 I had actually planned to continue the discussion on the communication requirement for what we call the community communications. But there is hardly any point in doing that with about 10 people here. So let me declare this as an open house where I would request the few participants here to ask questions on any aspect of communication skills. And we'll have a small discussion and debate around such questions. Sir, I don't really have a question but I had this small suggestion or a request if you like. So basically I like this proposal that you had given that we record videos giving some presentation at the beginning and then at the end. But in between it would have been better if there could have been some feedback on our performance. So that we would have known that based on our video, based on our presentation, these are the areas that we need to improve upon. What we have got in this course is really general guidelines that we need to follow, which is okay and we might pick up on a few of them and see improvement. But it would have been, I don't know if it is possible with such a large class in this course. But yeah, that could have been a better thing to do and more helpful in my opinion. So this is one point that you make. Feedback on first video presentation, individual feedback. I think that's a very good point. I wish it had occurred to me earlier or you had made this session earlier. We could have done that but even now there is a time, my team of TAs and Firuza and others and I personally will try to look at as many videos as possible. But these have been uploaded on a link which are visible to everyone. So here is another point that I'll make. This is an excellent suggestion and I take it. I should have done it actually. It did not occur to me, frankly. And if I ever take this course again, I will do that right up front. But you see, that is where a collaborative community would have helped. So for example, all of you have recorded your presentation because it was part of the course activity. But none of you have bothered to check your friend's presentations to give comments, right? So we are not intrinsically collaborative in nature. That's the point I'm trying to make. And this is the exalted crowd. The crowd at IIT Bombay CS department, M. Tech students are the leaders. So if the leaders intrinsically don't think of such collaboration, then there is some lacuni that we face collectively. I would like to strongly suggest that while I will implement this, although it is late as we say in Madhya Pradesh, there I am, there I am. So at least we'll do it. But I think it is equally important that a collaborative community acts on such things, independent of external importance. All of us wait for someone else to create a collaborative community. Like what is a class? It's a compulsory collaborative community. They are required to attend, come together, etc., etc. Can we not start doing it independently? So that is the point that I would like to make. In fact this is the reason why in all major online courses where peer assessment is done, the peer assessment is made part of your own evaluation. So if I submit an assignment like I submit a presentation video, it will not be rated by my peers unless I rate at least three or four other peers. So this point is well taken. Actually during the presentations they had circulated forms where you were supposed to rate people in your own group. Right. But those forms were not really given back, they were not put up where we could. Oh is that so? But I thought they were publicly notified because that was the purpose. And that's a mistake. Are the forms not on the model? Assessment. Huh? Yeah but what checking is required? Meaning? Oh. So major goof upon our part. I apologize. That was the whole purpose actually. So what was it called? Assessment forms. I now recall a brief discussion that I had with Thiruja on this. While as far as I am concerned there is no issue on this, but there was one fear expressed by someone who was listening into the conversation in my room that I might not like my assessment by six people to be seen by hundred others. So that was just one point. It's not an excuse but we differed. I remember I differed the decision on this and then I never revisited that. So apologies for that. But I agree with you that there is no harm. After all marks in a or grades in a course are always put up on the board the end of the day. So if twenty other people know my grade I don't crib about it because that is what it is. So we'll treat this as a small coherent group and we'll announce this group. This we shall do immediately. Today or tomorrow. We'll have to discover where those forms are. I hope they are kept somewhere. Any idea who is the custodian of those forms or one of my staff members? My staff members sometimes behave like right only this. That means you give them paper, they file them properly and keep them till eternity. So we'll have to make it read write desk. We'll have to risk it. I forgot to mention there is one more assignment which we usually in the past used to give pretty early in the course but we have differed it considering that other aspects of literature, survey, proper writing etc. are more important. And this is about writing a summary of TED Talks. This exercise we had given last year. I think the entire class is familiar with TED Talks with many people who have seen TED Talks and so on. But as I mentioned we rarely take down a pencil and paper and write down the summary of a TED Talk after we weave it. So this is an exercise. You will be required to view two TED Talks. That means about 36-40 minutes of your time you'll have to spend. Each TED Talk is about 18 minutes and you'll have to write a summary of that