 There were a lot of queries when I announced in one of the lab assignments that you should form teams and have discussions on what programming project that will carry out. Most of the queries related to whether all participants will have to complete a large programming project within the two weeks itself. Of course, the more enthusiastic amongst you should go ahead and do that, but that is not the intention. Since throughout the last three or four days the discussions that we were having and the enthusiasm that I see amongst you when I interact with you has prompted me to generalize the workshop activities further. So I thought I will discuss the activities that the participants can undertake and should undertake. I will just spend about ten minutes describing this because this contains some mandatory activities and some optional activities. First of all, I will restate the main objective of the workshop. Then I will describe the mandatory activities which everybody must do. Why are there mandatory activities by the way? The mandatory activities are there because this is essentially an IST workshop and all of you will be given a certificate on behalf of IST and IIT Bombay and of course your remote center. Now IST workshop requires certain things to be fulfilled. What are those requirements? Whatever we have said in our workshop brochures, whether it includes evaluation, whether it includes submission, whether it includes attendance, all of that must be fulfilled before a certificate can be given. And that is the only reason why I call these activities as mandatory activities. Apart from that, there are a whole lot of optional activities which I am sure many of you would be eager to participate in and therefore I am extending the scope of both the mandatory and optional activities by first defining the set of activities that can be undertaken as a part of this workshop and the associated mission. So I restate the objectives. This is the fundamental objective, enhance the effectiveness of teaching learning process in our technical education. I do not know whether I shared this with you or not. I had a big argument with some big wigs in MHRD, in UGCN, some even in IST and certainly many in the QIP programs and such thing because I have been objecting to the term quality improvement program. That term implies as if my quality is so poor that it needs improvement. I like to use the term empowerment of teachers instead of improvement. That is the right word. In any case, what we are talking about here is enhancement of the teaching learning process. It includes us and therefore if we do a better job, if we do an improved job, obviously the environment and process will improve. But it also includes students, it also includes our colleagues, it also includes our associate technical associates and others. The whole system, the effectiveness has to include. That is the objective. In a limited way, the objective that we are trying to fulfill is to exploit the communication and information technologies to boost this effectiveness. So what do we do? We engage a large number of teachers through a conventional IST workshop. The workshop is conventional but the process is unconventional. We are using distance and blended point. As I have mentioned already, never earlier in this country, thousand teachers were engaged in a single course at a single point. Now the workshop, the way we have defined it since we are not face to face here and since you are not spending time at a single place, you are spending time at different places in order to ensure effectiveness of this workshop itself. We have said, all of you would have read the brochure that you will have to do some activity which you will have to submit within two weeks of the completion of the workshop. So this requires additional work for two weeks. But is that the main objective? It is only a partial object. The main objective still remains to sustain the engagement with those who are interested in the cause. Naturally, all of us are interested, all of us are teachers. But when I say interested in the cause, that means I am willing to go one mile more than maybe what is normally possible. So even if all of us are busy, some of us may say, I am excited with this prospect and I will spend some more time. This is what I explained to you earlier in the first lecture when I said that we would have programming projects which are optional. As I mentioned at the beginning of this talk, I am extending the scope, widening the scope of that optional activity. So what we say is that for three months through course projects and for one year or more for activities such as portal editorial group, this is what I defined as the possible engagement. I am now saying that let us widen the list of activities that all of us can undertake. First the mandatory part, the conventional lab assignments are given every day. The expectation is that the participants will add value by providing greater insight into each lab, by suggesting a better alternative formulation of the given problem, by suggesting additional tasks, maybe by preparing a model solution, maybe by suggesting additional similar assignments. What I am observing is through at least the queries and the model submissions that I see is that most of the participants are conducting the lab religiously of course very properly which is correct, but they are conducting it as if carrying out that lab assignment is the main objective. It is not. We are all teachers, please remember that. When we teach our students that is what we may expect because we know that the students do not know much when they come to the lab. So they must minimally do those lab assignments, that is our expectation. But since all of us are teachers, I would expect you to go a little bit forward, a little bit ahead than just completing that lab assignment. After all your objective having come here from wherever you stay is to enhance yourself, empower