 general outline of my presentation. I will be talking a little about the project introducing the project to you and then we will be talking about the methodology of how we choose our remote centers. Then the people and the team at the remote centers, then the coordinators workshop of course, you are familiar to it now. Then I will be talking specifically about the logistics of the main workshop a little about A-view, Moodle. Many of you are not very familiar with Moodle. Then of course, the most important thing the funds and then the post main workshop activity. Next piece. This project is called the empowerment of students and teachers through synchronous and asynchronous instruction that is the formal title of our project. We of course, call it teacher thousand teachers or now teach ten thousand teachers project. It was initiated in 19 sorry 2009 by professor Patek and then later on we got support from the NME ICT and the MHRD. We used to use the edusat earlier, but then we discovered that edusat limited our reach to just those colleges which had the edusat setup. And of course, in 2010 we moved on to A-view which is definitely cost effective and easier to install in various colleges. We have so far conducted 11 workshops on various engineering and some non-engineering subjects as well. We have conducted workshops on core engineering subjects like basic electronics. We have done thermodynamics before. We have done database management, but then we have also done some slightly more unusual subjects like solar photovoltaics and writing effective conference papers. I am very proud to say that our workshops have been attended by almost 17000 participants across the country and distributed at 187 remote centers across this country. Yeah, now I will come to methodology. This is the way we identify our remote centers. We see that they have proximity to a number of other colleges because we want our remote centers to facilitate learning to a number of people around them. And their institute should act as a hub for these teachers to come to and attend the workshop. So, we look at the infrastructure and we also look at the faculty because we believe that like all of you who have come here to be coordinators for thermodynamics, you will go back and act as a medium between the IIT faculty and participants at your centers. So, you should I mean the faculty the workshop coordinator should be good enough to be able to do that. So, that is how we choose our remote centers. Now, many of you are familiar with this remote center coordinator RCC. There are some centers which still have not centers a nomination for the remote center coordinator. If there are any such institutions here, I request you to please go back approach your head of the institute and send us a nomination for a remote center coordinator. The remote center coordinator will be responsible for the overall management and the smooth conduct of the workshop at the center. He or she will be responsible for each and every workshop that takes place and not just one specific workshop. Then we have for specific workshops we have the workshop coordinators like all of you. These are faculty members teaching a particular subject and whenever we have a workshop schedule for that particular subject we invite people to come here to be the coordinators. Now, these are some of the critical components of our entire methodology. We use the A-view. Of course, most of you have already tested for A-view and will also be going through a rigorous testing schedule closer to the main workshop. Now, you all must remember that A-view is the medium through which we transmit the live workshop which is being conducted at IIT Bombay to all your centers. So, the A-view mechanism has to be perfect. If there is some problem with your A-view mechanism, please the team is there to help during the testing schedule. Please come to them with all your problems and they will try to resolve them. Please remember that a faulty A-view system can just disrupt the workshop at your center. It will not be as satisfying an experience as it is to many of the participants and we have received a lot of negative feedback about centers saying that the audio quality was not good or the video quality was not very good. So, please make sure that your infrastructure is in good working condition and please to attend all the testing schedules. We also use the Moodle. This is another very important component. This is the platform that we use to interact with all our participants. So, all quizzes, all feedback, all assignments, everything is put up on the Moodle. It is very important and equally important for you all as coordinators to become conversant with this before the main workshop begins. Now, I am coming to the logistics for the main workshop. I have already talked about the remote center coordinator and the workshop coordinator, very important people. Now, we have already prepared an advertisement based on your registrations. We have I think 0 down upon 166 remote centers for this workshop and we have prepared an advertisement which should be appearing maybe tomorrow or day after tomorrow. We have prepared brochures. We will be giving you about 50 brochures each tomorrow before you leave to distribute in your local area and we will also be sending out the advertisement to all the people who are on our database. We have a huge number of teachers on our database and we will be as for this workshop, we will also be conducting the registration on our website. The registration will be on the IITB NME ICT website and only online registration will be allowed. We plan to end the registration on 3rd December because that will give us enough time for we to make other logistic arrangements like the funds to be transferred to your institutes. We plan to use Akash tablets in this workshop. So, we need to get them across to your centers. So, for these logistics we definitely need some time. So, we will be closing registration on 3rd December. We normally ask the participant to provide a letter from the institute. The participant need not be a permanent employee there. He can be a contract employee or a visiting faculty, but we definitely need some letter saying that he is a teacher attached to affiliated to a certain institute and that letter he will