 I am Deepak Phatak. I am a teacher of computer science here. I have been with the institute for about 40 years. Let me also welcome Prasagayatunde. Many of you might have attended his previous course on thermodynamics and some other courses. So, welcome Prasagayatunde. He is the coordinator for this as well as the subsequent workshop. To you all, good morning. I am pleased to introduce my colleagues and co-coordinators of this course, Professor Upendra Bhandarkar and Professor Bhailchandra Puranik, both of mechanical engineer. They are pedigrees like this. Professor Bhandarkar was my student way back between 1991 and 95. He did his mechanical engineering from here, worked with me for a project and I seem to have impressed him enough. He decided to, you know, make a career in mechanical engineering in thermal engineering in particular. I am happy he did that and is back as my colleague for the last eight years, nine years, something like that. He teaches thermodynamics, almost anything in thermal engineering at the undergraduate and postgraduate level and has helped me and others in conducting similar courses in earlier. The first course last year was for something called the earlier edition of this called Thermodynamics in Mechanical Engineering. He was a coordinator with me at that time. Professor Puranik is an alumnus of the College of Engineering Pune. And then after doing his PhD, he is back with us on the faculty member. Expertise again generally in fluid mechanics, CFD, thermal engineering and other aspects. And he has taught not in the earlier thermodynamics course, but I think he has been a part of the fluid mechanics and CFD course and maybe also of the heat transfer course. I am not so sure. Anyway, we are all able to take part in many of these courses. And although Professor Bhandarkar was part of the earlier thermodynamics, here also he will be a part. But since in the second edition, what is now called engineering thermodynamics, we plan to extend the scope by having some additional topics. And these people are very conversant in teaching many of those additional topics. So, that is why they are here. Do you want to say something? Thank you, Professor Gaitande. As you said, I have done this before, but it is not something that I do very often. So, I hope I can manage to teach you the two or three topics that Professor Gaitande has requested me to teach you in as good a fashion that he does. So, I hope I can meet your expectations on that. Thank you. Yeah, similar comments here. I do not really teach thermodynamics per se. I think what I plan to do is in case there is sufficient interest from your side to look at compressible flows. That is something that I routinely teach here at IIT Bombay. And primarily, that is the topic that I will be handling in case there is sufficient interest for it. Additionally, perhaps something more simple from the list of topics is probably what I will do. So, welcome all and hopefully, we will have a good interaction over the next three days. Thank you. Thank you, Professor Pandarakar. Thank you, Professor Puranik. Thank you, Professor Gaitande. As some of you would know, we try to keep these inaugural sessions very brief because the main task ahead needs to be completed in just three days. How many of you have participated either as participating teachers or coordinators or whichever way? In any one of the workshops that we have conducted in the past, wrong question. How many of you are not aware of these workshop schedule and have not participated? Several people. That is good news. So, for some of you, what I will say will be a repetition, although there are a few new things which I would like to add. All of you are aware through our pamphlets and web pages and so on that we conduct these teacher's trainings workshops. We started it around year 2000 when I started the distance education program in the then school of IT. We used V-SATS then and we could reach out to just three or four remote centers. I think our first one was VRC, Nagpur, Indore, Nanded, COEP and so on. Subsequently, we expanded our reach and we offered our CEP courses and some QIP courses were offered. Tyfaq supported a project to try and test whether this methodology can be used to train teachers. So, we did some early training for teachers then. About three years ago, government of India liked the scheme and sponsored a project to train 1000 teachers at a time. To train 1000 teachers at a time was considered near impossible. But the methodology that we use is that we have remote centers such as yours. We have each remote center in charge of a faculty member who has taught that subject for some time. That workshop coordinator handles anywhere between 30, 40, 50, 60 teachers who assemble at that remote center for the main workshop. This way we are able to open about 1000 teachers and engage them for a two week IST program. We have a special memorandum understanding with IST to permit us to give IST certificates even when we conduct the program in distance. In fact, the then IST president as well as the current president has acknowledged that our courses are as effective as face-to-face courses if not more effective primarily because of the expertise that we gather not only in terms of the faculty members from IIT and other places but also dedicated faculty colleagues who take charge of activities at each remote center. The model is that the lectures are delivered interactively in the morning using a view on internet and in the afternoon the tutorials, lab assignments, etcetera, etcetera