Chengdu's University of Electronic Science and Technology is in the news again for its novel method to ensure its students turn up on time for classes.

According to CCTVNews, a "strict professor" at the college in China's Sichuan province is making latecomers copy out 1,000 emojis by hand.

Photos circulating on social media showed several students writing row after row of symbols expressing a range of emotions.

Emojis are commonly used in text messages and on social media apps.

A similarly bizarre punishment was meted out to students at the same university last October.

But instead of emojis, Professor Wang Sijun chose a complicated 56-stroke Chinese character for his students to write 1,000 times.

Pronounced as "biang", the character has its origins in a noodle dish - biang biang noodles - popular in some parts of China.

It is unclear if Prof Wang is behind the latest punishment.