Since the start of the pandemic, our country has been thrown into utter distress and turmoil: affecting people, organisations, businesses, and the government. The shockwaves have been surely felt in our college, NITK, where we were forced to pack our bags and leave its premises. Coming to the thought of how internal activities were affected by the pandemic, isolation and online education, we at Pulse NITK conducted a series of surveys and interviews with the 2021-22 Convenors of NITK Clubs. These clubs range from outdoor to indoor, from technical to non-technical, from field-oriented to one that comprises many branches and divisions.
Our aim is to understand what harm the pandemic did to the clubs? How well did they deal with it? And how they plan to restructure and organise themselves to face it in the coming semesters.
1. How did the pandemic affect club activities (both internal and external) over the previous two semesters? (Can include events, projects, meets and other activities)
Music Club NITK
We’ve shifted most of our events towards online platforms, including ‘Music Night’ and hold an average of 2 meets every month. We cut down on the duration and number of events due to the pandemic: for instance, we haven’t had Incident 2020, we haven’t gone to other college fests to perform. Furthermore, we haven’t had the chance to host live music sessions.
We are looking forward to coming back to campus if that’s an option as we’re not able to provide the actual club experience to the new recruits.
ISTE NITK Chapter
While the pandemic initially seemed like a colossal obstacle in all of our plans last year, especially for a club like ISTE that always thrived on huge on-campus events like Scotland Yard, Transcend etc., a huge shout-out to our seniors for turning this crisis into an opportunity. We were able to replicate all of our offline events online! The turnout was surprisingly good and, in some cases, even better than what we would’ve gotten in an offline scenario.
The fact that we had so much time on our hands last year helped us try out many innovative new things like the Beyond NITK YouTube series. The online year also allowed us to hold pan-India and international events like the Ada Lovelace Day Celebrations in collaboration with Hoppers Society Edinburgh and Bizfest 2021.
Internally, we strengthened our emphasis on our members’ technical knowledge and conducted a series of KEPs in all SIGs immediately post recruitments to expose the new members to the various domains of their branch or field of interest. This, in turn, benefited the quality of projects last year: there were some tremendous interdisciplinary projects as well.
Overall, it was a challenging year but a very fulfilling one at the same time!
Web Enthusiasts’ Club
The majority of our events are software-based; thus, we didn’t face significant issues with conducting them (events). However, we were challenged in our ability to draw in external audiences, especially the freshman students. As a result, we had to restructure our approach to market our events. We also aimed at improving the depth of internal affairs for existing members through various innovative means.
Lastly, the club meets were affected, as sharing ideas on virtual platforms isn’t nearly as effective as in person, but we hope our collective effort overcomes all sorts of obstacles in the coming future!
IE NITK
Our collective effort allowed us to be able to successfully adapt to online culture and didn’t let it affect the knowledge exchange sessions, projects and general club events since the start of the pandemic. However, we have noticed a dichotomy between people and activities in general. Many people are displeased about having to leave college premises and stay at home for more than a year.
However, as IE members, we noticed that having our club as a support system has really helped us get through the situation and stay focused, all while having fun. Impediments to our growth didn’t exist, be it technical or overall. We were able to form meaningful bonds and relationships with our peers and support each other in this uneventful time. As a result, our members have felt they have been very successful in the past year in gaining opportunities and performing to their full potential!
IRIS
As we often telecommunicate with alumni and college facilities, the team was already used to working in a remote environment. Most of our developers work alone on a project, managed by a senior developer and hence doesn’t require constant communication as it is in a group project.
This relatively flat structure makes it easy to schedule meetings and discussions, although not with the same ease as it would have been offline.
One of the things we started last year that really helped was to schedule weekly progress meets. By having a set time to talk about the projects and progress, we were able to maintain accountability and clear any blockers as soon as possible.
ROTARACT CLUB NITK CHAPTER
The pandemic had been challenging for everyone in the club, but with everyone’s support, we were gradually able to move into virtual operations. We have worked on a few projects and have been successful in implementing them, and we are always striving to enhance each one of them. We were unable to hold as many events as the previous year, but we certainly made an impression on social platforms with our new initiatives.