are conducted at each remote center. That way we are able to maintain the notion of a classroom even at each remote center because there is a group of people over. More importantly, we release all the recorded lectures, videos, tutorials and even the submissions made by participants in open source so that a much larger body of teachers and students could benefit. So, this 10,000 teacher program we did some pilots and we conducted about 10 workshops. We trained about 11,000 teachers in the process. When the ministry asked us whether we can scale it up further because as you are aware there are more than 4,000 engineering colleges and the number of teachers and the number of subjects that they teach. So, if you pair teacher subject extraordinarily large number of people are waiting for some guidance, some suggestions and so on. Very recently the government has approved a new project which I have proposed which attempts to train 10,000 teachers at a time. We call it a T10KT program, trained 10,000 teachers. This is part of our talk to a teacher program. One of the important things that we try to ensure in this subject specific workshops is that rather than imposing upon all the teachers the syllabus and the methodology of teaching that we adopt at IIT, we do believe that it has plus points. But instead of just doing that which is what has been attempted for example through NPTEL courses and so on and one of the reasons I found out through my interaction with teachers as to why they do not use NPTEL courses in their normal teaching is because they find that those courses are not exactly aligned to the syllabus and the exam system followed in the individual colleges. We believe that that system needs to be changed. We believe that the university evaluation system needs to undergo drastic changes. We believe that every college, every teacher should be an autonomous while teaching a subject but that will happen over a period of time. It is not going to happen overnight. Consequently, all of you and your colleagues whom you will teach over the next two week program will be forced to teach as per the normal standard syllabus of the university and will be forced to set question papers and conduct evaluation exactly as per the university norms. That cannot be reached away. That is the reason why we conduct this program with the coordinators. I suppose you would have all brought with you the knowledge of your own syllabus and your own exam systems and so on and so forth which you will share with my colleagues here. Additionally, my colleagues will share with you the plus points of the way subjects are taught in IIT. And what we would like to give to the 10,000 teachers who come to the workshop is a blend of both. So, they should find something very useful and concrete to be used by them while teaching the courses including question bags that we will create and so on. And additionally, we would like to introduce some pedagogical elements which over 50 years IIT has refined and refined and refined. It essentially centers around asking hard questions. It essentially centers around creating interest and enthusiasm in the minds of students, making them apply their mind because that is what is learning. I would also like to mention that increasingly with the web and internet permitting you access to top quality material, the conventional paradigm of teaching and learning is going to change very drastically. Those of you who participate in the Akash project would remember that I am uploading a team assignment where I am asking teams of teachers to think about how things will change and how in specific Akash tablet could be used to contribute to that change positively. But that is a separate issue. The point I am making is today you have the best teachers in any subject. Their lectures are available online. Consequently, contents and delivery which used to be the most important contribution of each individual teacher so far in teaching is going to take a back seat. Does it mean that teachers have no rule? Absolutely not. On the contrary, teachers will have a greater role. Some of my colleagues have started examining the possibility of inverting the classroom and home assignment. For example, Professor Kandan gave a course last year where he said that my lectures are online recorded from the previous year. There will be no lecture tomorrow. You are instead supposed to listen to that lecture or this weekend and come prepared to answer questions on that lecture. The whole classroom now is converted into a tutorial kind of engagement where you ask students some problems, solve those problems, you interact with them because after all problem solving is where students apply their mind. So, all of this will take effect into the educational system over a period of time. But practically a new history is being written now as we speak in terms of these changes and you will be at the forefront of making these changes possible in a more effective way. So, you all have a greater responsibility than just coordinating this workshop for two weeks in your places. You also have to engage the participating teachers, share with them the changes that are happening, request them to think of how differently they could do their teaching learning process in their own colleges. So, this is the backdrop. We have some funding from the government for these workshops. The funding has been drastically reduced on a per workshop basis. For the obvious reasons that when we had promised government that we will train about 12,000 