TED Talk which will require another 15 minutes. So a total of one and a half hours you'll have to spend. This assignment submission will be on 12th or 15th. That will be the last submission. And that along with your literature survey will come for your passing. So what we have done is we have listed 10 TED Talks with serial numbers 0 to 9. So you have to do that as per assignment. That means your last digit of the roll number decides which TED Talk you will see. Whether you like that topic or not. We tried to make those topics generic. Then there is a list of additional 8 or 10 TED Talks of which you can choose any one. So one is a pre-assigned TED Talk and the other is any of your choice. And you just submit the two summaries by giving your roll number. So that assignment also Feroza is putting up. We'll open it up now. So you can view it between now and 12th April whenever you want. 12th April will be the... I think 12th April we have a lecture, right? So 11th April will be there. 12th is when we will have the mock interview. I'll set up the schedule shortly. Okay, any other point? I want to know exactly what you as our other faculty members etc. I want to see in our seminar report for example. What report will be called a good report? Generally in seminar we study 2, 3 or 5 or 10 papers. Yes. And will be just our understanding of the papers. You want to see some kind of conclusion, some classification. So generally what the academic community looks at when the community views at a seminar report. So let me describe that first. You're very right. The meat of the matter has to be your critical understanding of some papers that you have reviewed pertaining to a subject. But that is only the crux of the seminar report. It's not the entire seminar. What is more important is your critical views on what papers you have seen. So one thing is to describe what those papers describe in summary. That is of course essential. But that is not adequate. You are expected to give your own views on it. Like the completeness of the work or inadequacy or any error in your opinion. That is one. Second, there has to be a coherent whole that should come out of your literature survey. So that is why although it is not an intake project report, stage one report or a PAD thesis, it is expected to be written on similar lines. That should be an introduction section. We should say what is the problem that you are looking at. Then in the literature survey of course you do the bulk of your work. But in your concluding remarks, you must indicate your own critical analysis of the entire thing that you have studied. Does it adequately solve the major problem? What are the issues still remaining or unsolved? Or in your opinion, how some work could be extended? The reason is that in our at least intake kind of environment, a seminar is supposed to lead to an intake project. Now how does that lead? Is it that you surgically cut your seminar report and say now you start MTP? The title is same. That is not so. The whole idea is that the literature survey that you carry out as part of your seminar report is supposed to form the basis of a much larger work in your MTP that you will do later. I mean that is the expectation. It would apply even for a PhD. If a PhD scholar is submitting a seminar report, it is expected to help in some way or the other, the larger problem that one is solving. Now what is expected in a seminar report is some commentary by you on the impact of whatever you have studied on the larger problem that you have in mind. So two lacuni may happen. One is you are not conceived of any larger problem at all. You are in a mundane fashion. You are just your guide and you have decided these five papers. You have studied them and submitted them. That is not a good seminar. So if I am a panel of examiners, I will look for some originality. Originality not in the form of research contribution, but originality in the form of your thoughts on critical analysis of whatever has been done and your ability to connect it to something larger. Whether it is going to be your MTP or a research problem or not, it doesn't matter. Something larger. That will be the difference between a good report and an excellent report. Of course a poor report will be one which is written in very shoddy English, which does not list all the references properly and blatantly plagiarizes sentences from the court and report. Then such reports will get a failure. But I am saying if I understand your question, you want to know beyond the good report. So I think in my opinion beyond the good report these are two things. A, your ability first to conceive a larger problem and connect your work to that larger problem. And B, your critical analysis of whatever you have surveyed. You should be able to say that you don't agree with this observation or you think some more work should have been done. Or you think that in future so much more has to be done in these areas which are covered by this research. What is your own conclusion about the whole thing? Your own thoughts. So I think that is what will make a difference. This is what generally the examiners panel will be looking at. The difference between a good and an excellent report. So let me write it. So what are the three points that we made? This is the first thing I said. Ability to connect your survey to a larger problem. And the second one is when I say by others, I mean others whose papers you have surveyed. So in fact let me refine the second one more. Suppose the each research paper that you study, suppose it was being presented as a seminar report or an R&D project report. Imagine yourself to be the examiner of that. One way is of course to summarize what a research paper says. The other way is to