As a cultural club, we addressed numerous underlying issues and successfully made an impact on society and NITK students. We worked with other clubs as well as non-profit organizations from the community. We succeeded in organizing three fundraisers for various humanitarian causes. For the upcoming academic year, we intend to set even higher targets.
AMATEUR ASTRONOMY CLUB (AAC)
The pandemic caught everyone off-guard, but the club stayed together and pivoted our focus to what we could do during these tough times. A bright spot during the past year was our improved social media presence on Instagram, where we put out content on a regular basis, and received an excellent response.
Starry night sessions, being a key event of our club, was a fun way for the members to bond and socialize and is definitely something we miss. It’s one of those things that cannot be replicated in an online semester.
With the college event, ‘Engineer’, getting cancelled, so did our Astro-committee room, from where we showcased our projects and had other aspects like games and presentations about “cool space things”.
It was clear to us that any physical projects would have to be put on hold, which was quite a big blow since most of our projects had a physical aspect to them.
However, we did complete a number of projects online over the last two semesters. Having an online semester really pushed us to find innovative ways to conduct events like Astro-Fest and quizzes, which turned out surprisingly well.
Club meetings and interactions did take a hit, but not as significantly. We were still able to interact with each other casually outside of club activities. Having multiple online platforms to interact with is really convenient and was a huge boon to us.
BAJA NITK
The aim of the team BAJA NITK RACING is to make a physical buggy to participate in a national event BAJA SAE INDIA. However, owing to corona, the main goal of making a physical buggy has changed to a mere computer-simulated buggy, which takes away more than 50% of the work that we were supposed to do during the procurement.
Although we have accepted the challenge and developed the plan accordingly to participate in the online event, there remain a few more obscure challenges.
Permissions from college and having a team meeting isn’t as easy now as they used to be before the pandemic. One of the major problems that this team might face in the near future is the lack of knowledge in manufacturing the buggy from scratch because the 2023/2024 batch haven’t yet got the opportunity to work at the lab.
Apart from this, the positive effect of the online semesters is that they allowed us to participate in two events, BAJA SAE INDIA and All-Terrain Vehicle Championship. Despite the challenges, we managed to produce a remarkable result by securing AIR 2nd in the All Terrain Vehicle Championship and AIR 11th in the static events in the BAJA SAE INDIA event.
2. Next two semesters are mostly online. How do you plan to address the difficulties faced and lead your club?
Music Club NITK
I plan to increase intersections amongst different batches within the club. Hence, we form a well-to-do social bond, actively take suggestions from everyone, and implement them to the best of our(core’s) capabilities.
ISTE NITK
Every member of our club has something unique to bring to the table. The plan is to encourage that uniqueness and give them the platform to take the stage, whether it’s projects, KEPs or events. It’s already started happening with our successful Summer Mentorship Program!
The main challenge we see as the year progresses is engaging with a group of people who have never been on campus. We’d aim to keep them interested and invested, not just in ISTE but in college life too. We are hence looking at more meaningful ways in reaching out to the first years. Another thing we plan on doing this year and conducting more pan India events apart from giving NITK more spotlight. It also gives our members more opportunities to network with people across colleges.
What may look like difficulties are actually opportunities to think out of the box. We can’t wait for the rest of the college to see what we’ve been working on!
Web Enthusiasts’ Club
Our most significant takeaway from the past year concerning external events is to centre on quality over quantity to not bewilder the freshman students. We found that structuring them beforehand, with discussion points and clear goals, makes them far more streamlined for internal meets.
We believe that implementing our newly-found strategies would surely help the club grow and nurture the recruits in this crisis period.
IE NITK
The pandemic brought forth an unavoidable catastrophe along with it: online classes. Before the current situation, when things were offline, we were forced to shed off the shell of JEE-induced indoctrination that most of us were forced to endure. This led to us making new friends, exploring a new land and its culture, and overall growth, both in a technical and non-technical capacity.