teachers, we ended up training 19,000 teachers because we ran a program on introduction to research methodologies which was attended by many people including some of your centers. That was very popular and the government was convinced that we can actually train 10,000 teachers at a time. That is why this new project has been approved. The contours of this project are we have IIT Kharagpur as a partner. So, IIT Kharagpur will conduct six workshops over the next three years. We will be conducting nine workshops. A total of 15 workshops in 15 chosen subjects. Each one engaging 10,000 teachers at a time. This way we expect to train about 1,50,000 teachers. It is a very honorous task. Such a thing has never been attempted anywhere in the world. In fact, training 10,000 teachers at a time itself, I believe is a global person and you are all part of creation of that. Now, when we train such large numbers, there are some additional problems. When you scale up from 100 teachers to 1,000 teachers, we have some problems which we resolve. When you scale up from 1,000 teachers to 10,000 teachers, there are more problems. Consider this. Some of you who would have attended some co-ordinators workshop earlier would recall that there would be 30 or 50 teachers at a time and then interaction would be very intense. When you have 200 teachers at a time for the co-ordinators, it is extremely difficult to relate to each one of them. We have therefore introduced a concept of nodal centers. We will be establishing up to 10 nodal centers over the next six months. Each of the nodal centers will be requested to take charge of basic interaction with about 30 to 50 identified remote centers. So, obviously these will be in different regions. Some colleges have been identified for that purpose. We will soon be having a meeting. I did not want to delay the conduct of the first workshop till next June by which time we would have put in place all these arrangements. And that is why we are doing it now. And I had to request Professor Gaiton and his colleagues to interact with 175 or so teachers. Although it is very, very difficult to have a one-on-one interaction during this time. So, the model is that we will continue our workshop training program exactly as it was earlier, except that the co-ordinators' workshops which used to happen always at IIT, Bombay for 30, 40, 50, 70 teachers would now happen at four or five places. But the co-ordinator workshop will be conducted from here. And what we would like to try and ensure is that if the co-ordinators' workshop happens at five places or four places, then at each of those four or five places, at least one of the faculty members related is present physically, whereas the co-ordinators' workshop will also be done on here. Obviously, the nodal centers have to be stronger institutions. We are looking keenly towards institutions like NITs and institutions like COEP, for example, or some good institutions will be shortly selected. The second problem that we have tried to resolve is we have requested for and got some additional funding for each remote center. You will appreciate that today all the basic arrangements of providing a server at your place, providing video, audio equipment, everything is done by your college. Almost all colleges have tried their best to provide the best equipment. However, at many places there are problems about audio reception, there are problems about video reception, there are problems about server not working and so on. So, I requested specifically and the government has granted about three lakh rupees to be given to each remote center to set up the basic equipment. We are working out the details of the equipment that you should have. Of course, you need not duplicate anything. If you already have some equipment of that kind, you can use this money for something else. In fact, the ministry I remember was quite pleased to see that IIT Bombay is trying to support establishment of good infrastructure at each of the remote centers. Very similarly, we have a relatively larger equipment set up to be granted from the project at the nodal centers. The details we will share with you in due course of time. Of course, none of that will work for the December workshop because the time is too little for acquisition and that is why in the December workshop you will have to go back and ensure that your basic infrastructure works very well. At the end of this workshop, I would expect the following to be achieved. My colleagues here should then be fully conversant at that time as to what exactly is done in the name of thermodynamics in your respective colleges and universities. You should also be familiar by then of what we do in engineering thermodynamics. I had a long debate with Professor Gaitonde by the way on thermodynamics and engineering thermodynamics. He insists that because thermodynamics I now understand is like an elephant. As an electrical engineering student when I studied thermodynamics in 1966-67 sometimes at Indore, I had no clue either about thermo or about dynamics. But in those days, the engineering education used to be of five years duration. Some of you would have undergone that education and those who have undergone that education would recall that the basic engineering subjects were taught far more vigorously to the engineering students. The four year program has diluted significantly the contents of the basic courses in engineering. When we were students, we were told that mechanical engineering is the mother of all engineering. In fact, there