  4. Participated on a webinar conducted by Atal Incubation Centre-Pondicherry Engineering College Foundation titled “How to Conduct Online Class to Students” on 30-04-2020. Followed by an online examination conducted on 08-04-2020 and secured “S” Grade.

Papers published 

The following are the list of published papers obtained through collaborative research, they were accepted /published during this covid19 lockdown period, even though efforts for these publications started from April 2019. I also want to hail a fact here that, most of the core brain affiliated with these research publications worked on a personal interest in the field of bacterial taxonomy. 

  1. Madhaiyan M., Wirth J.S., Saravanan V.S.** (2020) Phylogenomic analyses of the Staphylococcaceae family suggest the reclassification of five species within the genus Staphylococcus as heterotypic synonyms, the promotion of five subspecies to novel species, the taxonomic reassignment of five Staphylococcus species to Mammaliicoccus gen. nov., and the formal assignment of Nosocomiicoccus to the family Staphylococcaceae Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol. 70 (11): 5926-5936.  https://doi.org/10.1099/ijsem.0.004498 (Impact factor 2.4).                                                                    **This paper is one of the seminal and highly cited paper in its field.                                                                                                   
  2. Madhaiyan M, Saravanan VS, Wirth J.S., Alex T.H.H. Kim S.J., Weon H.Y., Kwon SW, Whitman WB, and Ji LH (2020) Sphingomonas palmae sp. nov. and Sphingomonas gellaniae sp. nov., endophytically associated phyllosphere bacteria isolated from economically important crop plants. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 113: 1617-1632. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10482-020-01468-5 (Impact factor 2.6).                                                                         
  3. Madhaiyan M., *Saravanan V.S. and See-Too W-S. (2020) Genome- based analyses reveal the presence of 12 heterotypic synonyms in the genus Streptomyces and emended descriptions of Streptomyces bottropensis, Streptomyces celluloflavus, Streptomyces fulvissimus, Streptomyces glaucescens, Streptomyces murinus, and Streptomyces variegatus. Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol. 70 (6): 3924–3929. https://doi.org/10.1099/ijsem.0.004217. (Impact factor 2.4).                                              *Equal author contribution with first author                                                                                                                                                                                             
  4. Madhaiyan M., See-Too W-S., Ee R., Saravanan, V.S., Alex T.H.H., Lin C., Kim S.J., Weon H-Y., Kwon S.W., Whitman W.B., and Ji L. (2020) Chitinasiproducens palmae gen. nov., sp. nov., a new member of the family Burkholderiaceae isolated from leaf tissues of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.). Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol. 70 (4): 2640-2647. https://doi.org/10.1099/ijsem.0.004084 (impact factor 2.4).                                                                                                                                                            
  5. Madhaiyan M, Saravanan V.S., Wirth J.S. and Whitman W.B. (2020) Reclassification of Sphingomonas aeria as a later heterotypic synonym of Sphingomonas carotinifaciens based on whole-genome sequence analysis. Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol. 70 (4): 2355-2358. https://doi.org/10.1099/ijsem.0.004045 (impact factor 2.4).

Special duties undertaken 

The following are the significant duties I have undertaken during this covid19 lockdown period

  1. As nodal officer of NIRF, I submitted the basic data requested by NIRF and based on the research data from third party sources (e.g. Scopus), Indira Gandhi College of Arts and Science was ranked  within 200 colleges among the 1659 participated colleges for the NIRF India rankings 2020.                                      
  2. Worked as a co-ordinator from the Dept. of Microbiology to conduct the term end semester examination (September 2020) online.                                                                                                                                                         
  3. Worked as Assistant Superintendent for the conduct of semester (April/May 2020) examination online for arrear students of 1st and 5th semester for the academic year 2019-20, which was scheduled and conducted between 1st October to 31st October 2020 (II spell).                                                                                                    

  4. Appointed as an expert committee member  to conduct the inspection (Usha Latchumanan College of Education, run under the aegis of M/s SMG Anjalai Ammal Educational Society, Thirukkanur, Puducherry. Our team has conducted inspection and furnished the report on 23-10-2020 to the Directorate of Higher and Technical Education, Puducherry.

E-Resources created 

The following are the webpage based resources created as per the four quadrants guidelines of the Ministry of Education India and UGC during lock down period in order to facilitate the teaching-learning activities of the students.

  1. CELL BIOLOGY (CBCS pattern – new web page under DHTE from 2020-21 onwards)  To directly reach this webpage in Google search use Keywords: Cell biology and DHTEPDY. It is an open education resource (OER) created as per the guidelines of Ministry of Education, India and UGC guidelines, it cater to self learning activities of the students and facilitates teaching-learning activity as whole.                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
  2. Pondicherry University Semester Question papers I had been entrusted with the duty of Asst. Superintendent of examinations (October II spell), I had the access to the scanned e copies of the question paper, with that I created a Question Paper Repository for all the courses offered in the Indira Gandhi College of Arts and Science, with a motive that it will be useful to the students and teachers in the coming days.