need to upload on our website and only those people who submit valid letters we confirm them. We send a short list to the remote center coordinator as well as the workshop coordinator. We also display it on our website and we will also give the contact details of all workshop coordinator and remote center coordinators on the website. So, that the participants can contact you for further details. The coordinators are requested to make arrangements for logic and boarding, but this is purely optional. We understand that December many times the hostels are not available or guest house is not available, but it is purely optional. Only in cases where the remote center is very remote or some such thing maybe we will sort of ask the remote center to provide some sort of. If their participants are coming from a long distance or something like that we will ask them to provide. Now, I come to the main workshop as I have said earlier there will be very rigorous testing schedule for AVU. We have in the past cancelled centers who have not come for testing mainly because if there is no AVU there is no workshop. It is as simple as that I mean I do not have there is no nothing very complicated about it. If your AVU does not work you cannot obviously hold the workshop. So, please do come for the AVU testing and get all your doubts and problems resolved. The team is there to help I will be putting up helplines later on helpline numbers. Then all of you have signed the creative commons license and the seen the creative commons license and signed the permission slip. That is because we record all these proceedings and later on put them in the open source and we need the permission from all the participants to do that. So, you will have to take care of that as well. I will be writing a very elaborate and detailed mail a little later on with all these instructions and we will be sending you the soft copy for the creative commons license and the permission slip as well. We will have the inaugural and the validity tree functions at IIT Bombay, but we have a certain schedule. Outside of that schedule if you wish to have your own inaugural or validity tree functions you are willing I mean you are absolutely free to do so. As I said we will be putting up helplines for a view testing for registration for Moodle for any administrative problems that you might have I will be circulating a list of numbers that you can contact. We will be using as I have said earlier we will be using Moodle very extensively throughout the workshop. So, please do familiarize yourself with Moodle. Again we begin sharp at 9 o'clock and we will end at 5.30 with these breaks during the day. We will mail you the schedule I think two days before the workshop begins and we will also be putting it up on our website as well as on the Moodle. All the participants who register who are confirmed will be given their Moodle IDs and passwords immediately. So, that before they come to the workshop they will they would have already become part of the Moodle. So, they will have access to all these things. Now coming to the post main workshop activity the faculty will at IIT Bombay will announce the final assignment which is a mandatory requirement for all participants. They will be given about two weeks to complete that assignment and the concerned faculty will also be giving you instructions about that assignments during the main workshop. Now it is the coordinators the workshop coordinators duty to see to it that the assignment is submitted. We will not we will not issue any participation certificate to anybody who does not submit assignment. We will prepare certificates and send them to you. Obviously during the workshop you will be sending us the attendance you will be sending us the list of all the participants at your workshops. Just make sure that they write their correct names because we do get a lot of request two weeks or three weeks afterwards that my name has been spelled wrong or whatever. Just make sure that when you send us the list please do send us the correct names. We will send you participation certificates as well as I do not know if Professor Gaitonday is going to be using this method in this workshop but we also have distributed certificates of excellence in the past where participants have excelled at either assignments or quizzes during the workshop. Then we will be publishing all content like slides assignments quizzes lecture videos everything on the portal and the participants can make use of the recordings later on if they wish to. Now coming to a crucial point the funds. Professor Patak has already talked about there being certain changes of this funding pattern from this workshop onwards. We will partially fund the conduct of the workshop at the remote centers. All of you have received the budget sheet. Another reason for us to end the registration on 3rd December is that we need that time to fix the number of participants that you have at your center and according to that figure we will be transferring money to your banks and we require these bank details for money to be transferred. Please make sure that the account is in the name of the institute. We will not transfer money to any individual's name. Next please. Now the funds will include you would have noticed that we have said that travel allowance is only for out station participants. Out station participants meaning people who will come from other cities to your place. No local travel allowance will be paid this time. Lodging and boarding expenses will be given only to out station participants. The funds will also include food, all honoraria, all printing, photocopying, etc. and the institute overheads. I think the budget makes it very clear about. It says for the workshop team as well participants. Post main workshop we will need the utilization certificate of the funds that we have sent to you. We will send you the format for the utilization certificate. You will have to give it back to us in exactly the same format. And this is another condition from the government of India that all bills and receipts have to be submitted with CA certification. Accounts officer registrar will not do. It has to be a certified CA. These are the workshops that we have conducted so far 11 in number. This is our project theme. Thank you very much. I will take questions and Professor Patak will be joining me for participants that you should have at the center because that is the main problem at our place. I come from Sholapur and there are four colleges who are RC centers and the main problem is thermodynamics people will do not more than 30 in all the four colleges nearby. So let's find out how many colleges from Sholapur are represented here. There are four people. One, two, three, four, five. Two from Pundarpur, two from Sholapur. Two from Pundarpur and two from Sholapur. And how many colleges are in that vicinity? Eight colleges. Eight in the city and four in the district place. About 12 colleges. And how many people who teach thermodynamics? Out of the 12, two are around dysfunctional. Means they are not admissions more than a hundred. I am going in the ground reality that is the main thing. 