look at that research paper as if it is presented to you as an examiner and you are assessing the effectiveness, the adequacy, the correctness of that research. Then what questions will come to your mind? Now that is your own critique. You feel this is inadequate, you feel there is some error here or you feel that more work should have been done or you feel that it can be extended further. So you implicitly act as an examiner of that unseen person whose research paper you are surveyed. That will give you a chance to articulate your own critique. Now coming back to your own seminar report and I think an excellent seminar report in addition to a good well-written survey of literature should contain these two things. I hope this answer is reasonable, satisfactory. It's not easy to do that because this will require additional work. That is why seminar report is not just literature survey. It's something more than that. And of course an intake project first stage or a annual, what you call the, PhD scholars annual report is much more than either of them because that will have to give the entire background, the conceptualization. Probably it will have some design elements, experimentation, all that. Any other questions? Sir, I have a suggestion that after coming here we don't get many occasions where we can talk to a crowd, talk in the sense present to a crowd. So as it is, we get the opportunity of having almost like 100, 150 students and one of the major fears a student faces is how to talk to an audience of this size. So there are very less occasions after coming here that we get this chance. So as it is, this class is on communication skills. So I feel there should be one session where each student gets to talk to such a large number of audience. And the non-trivial part of it is like the presentation which we had was of say five minutes, which wasn't like we could have managed that because five minutes is a small time. And the topics were of our choice and non-technical. So that was manageable. But talking on a technical topic for say 10, 15 minutes to such a large crowd is a non-trivial task. And we don't get to do it except for the seminar presentations on the MTP presentations. So before we, and this is according to me this is the right time because at the end of this semester we anyways most of us present the seminar presentation. So having such a presentation during this course will be a say practice to the presentation which we would make. And as it is that presentation will be hardly some 10, 20 people amongst them. So if we can present to such a large crowd over here, then obviously we can do better there. So if you recall, apart from organizing the preliminary recorded presentations, I also conducted a session where people were to speak extempore. What you are suggesting is not an extempore speech, but a prepared talk and of a slightly longer duration. And mostly it should be technical because talking on a random topic which is non-technical is slightly obviously easier than a technical topic. The difference is you don't want that topic to be your seminar report itself, that any way you are going to present or in addition to that perhaps. The major thing I wanted to say is like the topics which we had, the presentation which you said, anybody can have some basic idea and they can talk about it any ways. But talking on a technical topic is really difficult to such a large crowd. There is a logistics problem in that. I mean I have absolutely no hesitation in arranging such talks here for the whole class. But take a 10 minute talk for example. Now if there is a 10 minute talk, you require 5 minutes for overlap. So that means in 55 minutes you get at most 4 talks. There are 120 people. So we will require to devote 30 lecture sessions on just this activity. And let me tell you initially for the first session, the second session, say first 4 or 8 talks, all 110 people will come and listen attentively because there is a novelty element in it. On the third lecture you will find attendance to be as thin as this. In the fourth lecture, there will be exactly 4 people present who are supposed to speak on that. So it will defeat the verbal. That is the reason why I made the initial time that groups of people because there would be about 15 to 20 or 30 people in that group and that would roughly the largest group that you will face in your seminar. The intention was to inculcate the ability to speak to a group of sort of research kind of stuff. But stage fear, let me tell you, it is not a question of absolute number of people. If you can face 30 people confidently, you can face 300 and you can face 3000. The first time whenever you do it, that is whenever you go to a larger number, you will have some issues. But otherwise, once the ice breaks, there is no difference between the size of the cloud. The essential aspect is to get rid of the stage fear. That stage fear, I mean the whole effort here was to actually call you up and insist that you remove that stage fear. To that extent, I like the observation that he made that an immediate feedback or at least display of the observations or grades by others would have perhaps been useful. I doubt whether people will revisit their presentations now. So how do we handle this logistics, any suggestion? So the suggestion is do it selectively. While I agree with this, there is a problem. If I am a person who has a stage fear, I will be the last one to admit it because you see the complex of stage fear is actually part of a much larger fear complex. So whenever I am afraid of admitting anything to myself, that is the worst case of fear, no? I am afraid of admitting something to myself and that reflects in my inability to admit it to others. So I am just thinking