We were also forced to discard the hyper-competitive mindset required for JEE and learnt to actually socialize and work collaboratively with others, leading to an exponential growth of technical knowledge due to a peer support system. It also motivated us to pass on this knowledge to our juniors and batchmates through events, KEPs, workshops and more. Alas! Our juniors haven’t had the opportunity to meet any of their batchmates in person. They haven’t been able to form interpersonal relationships with each other on the level that we had the chance to. The technological growth of juniors has been stunted compared to their seniors due to a lack of peer support systems. Paired with their frustration of not seeing the college they took admission in, all these factors have culminated in a general dissociation with NITK and club activities. Due to no fault of their own, many juniors are treating college life as a job.
As a club, we would want to ensure that our juniors have the same development-conducive environment. We plan to host frequent ‘chill’ sessions to promote bonding among members. We would also be conducting various hands-on workshops only for our members apart from what we perform for NITK. This is done to supplement their online classes to ensure that their technical growth remains unchallenged. To help us expand our horizons and gain a holistic perception of the world, IE NITK would be interested in collaborating with organizations from and beyond NITK!
IRIS
I feel that two pretty important challenges stand out majorly (apart from all the technical problems, of course): work-life balance and building social bonds.
Members of IRIS are often part of many other clubs and co-curricular activities. This ranges from exclusive clubs like ACM, Web Club to groups like Artist Forum, E-cell and Toastmasters. With the multitude of responsibilities, I worry about the work life balance of our members. To face this challenge, I aim to share work in a more sensible and flexible manner and ensure that the communication between all members is smooth.
Another challenge that I believe the IRIS team will face this year, unlike our seniors, is that we haven’t met each other yet. Our seniors were quite close to each other and I do believe that such close, social bonds are an important part of long-term collaboration. This extends especially to the first years, who are with us, as they haven’t met anyone from college but I am confident that as the team gets working, these bonds are bound to be built among us.
ROTARACT CLUB NITK CHAPTER
Our strategy is to strike a better balance between club activities and academics, connect with each and every club member, and ensure that we become adapted to this lifestyle while remaining cheerful.
We set flexible and manageable goals for each of our club’s ventures, and this will be reviewed every 2-3 months. More intra-club activities will be planned in order to boost member participation. Furthermore, we intend to launch new programs that will not only have a positive impact on the society but will also benefit its members. We will make sure that each and every member takes advantage of their perks during the club events and activities.
We are confident that on facing any difficulty, we will be able to get over it as a team and a family.
AMATEUR ASTRONOMY CLUB (AAC)
We have a few ideas up our sleeves and are excited to try them out over the next two semesters. We have realized that our best way to reach out to everyone in the college is with a strong social media presence and that will be key in driving the club’s external interactions.
Projects online too have an incredible scope to be just as good as physical projects by using various simulation and coding software. Especially with the number of learning tools available online, it would be a great experience for us to implement them as projects.
We plan to have a new approach to our events. Having regular Instagram posts, quizzes and blog articles will always be a constant from the club. One of our goals is to bring the events that we could not conduct the past year transition to the virtual stage.
AAC has always been about building a family environment for each member and this pandemic has certainly challenged that. Keeping everyone in the club engaged and involved is key for a successful year. Having more casual sessions with each other and a few internal events is one of the main focuses of the year.
It has been a really difficult couple semesters, and will no doubt be hard to cope with the upcoming semesters. Creating an environment, for both the members of the club and people participating in our activities, that is stress-free is vital. The most important thing is to have fun while we are at it!
BAJA NITK
The experiences from the past two semesters have taught us how to cope up with this online competition pretty well. We have developed a plan accordingly, scheduling meets with the team every fortnight with the updates and progress.
We have also taken special care to maintain a good relationship with our faculty advisor and department by keeping them involved in every decision we make. This enhances transparency and also trust as goodwill. This might help us with the permissions and letters that we will be required for participation in the national competition.
The juniors of the club are given the responsibility of designing on the basis of their subsystems whereas, the decision making responsibility remains with the post holders in the team. This is done to promote their skills so that the team won’t suffer in the upcoming years and the knowledge transfer goes on.
We are looking forward to participating in more competitions and building our team bond while simultaneously enhancing their capabilities.