20 people. Let's put it this way. When we planned this to 10,000 teachers, the idea was that on an average about 150 to 200 centers will participate and on an average 50 to 70 teachers will participate in every remote center. That is the thumb rule. All our budgeting has been done on that basis. Now it should be a travesty of faith if a remote center coordinator, a workshop coordinator, two teaching assistants, one system administrator, one network expert and three attendants together teach three participants. So I do not know how to handle it frankly. We usually do the following. Whenever that happens and if all the remote centers are at one in one city, we find out which are the remote centers which have least registration and we advise them to go to some neighboring remote center. Excuse me sir. In the same setting. Sir, whether the faculty members from the government polytechnics or private polytechnics may be permitted to join this. Private colleges? No, polytechnics. Diploma colleges. This is an usual debate that I have been having with the ministry. We have artificially distinguished between engineering, science, arts and so on. Similarly, in engineering we have said polytechnic, engineering, ITI, whatever. I have always held that knowledge cannot be partitioned like that. More importantly, the same knowledge is being given by different people to different students. Like you said, thermodynamics is very fundamental. Personally, I have no problem. Let me put it this way. In the past also we have made this exception. Our advertisement still says it is for engineering college teachers. Now, you can personally go and tell people that if there are teachers in polytechnic who are interested in attending, they are most welcome, we will not object to it. But do not expect us to send you a formal letter saying that you are permitted to. No, that is okay. But that is okay. I agree, I agree. You see, the point is like this. Suppose I am a polytechnic teacher in Saulapur. Now, I am being deprived of this training. I will never be able to listen to Professor Gayathondey. So, if I get a chance and if I have to teach thermodynamics any which way, I might as well benefit. The problem arises as followed. That kind of syllabus coverage that happens in engineering degree program, the kind of question answering that happens in the engineering degree program is often different from the kind of thing that happened in politics. That is the worry. If you believe that the polytechnic teachers will benefit from this workshop, we have no problem. But if you are trying to suggest that merely to make up the numbers, I am against it. I hope I am very clear. The objective is not to get numbers. That way you can invite some 20 friends and they will attend. Sir, in methodology, there is no problem. This is subject specific workshop. Correct. That is why it is a problem. So, let me put it this way. Most of the 15 workshops that we will conduct will be subject specific. However, out of these 15 workshops, at least 4 to 5 will be of generic nature. I would expect those workshops to be attended by as many as 15,000 teachers. But I would also expect that some of the subject specific workshops could be attended by only 7,000, 8,000 teachers, not 10,000 teachers. So, that is perfectly fine. So, in short, my final response is that if there are multiple colleges in a particular city, in the registration, we ask people to choose one particular remote center. That remote center gets allocated. If a remote center is filled up to the capacity, we will stop registration at that point. If, let us say, by 3rd December, take the case of Solaapur, there are 4 colleges. Suppose, the attendees are 10, 8, 7, 5. Then what we will do is, we will say out of these, only the top 2 will run and the other 5 and 7 will be requested to join the course and that is about it. The workshop coordinators would have spent their efforts and time in coming here and going back, but that is part of the game. After all, we are taking care of the expenditure on your travel, etcetera, etcetera. It is not a problem, but yes, that is it. I am not worried about that. I am worried about some places, particularly in Chennai and those regions, where online university once had to run a course with 120 participating teachers. Is online university somebody there? Yeah, two of you. So, you remember that we had very large possibilities and there, what we did is, we actually split that remote center into logical two remote centers. We said, online university 1, online university 2 and they were able to get two halls with two A-view connections with double the bandwidth and they could put up people including TAs, etcetera. No problem. Ultimate objective is to benefit as many teachers as we can, as long as the teachers are genuine in their interest. Again, I will repeat. I would expect on an average 50 to 70 participants in each college. There would be exceptions on both sides, but we will take care of the exceptions by applying our mind at that point. Minimum candidate must be 20. I mean, I said average, I would expect 50 to 70 faculty members in every remote center. That is all. There is no minimum number, there is no maximum number. It is big. There are 4,000 engineering colleges in the country. I would expect at least four teachers in every college who would be familiar with or who would be dealing with thermodynamics sometime or the other. Only two and