yourself. And where is the best additional learning that can happen? In the group. So here is a suggestion. So far you were doing laboratory assignments and uploading the assignments individually. I am taking away that requirement because with all said and done that will require each one of you to sort of enter your program, test it and so on so forth. Instead what I suggest is since you have already formed teams, I am now extending the scope of that team. That team now becomes your coherent group for now and for quite some time to come. So what I am suggesting? In the lab first every participant individually completes the assignment, completes as in logical thinking. So you need not, of course you can experiment, you can try things out but you essentially formulate what is going to be the solution or what is going to be your final submission. But then don't waste time in doing that. Just take your idea and now discuss it with all other team members. You would have formed teams by now, may be four members, five members, some places, some places three whatever. You would have a team leader. So very quietly go into a corner of a lab after completing the first part and start discussing how each one of you did approach the particular lab assignment. And then finally collectively your team comes to a model solution. It might be just one of the solutions suggested by any one of the five team members or during the discussion you might find something better which is a combination of all your brains and all your ideas. Submit only one assignment on the moodle for our record but the primary objective is you would have sat down, you would have discussed, you would have thought and each one of you would have at the end seen something better than an individual attack. I hope you will agree that let us utilize this opportunity where we have come together to actually initiate some kind of group thinking and some kind of group activity. So unless there are very strong objections from central coordinators or colleague teachers who are participating, I would humbly recommend that from today onwards this is what we follow. Today's assignment anyway is rather simple. The program that I mentioned the recursive program for computing terms of Fibonacci series has been given. There is another program which is given estimation of the values of pi which I will discuss in the session after T when we discuss algorithmic complexity. But today's lab is entirely about understanding how different implementations of the same algorithm may take different execution time and thereby we understand algorithmic complexity a little more. So frankly there is not much to be done in terms of a team effort but even today what you could do is look at that assignment. You will determine very quickly that it is a rather trivial assignment. You simply have to run it for different values of parameter note down the times and sort of mentally make a judgment that ok if a program is written like this it will run in this fashion, if a program is written like that it will run in that fashion. Complete that but the least you could do is now you discuss and say alright if I have to teach a first year student something about algorithmic efficiency or something about execution time can I muddle with this assignment? As a group I will of course submit the assignment put a tar file or r file and submit it but can I come up with something better that's the idea. I would strongly request energy to consider doing this kind of thing not only today every day. In addition there is another task which necessarily requires you to discuss things with your colleagues as you will see in the assignment today. In short I am moving over from the conventional model of a lab where a participant sits in front of the machine and quietly completes the assignment on his or her own and I am moving away from that model to say that yes partly you will do that for some time but for most part you will sit together with your team members discuss something. If you have finished all discussion about the lab assignment I don't mind if you start discussing about a lecture or start discussing about any other interesting topic as long as the discussion pertains to teaching learning of computer programming using C or whatever which is the topic of that. I would request you to consider this. This is about the lab sessions. Now I describe the task which participants can carry out. The first task remains programming project. By the way I am now not talking about mandatory or optional I am merely listing all the tasks that you as participants in this endeavor can undertake and I am not talking only about workshop I am saying workshop and beyond. So a team can do programming projects. A team can contribute to question bank we have already seen these two alternatives. I told you that in the pilot project that we ran last December we have over 1800 questions as contributions to the question bank and there are more than 150 participants who actually have done programming projects. As I said we are still waiting for evaluation from the remote centers to decide who are the winners of the cash incentive that we had promised them. We could continue with that that option is also available still but I am now trying to discuss some newer options more exciting options. Consider the following tasks. There are lecture slides. The slides are getting uploaded on the moodle every now later on you will have access to the entire video recording of the lectures after editing. Don't we feel that since we have attended I am now speaking on behalf of a participant. Suppose I am a participant I say I have attended this so I have actually been face to face I have worked closely with the colleagues in my remote center and therefore my understanding is much better but if somebody was to merely see the slides can he or she understand if some student was to look at the slides can the understanding be improved by adding