was no engineering at one time. There were alchemists and then scientists and then when engineering began by implicit understanding it was mechanical engineering which contained civil engineering as a part if you recall the history of it. But from mechanical engineering then other engineering disciplines came and then we have succeeded in chopping off portions of knowledge saying this is mechanical engineering this is electrical engineering this is civil engineering and so on. Courses like thermodynamics are fundamental courses to the understanding of many natural phenomena. They are transcendent engineering actually. They emanate from physics. They get into engineering. It is very, very important therefore for all of us to tell our 10,000 teacher colleagues how important it is to ensure that these basic concepts are well understood by our students. Today it is fashionable for students to say I am a computer science student so I will have nothing to do with thermodynamics which is nonsense. I mean it does not matter which branch of engineering or science you are studying the basic concepts of engineering and science must be understood by them. And one of our endeavors is to jointly propagate that viewpoint across to the teaching community which will be part of it. There are several details there are more details about the exact financing provisions etc. We usually have a short session if somebody my finance minister Jaya is missing unfortunately she is only but we have Dr. Mukta Atre who many of you would have interacted and Kalpana who is the in charge of our contents both of them are standing. Can you raise your hand so that they can see you. They will be interacting with you telling you the details about the official processes and procedures that we follow. But primarily the dates have been I think frozen as 11th December to 21st December. Although we call it a two week program we have to run it for 10 full days to 10 full working days so we provide for just one holiday in between so that we can cover it because many teachers would like to enjoy part of their vacation before they start with their regular semester so we try to compress it. So it is fashionable to have an introduction session here when we have 30 to 50 people that takes around 10 to 12 minutes but with 175 people that itself will eat up a large portion of this course. So what I propose is that during the validity session then we will distribute the certificates perhaps we will have an occasion to know each person by name at least I will have an occasion to know. Of course my colleagues here will be interacting with you and they will be knowing more about it. We still have about 5 minutes so are there any quick questions or comments by anybody? Sir my name is Kishan Naik I am from University BDT College Dhawan Gere. So our college is a constant college of BTO Belgium sir. So here my question is with the and we are also belongs under the tech cube. So earlier so we have the many different history of our college I will not share with you right now because the time per limits. So here when it comes to a constant this constant college autonomous what we call but I have seen many colleges in my limit so here whatever the contents of the course has been diluted according to the requirement of the faculty. In many autonomous colleges I will not point out the name I have seen literally this is my big question and this is in your limits see how this can be and when you are teaching the all faculty together so I am an autonomous I want to teach only take example of thermodynamics 0th law first line second law that is all I do not want to go for the entropy also. So it is happening in many autonomous colleges so how to overcome all this? Okay. Yeah please. I am from government engineering college Goa sir. So I request the team of this thermodynamics course to look into one small aspect that how to develop learning aptitude in the students with the help of thermodynamics. That is a tall question. I have certain ideas about that we would like to share those ideas. Because that aptitude is very important sir everything is there wonderful syllabus is there Goa university syllabus VTU syllabus and Bombay IIT Mumbai syllabus everything is there but most important thing is missing that is how to develop learning aptitude in the students community that is the biggest challenge even to the intellect very high intellect class of body like IIT I think country is also expecting that way and we can hand over any type of high tech gadgets to the students and all if it is abused and misused I personally believe that it is detrimental to the planet so in view of this I would request I think thermodynamics will definitely because it is natural loss so natural loss means you can call anything by almighty or by supreme power whatever it is so with the help of that notional extension we can always imbibe that is the best etiquette amongst the students how to develop learning aptitude thank you sir I think I will just take these two questions because they are only three minutes both of them are generic questions both of them are relevant questions first of all you talked about developing learning aptitude I would like to suggest that an aptitude is largely a natural component of every human being you can please let me speak you can enhance a particular aptitude by adding certain indications to that but very importantly often the aptitude of a person is also defined by the attitude that person takes if the person is not interested in learning something no