there is something drastically wrong with our engineering education. So, there are 8,000 teachers. I would expect out of those 8,000, 6,000, 6,500, what? If I have 165,66 remote centers, the average may be 40 people, 50 people, whatever. See, please understand. This is the first such workshop that we are conducting for a full two weeks under trained 10,000 teacher problem. Actually, we conducted a pilot in research methodology. As you know, research methodology is an overwhelming success. We had to actually refuse several people, but that was a generic topic. Now, in this particular topic, you are aware, I am aware and also the ministry is aware that trained 10,000 teacher training program may not train 10,000 teachers because there may not be 10,000 teachers training thermodynamics as you say. That is perfectly fine, but on the other hand, since it is a focused workshop and unlikely to be repeated again and since about 800 teachers have already been trained in the past workshop, it is quite possible that there may be only 6,000 or 7,000 teachers here, but please understand one thing. What that would mean is a majority of teachers teaching thermodynamics in the country would have been engaged by us. Now, isn't that a service? And I am willing to take a flag for some extra expenditure. Don't worry about it. Is that okay? Yeah, please. Yes, yes, yes. So, if they come forward to attend the workshop, so shall we make? There has been a lot of debate on this. I think Professor Daitonday is best place to answer this question, but I will try to answer it on his behalf. He believes that engineering people look at thermodynamics a bit differently than the people from science teams. The emphasis on this particular course as you would have already known will be on engineering thermodynamics. Now, if the participating teachers from science college believe that they can benefit from it to whatever extent, I have no problem. He might have problem. So, Professor, see, the first edition of this course was specifically called in thermodynamics in mechanical engineering. This time for some reason we have called it engineering thermodynamics, but the emphasis still remains on mechanical engineering. A question was asked on Moodle yesterday and I have clarified that other than mechanical engineering, this should be of reasonable interest to related branches like aerospace, aeronautical engineering, automobile engineering. Chemical to some extent, but see chemists and chemical engineers, they straight away go into the reaction thermodynamics and kinetic thermodynamics without really developing the basic ideas. And they want all illustrations. I mean, they expect all illustrations and applications to be taken up from there. And I do not have any background, nor do I have a support from the chemistry and chemical engineering faculty here. And I tried to talk to one or two of them, but the one was reluctance to do something like this in a mixed mode. And second one is the time available. As it is you appreciate that in two days or three days, it is very difficult to do even a summarization. In ten days, I know ten days is comfortable, but again, there will be pressure because now I will have to handle 160 centres or at least 150 centres instead of just the 31 centres last time. So, mechanical engineers and allied disciplines like aerospace, aeronautical, automobile, some such thing is okay. Maybe even if somebody wants, even MSc physics, basic physics is okay. I do not mind last time, there were a few chemists who attended, there were a few mathematicians who attended, a few of them even appreciated, but a few others complained that look, the illustrations here are of no relevance to us. But that is obvious because everybody here is a mechanical engineer. So, we expect that we will present it in that. Suppose, I argue on behalf of my colleagues here, that suppose I say I have a science in which there is a chemistry professor, I have a chemical engineering department, in which there is a chemical engineering professor and they all want to attend. Suppose, I made it, make it explicitly clear to them that firstly, this is an engineering thermodynamics course heavily geared towards mechanical. All the illustrations, all the examples will be primarily taken from the mechanical engineering discipline. However, if you believe that you can benefit from the discussion of fundamental thermodynamics, you are most welcome to attend, but please do not expect any elaboration pertaining to your own. That is implied. The Americans, Americans have a catch all phrase at the end of such thing, your mileage will vary. Your mileage will vary. So, do you agree that if we put such remarks, unfortunately our printed brochures are already ready, but what we will do is, we will put up this disclaimer in the website and when people interact with you, you please tell them. In fact, last time there was a mathematics lady, I think from Srinagar, some such. She really appreciated the, particularly the mathematical and the logical treatment of thermodynamics, but there were others who wanted only applications, applications pertaining directly to them. They were not really. That is all. Particularly in that, Solaapur, Pandarpur, but other things. I just noticed that the centers are in Karnataka. Boulder is not very far from, you are essentially the Bangalore site. I do not know where Ujire is. It is far away. So, I am told from a college in Pandarpur that many of their students come from across the border, from Bijapur, Gadag, Hootki and all those places. So, if students come, why not you invite their faculty members to join? So, try your best. Let me put it this way. The onus of informing colleague teachers in other colleges has to be shared by you all. Do not limit yourself to only your colleges surrounding colleges. That is why I am giving you some fifty things, at least by word of mouth, call up people. Let there be awareness. If after that awareness, we do not have too many people, that is perfectly fine. We are not doing, we are not playing a number game. I repeat again. We are not playing a number game. We want a qualitative difference to people who are there and only those who are really interested in making a qualitative difference to themselves are welcome. But it should not so happen