loudly, what if we do the following? We do the first set of presentations, those 5 minute topics exactly as you said. But instead of stopping there, we quickly assess from the gradings, we make them into ABC category. Now I will personally review those C category people and we will check where the problem is stage fear rather than just inability to admit. Let's say there are 10 or 15 such people. I will not announce their grades or something. Then I will also ask an opinion if a few others first come first serve, some 4 or 5, right? Now we will have a group of 15 or 16 people who really need that help but who may not come out on their own. But now that is made a class exercise and it could be shown. So we will do it selectively. Does this make sense to you? I mean you ask this question first. So we will still have the full audience but we will have about 15 or 16 people speaking for 10 minutes. But this time it will be a technical topic not necessarily a seminar topic. So it should be a generic technical topic you mean. That looks like a feasible thing. Whatever we did here it was class wise but everyone has different difficulty in the communications. So in a large class when we are doing something almost 60-70 people thinks or it is maybe my best observation that it is not for me. I already know this. So in large class in communication skills seems a bad combination. Like if I have difficulty in pronunciation I need speech therapy like something that should be realized to me. And other one may have different like stammering or something, grammatical mistakes. So those have different needs and we are making them as a class. That maybe should we look at something like that. So if I were to write the gist of what you are saying we should have an individualized correction mechanism. So wherever I lag I should be given a feedback saying I must correct this. She must correct something else. He must correct something else. That's what you mean. Very good point. So I think a strategy is emerging for future courses combining everything from what he started. Yeah he has some more observation. So at the beginning of the class you mentioned that you will put up a modal form for those who would want to present for the second round of presentations. So we could instead have it for this thing like having it in front of a large crowd and have most of the class come in and give in their feedback to the person who is presenting. It's like those who would like to overcome their stage fear something they can also get in their individualized feedback. So what you are saying is we could implement it this time itself. Yeah. That's an excellent idea. At least the first 10 people like first come first serve whoever gives their names they can present in. Sorry. No what we'll do is mock interviews anyway would be held by external people and they would not like to hold it in presence of everyone. So that we'll hold but that what we'll do is that we can schedule it sometime later. See the purpose of those mock interviews is to benefit all of you to actually see a recorded interview. So that while that is important it is not urgent because I don't need the whole class for that. So I could even request my industry friends to come after the NSF and conduct the interviews mock interviews like this. I will tell them that we'll be recording them and we'll be making it available on the model model will still be active. All of you will be able to visualize those recorded interviews and that would be a good idea. But this seems to be more important than relevant. So on 12th and 15th we could have this will combine all of the things that we have just said will go through those assessments. We'll find out for ourselves who in our opinion have a stage fear and we'll also ask for additional names possible. And we will have them present on a technical topic on 12th April and 15th April here. Is that is that a good idea? Thank you for this suggestion. So 12th and 14th there'll be general presentations by select few whom I will name and I will also request some additional names. And these should be on general technical topics right. We should not keep too long a duration of presentation because I mean the class is attending compulsorily they should not get bored. Should we also have the assessment by the entire class like we did that last time? Correct. Can you do me a favor? Now you have all seen the assessment forms last time which we had designed that we had applied our mind and we had come up with some parameters. But can you make suggestions on what other parameters you think should be included on which the audience can comment meaningfully? And which could be useful? Any set of additional parameters characteristics that you would like to visualize but something which can be done very easy. I mean we can't expect a audience member to write a detailed critique. So it will have to be ticks. So what kind of gradation or assessment could be done different from the form that we had already used? If anyone has any idea? I think timing is also important. So put this in words and send an email. But this should be capturable in an assessment form. So I wanted to just see like whether you understood what the presenter spoke in the first one minute of his introduction. I agree. But this you have to communicate in written form so that the assessor understands. Very good. So I have three points to make. The first one is that I agree with Gary that making the whole class really assess things is good. Yeah and it seems that we are really going into this direction of collaborative communities because for such a large class it actually makes sense. But I feel that you know you somehow need to initiate people into this act of assessing. Come