Teaching at Altitude
- Nov 07, 2025
- 7 min read
Background
Prof. R. S. Pant, a senior faculty member at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Bombay, has been using SAFE since 2018, even before the pandemic. Over the years, he has employed the platform to streamline two key classroom processes: attendance marking and quiz-based evaluations. His courses often include batches of 80–100 students, and occasionally even electives with more than 300 participants.
In addition to IIT Bombay, Prof. Pant used SAFE at Plaksha University, Mohali, where he served as visiting faculty during a sabbatical.
R.S. Pant
Professor, Aerospace Engineering, IIT Bombay
Challenges
Managing attendance and conducting assessments for high-enrollment classes posed persistent logistical and academic integrity challenges. For faculty handling classes of more than about a hundred students, ensuring fairness during in-class quizzes and preventing proxy attendance often required extensive manual oversight. Traditional paper-based evaluations also created operational inefficiencies, from printing and distributing question papers to manually collecting and grading responses.
During one semester, when SAFE was temporarily unavailable, Prof. Pant had to conduct a quiz for over 300 students across two classrooms using the conventional pen-and-paper method. The absence of digital safeguards made it difficult to monitor student behavior effectively, leading to instances of compromised assessment fairness. The experience underscored the limitations of manual processes in maintaining transparency and accountability at scale.
Even digital alternatives previously explored, lacked critical functionalities like location validation, question randomization, and real-time technical support, making them unsuitable for secure and scalable classroom use.
Solution
Prof. R. S. Pant integrated SAFE into his teaching practice at IIT Bombay to simplify two critical classroom processes: attendance validation and assessments.
Attendance was managed through SAFE’s selfie-based validation feature, ensuring authenticity and eliminating proxy attendance. This mechanism proved particularly valuable in large cohorts where manual verification was time-consuming and prone to error.
For assessments, Prof. Pant adopted a structured continuous assessment approach using short, focused quizzes conducted at regular intervals, typically every fourth class. Each quiz lasted around 20 minutes and featured 15–20 multiple-choice questions, often with multiple correct answers. These quizzes were designed to assess students’ conceptual understanding across multiple topics rather than rote memorization.
With SAFE, grading was fully automated, allowing for immediate performance feedback and eliminating the administrative burden of manual evaluation. Typically, these quizzes accounted for 50–60% of the total marks in the course.
For his large elective course, where student enrollment is usually more than 300, Prof. Pant relied entirely on SAFE-based quizzes. In such large classes, where manual grading of written exams would be impractical and monitoring posed significant challenges, the platform ensured both efficiency and fairness in assessment.
Even during his visiting tenure at Plaksha University in Mohali, Punjab he preferred SAFE for his courses. The university, modeled on the U.S. higher education system, values faculty autonomy and innovative assessment practices, making SAFE a natural fit for their continuous evaluation framework.
SAFE’s reliability and structured workflow enabled Prof. Pant to manage attendance and evaluations seamlessly across large classes. SAFE’s location-based validation ensured students were physically present during both lectures and quizzes, while app-focus enforcement, Bluetooth and phone-call checks, and live monitoring dashboards preserved the authenticity of each assessment. The platform’s disruption-resilient architecture further minimized technical interruptions, allowing sessions to run smoothly even under variable network conditions. Collectively, these capabilities transformed classroom administration into a secure, technology-driven experience that faculty and students could rely on with confidence.
Educators' Reflections
“I had tried another platform earlier for a semester or two. It served the basic purpose but lacked the depth and reliability I needed for large classes. SAFE, on the other hand, offers a far more comprehensive ecosystem, from attendance validation to seamless quiz execution, and what really stands out is the level of technical support. Whenever there’s a quiz or an issue, the SAFE team is right there to ensure everything runs smoothly. That dependability makes a big difference in a live academic setting.”He also cited instances where SAFE’s location and device validation features caught students attempting to take quizzes from outside the classroom, leading to disciplinary action. Such real-time accountability, he noted, reinforced the platform’s effectiveness in maintaining academic integrity.
Although he has not yet explored SAFE for assignment submission, Prof. Pant expressed interest in using its scanned submission feature for future reports, especially to mitigate plagiarism and ensure originality of handwritten work.
Key Takeaway
Through consistent use of SAFE since 2018, Prof. R. S. Pant has transformed his classroom assessments in Aerospace Engineering at IIT Bombay. His experience highlights SAFE’s potential as a trusted partner for institutions aiming to modernize their academic systems while upholding academic rigor.
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