that people are simply not aware of it. That is all. Is it possible to extend the last date for registration? Let me put it this way. Unfortunately, the dates are being finalized at my whim and fancy. So, let me explain why. Ordinarily, we would like to draw a complete yearly timetable. That means, if we are going to conduct, say, two workshops in May and June, we would like to announce that timetable in January. We would like to conduct a co-ordinate as workshop in a distributed fashion, as I just mentioned, at nodal centres somewhere around February mark. There should be clear two months available for the workshop coordinators to go back and set up experiments, labs, etc. The reason we chose thermodynamics and I personally requested him to conduct this program in December is because we do not require any heavy investment in setting up of experiments and labs. But ordinarily, there should be clear two months between the coordinators workshop and the main workshop. Similarly, the registration deadline should be at least twenty days before the beginning of the workshop. Even one month, I would say. Why? Because if there are outstation people, they will have to arrange for their travel and other things. They will have to take care of their family commitments, college commitments, and so on. We will be doing all of that with IIT Kharagpur. Tomorrow, two of my colleagues from IIT Kharagpur are coming here. They are joining this project. They will be conducting some workshops and we will be setting up all these things. Now, I had a choice of saying, all right, we will begin only from next May. Or, all right, let us do first workshop this December so that we kickstart. We gain some additional experience in handling larger scale and see what will happen. Sir, what I mean to say, if the last date of registration, say it is past or registration is closed, if somewhere some teacher is demanding for participating in this course, is it possible to permit? It is a call we will have to take. I would suggest that let us stick to the third December as the date of registration. However, if there are individual requests which come, see usually what we do is, depending upon the request that we receive on emails from the coordinators saying that they have talked to some faculty members, they will be registering within a day or so. What we do is, we actually do not physically close down the site on third midnight. Although the last date of registration is third, I request my colleague Abhilash is here. He is the system administrator, what we call the God of systems. So, we request the God saying, will you please hold on for one more day, etcetera. But, there is a danger of doing that. The more you delay the end of registration, the later you will find out the total number of participants. It will take longer for my team to calculate the expenses and it will take longer for you to get the money. I had once in one workshop suggested the following, I can keep even two days before the workshop as the last date of registration. No problem. However, I said that then you conduct the workshop at the cost of your college and we will send you a reimbursement. Ninety percent of the college professors said no, that is not possible. If that is possible, there is no problem. But, since I, please understand that to prepare the cost table, get it approved from here and do the bank transfer requires a minimum of three to four days of effort here. So, counting that we had kept third. One more question, sir. How many teaching assistants can be engaged? Is there any limitation? No, there is no limit. You can have fifty people. You will have to pay each one one rupee Dakshina. No problem. See, I will tell you. Yeah. That's it. See, it all depends. I will tell you. Whatever amount, lump sum amount you have allocated, that remains same. But, is there any limitation on the number of… That is one of the reasons why I removed all those numbers from this sheet. We spent two hours together discussing the modus operandi and we said that we must provide flexibility to workshop coordinators. Depending upon the situation at each place, depending upon the process that is followed at each place, there will be different things. We are used to using, by the way, our own Ph.D. students and tech students as TAs. We also use senior undergraduate students as our TAs. We find that nothing wrong in that. There are several students who are good in being teaching assistants and who are willing to work as volunteers. We don't even have to pay them anything. Now, all these models are possible. We do not want to be restrictive. That is why what we have said is, from the limited budget that is available from the government to us, we have indicated this much money can be paid as an honorarium to the teaching assistants. Now, it may so happen that you may totally involve, say, eight people out of which four people work for first five days on certain topics and four other people work for five days on the remaining topics. That is perfectly fine. You can take a call on how would you like to divide this honorarium to them. One thing I would like to tell you, these funds are not very large funds. Please understand this is a token honorarium. We are merely recognizing the service being given by people to this effort. But I have seen, and this is something I would like to warn all of you, I have seen efforts by college management to artificially inflate the sum spent in records, although actually that much money is not spent. Now, this is blasphemy. This is government money, this is public money. Every paisa that we spend has to be actually spent and accounted for. If there is any fudging of any account, unfortunately I would not name the remote center, but there is one remote center where this fudging has happened on a very curious and very silly thing. The cost to the full that is given to the participants comes from their canteen. Their canteen has a standard rate list at which the canteen has been supplying food to all the faculty members throughout the year. During the workshop, the bills from the same canteen came out inflated. Why? Because IIT Bombay said up to this much money is permitted. Do you understand? This is chori. This is not all. We have not only blacklisted that remote center. I have personally complained to the ministry. The ministry will be writing a formal letter to AICT and some very stringent action will be taken against us. I would not have liked to mention this, but this has happened. They are all teachers like us. I mean at least teachers should be more careful about actual expenditure. For example, there was some request that at some places the cost of accommodation is higher. I think VRC in Nagpur has a higher rates of VNIT in Nagpur. Who is there from VNIT? So, your college charges exorbitant money for people to stay in your guest house, right? 