notes. So maybe I may think of writing explanatory notes on lectures and lab sessions which are conducted during workshop. Please do not underestimate the importance of writing English notes or in any language for that matter. Writing in natural language is often more difficult than writing in a programming language because that is an artificial language. But you will agree that that writing is important after all what are books? Books are nothing but natural language description of a technical subject. A book on computer programming though it does contain programs it does not contain only programs it contains explanations. Could we not think of writing explanation like that? All the explanation that you write all the explanatory notes that you write is there approved by an editorial board with due acknowledgement to your efforts they will go in open source. Hundreds of thousands of students may be able to use it. So that is an important contribution that can be made. Here is another suggestion. Designing additional lectures or labs. Covering more examples and details so that the totality of these slides, these lab assignments and the additional slides that you design, additional lab assignments that you design. The totality will cover a complete course offering at any one college. Why is that required? Remember that when you actually teach this course, you would have roughly 40 to 48 hours of actual lecturing. And you would have 10 to 12 laboratories. In our case, the kind of laboratories we are conducting are slightly different. And the number of lectures that we have are fully short. So obviously, while this may be a good kernel, because maybe a slightly different style of explanation, maybe a slightly innovative way of looking at things. But ultimately, if you have to use some material concretely to conduct the next course, these video lectures, these audio lectures, these lab assignments will not be sufficient. You'll have to fill up with a lot of details, additional examples. And you only know your students and your environment. You know what is it that they will be able to easily understand. What is it that they will not be able to easily understand? So you are in the best position to actually augment these contents by designing additional lectures or workshop. And when I say you, because you teach at places where academic autonomy may not be complete, where the attitude of students is guided far more by the marks and the exam system, you understand there ethos better. So if in a team, four or five of you think about designing something like this, that would be very nice. And by the way, what is a team? We have artificially formed a team of four or five people. Suppose some of you come up with an idea that in a center you have 60 people and there are three or four teams which actually can interact with each other on email or even physically meeting each other because you are nearby. You may even say that, look, I will undertake something larger and these three or four teams will work together. That is also perfectly fine. Additional audio video clips to supplement the recorded videos. I am personally very keen that at least some of you should do that. All that you need to do is take the context of a lecture, sit down in front of a webcam, prepare some slides, get some of your students or even your colleagues and do a conversation as question and answer on a particular lecture. You can even take all the questions which are being submitted on the moodle wheel anyway, assemble them, questions which are raised during the workshop because we seek answers to them. But instead of getting answers only in English language, if some of you would agree to prepare either written or verbal interaction where questions are asked in any language that you are familiar with could be Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, whatever, whatever. How nice it would be that if we have, let us say, the concept of arrays and a large number of examples on arrays described very well through the normal lecture given in English, good assignments and additionally we have running commentary or question answers in Hindi, in Telugu, in Bangla, in Gujarati, in Tamil, whatever, whatever. So you will have a very rich contents which could be more useful relatively to your students. This then is the large task. By no means this is an exhaustive list. Only after our interaction yesterday and when I realize that you are actually spending time in the labs in a rather stifled fashion. I would not say stifled, what should I say? The very disciplined fashion which is very good. I am very proud of the fact that in spite of you being teachers and many of your senior teachers, you are actually attending this workshop as if students are attending. Feels very nice because ultimately all of us as teachers, we are perpetual students. But then we can also do something extra which if we were students we could not do and that is any one of these. So can we not use this opportunity where we have come together at remote centers to discuss with each other, think imaginatively. So as I said, this is not an exhaustive list. So you can make a list of all possible activities that can be undertaken or that you may be interested in undertaking which must further the cause of adding meaningful open source contents and adding techniques or adding pedagogy value, whichever way you think. Now I will come back to the distinction between mandatory job or mandatory task and optional task. Earlier I had defined the mandatory task as an assignment to be submitted within two weeks. The two week timeline stands but what you have to submit in two weeks now will change drastically in the context of what we are discussing. I will repeat again that the tasks which I have listed are only representative. You may either refine these or add to this list. Our objective is to set up a large collaborative community. Eventually I expect that this first