matter how good is your syllabus no matter what knowledge you try to give the learning cannot be forced see learning is not delivery of contents learning is application of one smile when I speak people listen but only those people who apply their mind and think then the knowledge is created knowledge is never transferred from one person to another you remember the basic law again when you transfer something the quantity reduces at one end and increases at the other end by this token if I have been transferring knowledge for 40 years I should be a certified moron today but I am still reasonably intelligent that is because knowledge is never transferred knowledge is always created in the minds our job is to ensure mechanisms of helping these tools to create that knowledge aptitude as he rightly said is one of the aspects but more important is attitude just as we are worried about attitude of the students I think we also need to worry about attitude of teachers like us you observe that many places the course is diluted I would submit that the syllabus is not diluted if you take the printed syllabus you will hardly find a difference between the syllabus of most of the subjects at IIT most of the places I will take a course of which I am familiar database course which my colleague professor Sudarshan teaches when professor Sudarshan teaches from his own book which has written over 10 years with various things he is able to teach with a different level of understanding he is able to frankly tell you that there is a mistake in this book because I made that mistake if I teach that course in Indore using that book as a textbook I have studied under Sudarshan so I might do some job but I will not be able to do as good a job as he does if a third person at some small college in Jharsugudda teaches that course who has never studied databases formally we will do a shoddy job the syllabus is same at all the places the point I am trying to make is that we blame university system affiliation syllabus and so on what prevents a teacher from doing such college what prevents me from saying that look those who are interested in solving hard problems are welcome on every Sunday morning does my college refuse permission to do that do all students run away I will tell you wherever this has been attempted in small places this has been attempted 10 to 15 interested students come even on Sunday and do the work but that requires teachers to work something extra if I expect my students to work for 18 hours a day I must work minimally for 20 hours a day if I do not set that example I have no right to expect any better work from it so I would agree with you that there is something tremendously wrong with the system there is something wrong with the affiliated process there is something wrong with the dilution that happens etc etc but should we not concentrate on what we can correct and the easiest thing to correct is ourselves we are autonomous as individuals we are autonomous believe me one of the reasons why IIT have the name that they have got is because this autonomy of a teacher which is guaranteed by the institute nurtured by the institute but is used by the teacher in the positive we set our own papers question papers we evaluate the papers what we teach is the syllabus and yet in 50 years there has not been a single instance of somebody saying that the grading was wrong not a single instance what does it mean we are also human beings but we have learned to live with that responsibility now what I am saying is within the limits of the system why is it that we cannot take extra responsibility I would like you to take this message to the collective about these simple problems and difficult problems I have only one word to say you know solving 10 simple problems correctly gives you a lot of satisfaction lot of marks in the exam but no additional knowledge attempting to solve 10 difficult problems without success in any problem will leave you a lot of frustrated person but you will learn a lot if there is a difference between IIT system of teaching learning and other places this is the difference you will not find any paper in IIT system which consists of simple Dana question not a single question there are no choices there are 5 questions there are 6 you have to solve also and they are hard problem that is where you apply your mind what prevents our teachers from giving these problems if not in the final exam because the university system says so what prevents me from doing it in my internal care I submit that many of our teacher colleagues do not apply their mind to these possibilities how many of us repeat questions in the question paper if I teach a course three times and if a single question is repeated at any one time my own colleagues will haul me up over cold it requires enormous amount of time to set questions it is not easy but do we have time of course we have genuine problems we are busy in so many classes the load is more etc etc I am saying under all circumstances under all constraints it is possible for us teachers to do something extra and all that I am suggesting is let us together work out what is that extra thing that we can communicate to our colleague remember our task is if we want to ignite the minds of our students then we have to ignite the minds of our teachers and I think that is one of my ambitions in conducting this co-ordinators workshop here I will not take more of your time you have a very very long session we have reduced this program from five days to three days all the best thank you