600 rupees. 600 rupees. God bless you. So, a person like me comes. I will have to stay in some Dharamsala and visit your college during the day. So, do not worry. I am a rich teacher. I can afford that. But now, these are exceptions. So, let me again put it back to you. If there is a genuine cost, larger cost, what we would do? We would say if there are large number of out-station participants coming to Nagpur. Nagpur has multiple centers. If some other centers are able to accommodate out-station students, out-station participants at a lesser cost, we would rather welcome them to do that. But if there are some people who stay in your place, let us say they are not given 20 percent. They are only 5 percent or something. Let us say out of 50, only 4 or 5 teachers like that come from out-station and you are issued charges 600 rupees a day for the double room. Please be assured that all such exceptional cases will be approved. I have personally taken a call on all such cases. Wherever there is a geniousness, wherever there is a geniousness, that geniousness will have to be reflected later from your head of the institution that these are our charges or something like that. My worry, I will tell you, the incident that I quoted to you actually demolished a lot of trust with which I have worked all my 40 years. You see, when you send a letter to me or your institute sends a letter to me, prima facie, I believe in that. But when head of the institution sends me a first record, then my trust in all heads of the institutions is demolished. I hope you understand. I still continue to trust people. So, I will again repeat, in case of any exceptional situation, all that you need to do is warn my colleague Dr. Mukhtara in advance that such is the case and believe me, I will intervene. She will not be able to do anything beyond rules. But in all such cases, she brings the matter to me for her colleague to bring the matter to me. I take special permission from my dean saying this is a special case. See, for want of funding, a teacher will not be denied the privilege of what? Is that okay? Excuse me, sir. I have one question. I am being a remote center coordinator for last three, four workshops in our college. What I feel that technical assistance should be there. Yes. So, shall be accommodated in the part D, where system administrator, AVU and network coordinator plus technical assistance. Comma technical assistance. Yes. See, I believe that when you say technical assistance, it means the people who actually help either doing these things or setting up the labs for the technical work and small. Right. These are not teaching assistance for three years. Right, sir. You are perfectly fine. That nomenclature we have missed out. So, if you want, whether we should add it under D or whether we should add it along teaching assistance. Yes. Teaching assistance you can add or C or D. No problem. Actually, the amount is same. So, here is one suggestion. Think of it. I did not want to club too many things together, but I had half a mind of saying teaching assistance, system administrator, AVU, network coordinator, technical assistance. All of them together so much money. Would that make better sense to you? Yes. Again, the next part will be the certificate then. Yes. What is that? If we add technical assistance here, then we are providing the certificate to technical assistance. Correct. So, will you give the certificate? Yeah, anybody who helps you conduct a workshop, okay, except the support staff who are helpers and everything. Agree. But anybody who technically helps, don't forget that all of our engineering education actually happens because of the support from technical staff. Yes. We would be useless otherwise. We must recognize that. Thank you, sir. Thank you for pointing this out. There is one more point I would like to make here. This notion of remote center coordinator and workshop coordinator has not worked in several instances. We have received complaints in the past from places that the remote center coordinator, although he or she is nominated, the person has hardly done anything for the whole workshop. As the workshop coordinator who has to run around and do everything. In that case, to allocate an equal amount of money as honorarium to remote center coordinator does not make much sense. The point is I have no clue on how to handle this tactfully and yet meaningfully. If there are any suggestions, you are most welcome. If there are no suggestions, we will keep it like that. See, I will tell you the remote center coordinator was important when most of the people used to come from outside. In that case, the remote center coordinator was expected to take care of all their stay arrangement, food, etcetera, etcetera, accounting and the workshop coordinator was supposed to concentrate on the academic part of the workshop. So, what we will do is, these were circulated, but these are not been currently circulated. They are there on the website. So, they are there on the website. Go through that. All the remote centers. Sir, about a view mechanism, sir. Yes. Are we going to have any real-cell kind of thing before the workshop will going to start on? Little bit so, because the feedback from the Akash workshop was, you see, I do not know whether you notice this time. I asked a very funny kind of question in my feedback. One question said, what are the three things that you like most? The next question says, list the three things which you did not like. Now, this is a negative feedback. All of us teachers in IIT Bombay are used to this kind of question because that is what we will learn how to improve things. Ninety-five percent of the feedback, I have personally gone through eleven thousand feedbacks