again. Sorry I missed the last. You need to initiate people into this act of assessing. Not everybody knows if let's say I listen to somebody talking. At most the I think what I can really comment on is if I liked it or not if I understood it or not. I don't think even if I looked at the assessment form it was difficult for me to decide should I give him a four or a five or a three. So there has to be some sort of initiation only then the feedback by the whole class would be useful. So that is the first point. The second point is regarding stage fear that Niharika made. So I believe that so I think last year with people in my batch and that he is in my batch but we had done is I mean what you had done is that you had asked them to present on a technical topic. But I strongly feel that if you want to remove stage fear if you want to remove stage fear it's actually important that you allow people to do it on any topic that they like because they already feel comfortable. In fact that was my point in scheduling an extempore kind of thing. So it is not a prepared thought or something like that but something your ability to speak generically. No ability to speak in general is fine so that is one thing but I feel that the current format where you ask people to prepare on any topic of their choice and come and present. I think that's fair enough because then your focus is removed from the actual content that you want to speak and your focus is solely on facing the audience and really speaking something. And that I feel is a good way to remove stage fear. So you agree with the general topic being pre-SI where people prepare for them. No I want people to choose their own topics. Choose their own topics. So I think whatever we did in this course was fine. Okay. Because stage fear is not about what I am going to speak it's about going there and speaking something. So let me add one caveat to this. Choose your own topic but not your seminar topic. That's okay. And it should be made clear that you are not making a seminar like presentation. You are actually making a general presentation on the topic of your choice. Is that okay? That's a good suggestion. We'll take that. Coming back to the seminar report and all that. Just one suggestion from me is that can you provide us three reports maybe thesis or MTP report or VTEC report or seminar report. One excellent, one good and one very poor that you consider. There is a problem in that. If somebody gives you my seminar report which was adjudged poor I'll feel very bad about it. That solution is that. No, no. So I will either have to seek permission from that person or I will have to prepare that entire report as if it is being prepared for a blind review. Yeah, blind review. Yes. That's what I was very difficult to do that because usually from the list of references and everything you can figure out who that gentleman already is. So that's a bit dangerous. I will talk to my colleagues and find out what can be done about it. About excel and there is absolutely no issue. I think we should be able to get that. So let me put it this way. I don't know whether I'll be able to do it very quickly now. But over today and tomorrow I'll circulate a mail to my own colleagues saying that from this suggestion has come from the communication course. And if you care to share a soft copy of any one of your past students whose report was adjudged excellent by the committee, then my friends in the class would like to look at. I think you will get three or four. I will immediately put them on the moon. That's it. So this one is done. Good maybe. But poor I would rather avoid. So in fact, you look at this and say whatever is not this is poor. Draw your own conclusion about the poverty. Let us look at the richness first. But excellent idea. Thank you. Are you going to help us with poor reports? No. I think in addition to just giving out excellent reports or reports that have been just as excellent, it would be instructive to mark them and say that this was an accident. Why they were considered excellent? Things that make it excellent. Some objective analysis of the report. No. So what I can do is I can request my colleagues that this time when they judge the seminar reports and give grades, then for excellent reports, would they care to write a few lines of commentary so that I can use this next year for my next class. But it is not fair to for me to ask my colleague. Last year I was evaluating how to rewrite those comments. They say go fly a kite for that. Not interested. This is too much of work. No, at least for one report this can be done right. If you remember there was this one good student who had done a wonderful report. Let me pull out his report and make a few comments about it. No, I will add that comment. My worry is that because of that requirement, many of the colleagues will not respond at all to them. This is an extra work that I am asking you. I am too old and senior to be ignored completely. But I am still a faculty member like them. So they will do this to me but not publicly. So they will just keep quiet. Not very useful, no? What should be our priority to get a good sample of excellent reports or to necessarily get each one with the comment? That is the practical option. I think the first choice is better. If we get five or six excellent reports, reports which are considered excellent by people, then that should be a good exam. Let me do it in two stages. Let me get this and those who send this, to them I will write a mail saying will you please also say why it is excellent. That's a good idea because those four or five friends I can even make a phone call, test them, visit them. And get a few lines. It's a good idea. Oh my God, they are already late. Thank you.