Chennai: Chairman Vineet Joshi of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has announced that the board will be considering the possibility of setting up virtual laboratories for students.

Joshi made the announcement at a recent programme organized by the Kuruvila Jacob Memorial Educational Trust at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras.

"Although there is no replacement for doing things on your own, the virtual labs would help in reaching more students," said Joshi. The CBSE had recently issued circulars to schools affiliated to it, telling them to not pressurize their students by large amounts of projects and assignments.

Regarding the pressure that several students in CBSE schools are undergoing due to the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE), the chairman said, "It has come to our notice that several schools are increasing the pressure on their students by loading them with excessive homework and projects. We have encouraged such schools to assign their students with group projects and activities in class."

The occasion also marked the launch of online and offline content in physics and chemistry by CBSE, which had been an initiative of Kuruvila Jacob, involving the collaborations of several academicians, research scholars, teachers as well as web designers.

IIT-M had contributed by providing academic inputs by its professors for the CBSE initiative along with technical support. IIT-M director M.S. Ananth expressed his happiness that the institute could partner with them and said that the online content includes animation and features such as FAQs and a wiki for students.