ninety-five percent of the feedback says, audio quality poor, video quality poor, not enough tablets in the hands of participating teachers. These are the three ones, the three which constitute maximum. Now, about tablet availability, I cannot do anything because I depend upon an outsider to support. But, a view is the culprit if the setup is not proper and that is why it is not just a real-cell, it is a rigorous testing. Let me tell you and this is the responsibility which the remote center coordinator should take along with your network coordinator and so on. My colleague Sajjan Dixit who heads the team, his second-in-command Sushant is here, asked Sushant, how many days they have invited people to come? Morning till evening they are waiting here. They are remote centers which don't connect at all. For days together they don't connect. Now, they believe that for five minutes they can connect one day before and that will solve all the problems. That is not correct. It is a rigorous testing. You know, when your person speaks from there, there should not be any echo. When we speak from here, when one remote center is interacting with me, do you see an echo at your place? Do you see some hum at your place? These are all important things. And unless multiple centers participate in that testing, what she said is absolutely right. If you imagine in a classroom, I'm a teacher, I walk in. Now you can't see me properly and you can't hear me properly. Can you imagine the chaos? Exactly that happens when the AVU system is not working properly. So your internet, bandwidth, everything, everything has to be properly tested. Let me tell you, this is the crux of the conduct of a good workshop. The AVU connectivity, one MBPS, good bandwidth, must be assured. That is not there. And I would even go to the extent of saying that those of you who go back and cross check, and if you find out, before even 2nd or 1st of December or 28th of December, that look for some reason, the bandwidth is not working. Please be very firm to write a letter immediately saying, Madam, our AVU working is not likely to be good. Please excuse us from this time. We'll improve it and come back again. Sir, do we have any fixed dates regarding this issue, sir? The schedule is... They will send a schedule. What I have suggested this time is, they should send a generic schedule and they should also send a batch-wise schedule. Saying center numbers, this, this, this to this, should come on this date between these 2 hours, this to this 2 hours, this to this 2 hours. They had done it for Akash, but that was the experience that half the people did not respond. Excuse me, sir? Yeah. Sir, here it is. Yeah. I had a query regarding participation itself because I am much more concerned about that only. Can the faculty who are not particularly teaching this subject, thermodynamics, but have interest in that subject, be the participant, or even research students, research associates, post-graduate students? The faculty members who are interested in learning about thermodynamics and if they teach related subjects, they are most welcome. The research students, if they want to attend, they are most welcome to attend as audit people. We will not be giving them any certificates. Please remember, the ISD certification is a rigorous process. We have done a special MOU with ISD. Nowhere else Indian Society for Technical Education permits certification of people at distance education. We have a special MOU, but this is limited to teachers. They can attend, but we won't be giving any certificates. The remote center, local remote centers are free to give them a local certificate of attendance. But we will not be able to give any. Sir, what about the polytechnic faculty? Would they be getting that certificate? I have already explained. No, would they be getting the certificates in case they would be getting? As long as you don't tell me specifically that they are polytechnic teachers, yet you please give a certificate. Right, sir. Thank you. Sir. Yeah. No fun. Right, right, right. However, they also need to eat the food. So what you can do is, you can collect contributions from the such students and arrange them. Sir. Yeah. Okay. It is, it is quite complicated. It's not as complex as changing the prime minister of the country. But it's very close to that. Sir, I'll tell you what. We generally go by the stipulation of the institution. Institution nominates a remote center coordinator. Similarly, institution nominates a workshop coordinator as well. Now, usually these are the matters of initiatives which are taken by different faculty members. So I am interested in becoming a remote center coordinator or I am interested in becoming a thermodynamic workshop coordinator. I will go to my head of the institution and I'll say I'll be able to do that. Once the head of the institution appoints me for the workshop coordination of thermodynamics, it's my job to take care of it. A remote center coordinator is a larger problem because a remote center coordinator has to take care of multiple workshops. And in some cases, the remote center coordinator is not able to take care of this. Now, oh, that is very simple. The moment a person shifts a job from the college, then that person is no more either a remote center coordinator or workshop coordinator from that center. Immediately, the head of the institution should appoint somebody else. All that we seek is a nomination letter. But there should be a handing over taking over. What happens is if I shift to college X, I suddenly get Nirvana about college Y. So if you become the new remote center coordinator, I won't even talk to you about it. Ordinarily, I should tell you what I was doing, how I was doing it. There are some... Sir, due to some unavoidable reasons, if any main workshop coordinator is on leave or because of health problems, whether is it possible to appoint a co-coordinator? Absolutely. And the person, suppose I fall ill, I should request a colleague of mine to take care of things. I should be generous enough to let the honorarium be either shared or be given. We have no problem. Absolutely no problem. Sir, is there any fixed ratio between the inside and the outside participants? No. In the earlier workshop, we always used to say that no inside teacher will