attempt or first ever subject we have chosen computer programming since the IT industry is a great user of computer programming skills in the country. This portal should be extremely popular with both professionals, students and teachers and it should lead to a very vibrant community. Suppose that communities of ten thousand people would you as part of the first thousand not like to be at the kernel of this community. That is the objective. But do think quickly and consolidate your decisions of what you want to do. This has to be a team decision. For better or for worse you are now formed a team. You might have formed a team with an intention of doing a good programming project and you are most welcome to do it. That idea is also a good idea. The same team will also submit the mandatory assignment for the workshop within two weeks. But what that assignment would be and what subsequent optional things could be is now completely open. All that you have to think is how can whatever I decide to do A can be done in a reasonable amount of time. The mandatory part can be done within two weeks an optional part within three months or something and I am able to convince or take sort of concurrence of my entire team. Additionally the teams or the team leaders or all the members could also have a small discussion session with the local coordinator for the center because ultimately we have divided ourselves into some kind of a tree structure. So the first point of contact for all your submissions and even for later interaction is going to be the remote center where you are physically attending this workshop. So in a nutshell do think quickly and consolidate your decisions which your team has to announce on Monday. I now describe the mandatory activities. During the workshop each participant must attend all lecture sessions and complete the lab assignments daily. I don't know for what reason but Mr. Hariran of ISD was very keen in emphasizing that attendance must be taken every day since I can't take attendance sitting here unless all my clickers start working the attendance will have to be recorded. I won't say taking attendance but it will have to be recorded by the respective center coordinators and of course I expect the participants to actually sit down together with the team members, discuss things and help team leader in deciding the task which the team will carry out in subsequent weeks. And what are these subsequent weeks? Subsequent weeks are many. We are counting first the subsequent two weeks in which the mandatory activity must be continued. After the workshop each participant must complete his or her portion of the chosen task. So before the workshop ends your team must decide that in the next two weeks what my team is going to do. One team may decide to contribute to question back say three, four questions and model answers. Another team might decide as I suggested writing explanatory notes for the lecture slides. Still another team might decide to define additional lab assignments. A fourth team might think of something which is not listed here. It's alright. We can experiment. We are not rigid about it. All that we want is honest to God work for two weeks after the workshop is done by every team and that is submitted. I will be most honored to give a certificate to you for any sincere work that is done and submitted as a contribution to this whole effort. But that is mandated. So after the workshop each participant must complete his or her portion of the chosen task. Must be in constant touch with other members for email discussions. Why? Because once you go back after the workshop you will be probably at different places barring those few who stay in the same city or town in which case email is the only solace. Next you must ensure that the task is completed within the stipulated time frame of two weeks. Whatever is that task. So first you have to decide what task you will do and then you have to complete it within two weeks. Please note the hard deadline for final submission of this mandatory task is 25th July midnight. I forgot to add IST. I actually wrote IST then my friend said that IST is taken very lightly in India, Indian Standard Time. But incidentally in most international forums including the top conferences such deadlines are taken very very seriously. I will just give you one example. In one conference this happened many years ago and there was a great researcher, very well known researcher who was invited to submit a paper. So it's an invited paper. Ordinarily you and I will submit a paper it will get evaluated by ear reviews and so on and then somebody will tell me whether my paper is accepted or not. In this particular case the paper was sought. Please we invite you to submit a paper. However the great man was also given the same deadline as others. His paper reached 10 hours late the paper was rejected. And the answer that he got when he cribbed about it he said let look this happened that happened etc etc he was told professor you were laid by a very good margin of 10 hours even if the paper had arrived in our inbox 2 minutes late we would have still rejected it because that's the policy we have followed for 10 years. We all claim that we are all moving towards the status of a developed nation a developed nation must meet deadlines. So I will emphasize this again 25th July midnight should mean 25th July midnight barring force majeurey of course something extraordinary happens over which you have no control but ordinarily this should be the deadline. So this is the mandatory activity. Optional activities a team may choose to complete a programming project within about 3 months I would not like to put a hard deadline to that but at least there has to be some deadline because since we are speaking about evaluating your optional submissions and we have allocated and I am actually looking at any additional sponsorship funding to give cash rewards as a recognition it is better that