With the easy accessibility to teachers and faculty on social networking sites, parents now have a new tool to keep themselves updated about their child’s progress in schools and colleges. Academi-cians and parents say that unlike in the past, communication has become easy and it is also responsible for students becoming more attentive and regular in class.
According to Mihir Bhatia, a parent who keeps a tab on his son Mithilesh’s progress in college through interaction with the faculty from a suburban college on Facebook, this new avenue has made his son more disciplined and cut down on playing truant in college.
“I have been monitoring my son’s Facebook account regularly and that is how I came in contact with one of the faculty members. With the help of this member, I have managed to get in touch with other members too — either on Facebook or Twitter,” said Mr Bhatia.
“Once in college, students think they are free and hence take things lightly. Repeated remi-nders for them to attend lectures go unheeded and as a result, it had become difficult for us to discipline them. However, through these websites we can now directly inform the parents of the child’s antics so that they can take corrective measures,” said Prof Vaibhav Narawade, who teaches in an engineering college.
While both teachers and parents do not yet exploit the facility widely, trends show that it is fast catching up. In fact, officials from the Mumbai University are also happy about the new method of keeping in touch with the parents.