attend at that center. We used to say that for a specific reason. Good that you asked me this question. Because we had noticed that whenever people from the same college attend the workshop at that college, they are half the time doing something else. Suppose she is the principal of my college and she knows I am attending the thermodynamics workshop during December and she fights out, oh, Patak is attending in this college itself. Then suddenly I will get a slip saying, please go and attend that examination work. Now, she is the principal. It is very difficult for me to say no to her. Now, this was the problem. Therefore, we are debarred doing it. However, when we scale it up to thousand teachers, one of the objectives is to let, is to remove the unnecessary movement of people because that is what is costing maximum money to the government. Which means that a large number of faculty members from the same college will also be attending it. Now, this is where you as workshop coordinator have to make it absolutely clear to your own colleagues. Saying, look, two weeks means two weeks you have to work here, 9.30 to 5.30. And we will go by the recommendation of the workshop coordinator saying such and such people did not attend the full workshop. We will not give them certificate. No matter what pressure is brought upon. This is a basic disability. We don't expect similar discipline from our students. There is a minimum attendance and all sorts of rules. Why should we spare ourselves and our own colleagues? 100 percent confidential. In such cases, you can write confidential mail to my personal mail ID. You need not even share it publicly because whatever mail goes to her will go to the whole team naturally. By the way, whatever mail comes to me goes to about 15 of my secret fields. That is also not confidential but it's a good point. I think we should make a provision of a separate email ID where any confidential information that the workshop coordinator wish to share and this email ID will be looked at only by one or two people. That is a very good suggestion. We will set up such an email ID and we will communicate to all workshops. So, I hope there is still one question. Can you elaborate on the role of teaching assistants? Sorry? The role of teaching assistants in the main... Generally, the role of teaching assistants is... No, that's okay. I heard it. The question was what is the exact role of teaching assistants? So, if you see the IIT system the teaching assistants help us in conduct of tutorials in conduct of examinations in evaluation of examinations and in conduct of labs. Now, in this particular course the assignments and the evaluations will be on Moodle except when the final submissions of the team assignments are done. They are only to be perused by workshop coordinators. We don't expect evaluation and the perusal has to result in the following two possible things. Acceptable, not accepting. If it is acceptable we certify the participation by all the four members of that team. If it is not acceptable none of them gets accepted. Teaching assistants are therefore useful while conducting tutorials that you might conduct during the afternoon. I don't know. You will have tutorials, problem solving exercises and so on. So, whatever problems that are framed up by you and him now you will have to conduct some kind of a interaction with those teaching assistants. Teaching assistants need not be students or m tech students. They can even be your colleague teachers. Perfectly fine. But those people will be able to confidently answer questions of the participants related to them. And there is nothing wrong if I am your teaching assistant and she asked me a question of which I do not know the answer at all. I should not at all be hesitant in admitting that I don't know this answer. Let us together ask Professor Gatham. In fact, I would welcome such questions coming from the participants which none of us can answer because these are the questions which should be uppermost for us to answer subsequently. Right. Or absolutely fine. TG students can be teaching assistants. A participant cannot be a teaching assistant. No, no, no. He is asking about teaching assistant being TG students. So, that is perfectly fine. See, this is all the work at the peer level. When I was a young teacher one of my TAs was head of my department. It was perfectly common at that time. There is no senior junior business or hierarchy in academic. So, you are futile. Ordinarily, we would expect you to have either your colleague teachers or senior graduate students as we call them for graduate students. That should be fine. Moodle Moodle. All submissions are Moodle. Oh, they will know because we will be forming groups and all the participants from a centre and the workshop coordinator will be in one group. So, the assignments submitted by those participants will be visible to that workshop coordinator and to the teacher here. No, no, no. This time we will take care of that. No, no, no. This time you will know. We will know the moment. I think we need to stop now. Any more important questions that you have? I hope most of your doubts have been clarified. Let me also now tell you something more. This workshop budget that we have framed is at the beginning of the three-year project. Somewhere around July next year, the budget is likely to be upgraded slightly. And somewhere in July 2014, it will be upgraded further. So, the objective here is to leave some provision so that, you know, I do not claim to match the inflation rate. Inflation is apparently happening much faster. But, at least, to begin with, we want to do this experiment. And as you know, none of us are doing this for any money. I do not know whether you are aware, but Bhai or Professor Kannan, who have been involved in this project for the last five years, who have not taken a single price for anything that we have done. This is our personal commitment to this project. And this commitment is shown by many people. However, we must appreciate that if people contribute to the work, the work must be recognized. And towards that recognition, some honorium must be paid. But it should not be that for the sake of honorium people. As long as we follow that, I think that should be done. All right then. So, we will stop here.