we put some kind of a deadline we can agree on this deadline through some kind of a poll on the moodle over the next few days it is not necessary to fix it now. So this is the standard conventional thing that we had thought of originally and I had shared this with all of you you may still want to continue with it I will have absolutely no problem all of you are large majority of you may want to continue doing this those of you of course want to take the optional activity up alternately a team may choose any other activity which will further the cause of the mission so you may even consider working in larger groups and demand greater quantum of work thus multiple teams working together for this optional activity is okay with me but please consolidate your thinking four days of the workshop are over there are still sufficient days left there is a weekend Sunday is ordinarily kept a free day those of you in your which are remote center you are attending to you can attend to your personal needs you can meet some friends move around however please try to steal some time whether to sit down and finalize your thoughts with your team leaders and with your coordinator because Monday morning 9 30 sharp we all meet for introduction of teams and the teams will introduce themselves I will describe the pattern in a right up which I will send but effectively not more than two minutes will be available for one team so all that we can do is get to know your name and affiliation which college you are teaching this is what every team member will say because it is important for me that every team member individually introduces himself or herself please remember when you are introducing yourself all the thousand people across the country are watching you and listening to you and I think that is important to create the kind of coherent family says that we want in this large collaborative effort so we will have that introduction from you the team coordinator will get an additional one minute in which the team leader sorry in which the team leader must very clearly state what is the mandatory activity that the team proposes to do and if they propose to undertake optional activity what is the optional activity they have in mind so to get this clarity and to be able to say this in exactly one minute all of us are teachers so we know that we get ten minutes is much easier for us to express ourselves but to say something in one minute we may require two hours of preparation please do that preparation before you come to the presentation or the introduction session a few important do's and don'ts qualities of utmost importance make sure that your programs work and make sure that your documentation is complete and well written I am sad to say that in December the questions that we got actually had grammatical errors and spelling errors in the wording of the question itself this is a no-no I understand that most of us are not born as English speakers it is not our mother tongue but we have chosen English to be the language which we will use so every mistake we must feel inserted if that mistake has happened from our side so we must correct it consequently any submission that the team makes there should be at least two team members who should decide to watch out for any errors in submission whether it is of the grammatical nature or whether it is spelling or whether it is C program the program that you write should be reasonably well documented because these are formal submissions and please remember everything that you submit is going to go to open source openly seen by lakhs of people with your names on it so you would not like your name to be, you know thought about as somebody who does a shoddy job please therefore ensure that the quality is excellent second because we are going to release it in open source any material submitted should either be your own creation or associated reference should be quoted it happened last year in December that many teachers who submitted many teams who submitted the sample questions and all there are many questions directly taken from the examination papers of their own university that is perfectly right because you are at least writing the solution yourself but when you do that you must state that this question is from the question paper of this year in this university or moderately why is that essential? because although once a paper exam is conducted the paper is open knowledge but it is important that we credit remember the observation that professor Ranade had made in the slide on the Hemchandra numbers so wherever there is a reference reference should be quoted and wherever possible clearance should be obtained to release the material in open source questions in examinations public examinations is open source provided you quote the reference but if you have any material any explanatory note even a program which is either from a book or from some other site or something like that you must give reference to that you must acknowledge their credits and if a permission is required if that site is not open source then that permission must be obtained if you find some material very useful and if you think it should be included although it is intellectual property protected we will help you in writing to those people if it has sufficient educational content we will see if we can get those contents released for open source but if it so happens that some content given by any one team gets included through the editorial board and is put on the web and then somebody in the world comes and claims that this is a copy of my so and so program or my so and so article then the persons who have submitted it will have to bear the consequences so please remember that internationally it could be a very dangerous game and therefore please do not be tempted and of course feel free to copy good material which is in open source but do give credit so these are some important do's and don'ts thank you so much