 So, this is what Shokumar had said, that each one of us requires some external audit without which we tend to relax. As far as the class attendance is concerned, I am now beginning to realize the significance of statement by institutions that 75% or 85% attendance is compulsory. And if that appears only as a statement, it has no impact. But if it is implemented with students being detained at the end of the semester, not permitted to appear for exam, etc. And if that is communicated well, then the attendance is larger. I am always concerned about insisting on physical attendance because it does not in my opinion mean much. However, there seems to be some merit. If I am forced to attend a class, then since I cannot close the sound waves impacting on my ears, or I cannot permanently close my eyes for the entire hour except when I have not slept for a couple of nights and therefore I am sleeping. There is some merit in saying that an external audit of the type attendance is compulsory, it does help. Is that correct? Is it the general human behavior? This saying is by Professor Shokumar, he said it about 20 years ago, that each one of us requires an external audit and that helps. Is that a correct statement? What is your opinion? I mean if you have to speak statistically, this is a class of about 130 students and these are not ordinary 130 students. These are all M.Tech, PhD students of the great IIT Bombay. That means people have struggled hard to come here. These are obviously leadership material. Now even amongst the leadership material, if people don't feel like attending a class because there is no compulsion, then what would happen to ordinary mortals across the country? So in my concluding session today, I wish to emphasize that what Professor Shokumar stated, proudly reflects the human behavior better than anything else. And therefore we should, in fact he stated something else. He said, there are situations where we can actually neglect external audit. You can ignore, but it is not good for us. Even if there are no external audit mechanisms available, we should create some. We should create some so that there is a pressure, external pressure on our mind to do certain things. Does that make sense? Because you see people at your level, you cannot be forced by compulsions per se. So unless you make a compulsion on your own, so creating external audit is really a good act. There was one observation by a student that the TED Talk assignment which was given by Firuza does not have uniformity. Some of the TED Talks are longer and some TED Talks are shorter. I don't know, anybody here who has written that mail? No, someone else has made that observation. I have the following counter. Actually it is very funny to have to give an assignment on TED Talks. TED Talks is something that people should enjoy weaving and listening to because they are exciting things. Interesting things. And the statement made is it is very unfair. I would just like to make two observations. In case you meet the person who wrote that mail or I will send a mail. First of all life is not about fairness. Nature is not fair. Life is not fair. Life is as is. It comes its own way, does it things its own way. And secondly and more importantly if there is a longest TED Talk which because of my role number I am supposed to view should I weave it because of the external compulsion or should I weave it because I believe it would be interesting and useful. Of course I hope it is only an individual observation. You wanted to say something. No, I am sure the fellow is at least as smart as us. So therefore he would not have watched the TED Talks. But what he would have done is he would have downloaded, I mean he would have gone to the website of that TED Talk and observed the duration. But still the point is well made that if I spend time to visit ten sites to note down very carefully the duration of each of those ten TED Talks, spend time in analyzing that Phatak has been very unfair with me because of my peculiar role number. In this duration I think I would have watched that TED Talk. You are very right. Comparisons things. Once you start comparing with others there is a problem. All right. I would like a general opinion poll of the ten people who are present here. Is this slot okay? 8.30, 9.30 and 9.30, 10.30? I thought it was an ideal slot. You are free from this and the rest of the day you are available. But some mornings don't seem to happen in time in IIT Poway campus. 8.30 is, no, no but you will notice that even for the class at 9.30 people do come at 9.40, 9.45 etc. I think it is our generic problem of Indians. So it would not be impossible for people to genuinely believe that a 9.30 lecture means I should leave hostel at around 9.30. So the travel time is not accounted for. Same thing about 8.30. I am sure you put that time at 10.30, still the same thing will happen. I think we need to discipline ourselves. That's the point. So they attend all other classes. So they attend all other classes. There is a difference between the first lecture of a day and some subsequent lectures. So for example I come to this class say 10 minutes late. But since the class leaves me in time and I don't have time to go back to hostel or do something, I will automatically attend the next class in time. So should we keep a dummy class the beginning of the day? Yeah, but people are so smart they will recognize it after the one lecture of that dummy class and we'll start missing it completely. Any suggestions on how to communicate the usefulness of such discussions? I am asking you because since I have decided to stay here for two more years, I think I am destined to take this course at least two more times in the coming two years. So I would like to have your feedback on how I could. If the class is divided into multiple components or stages, before every stage, just before that lecture, we can have a short like one minute trailer kind of thing uploaded to Moodle where people can just see and see if the topic interests them. So the ones who are at least interested in those topics will definitely come to this class. So what you are suggesting is if I could chalk out the plan for the complete semester saying this is what is going to be covered in this sequence and then people can decide whether that particular set series of topics makes sense to them or not. Yes, just before that particular component just give just one class before. Just before, not at the beginning of the semester. Yeah, if you give it at the beginning they'll forget by the time they come in. He is trying to discover novel methods of enthusing students to attend. Okay, that is one way. Sir, I believe that it is all about how students perceive, what is the student's perception of the usefulness of the course or how much they gain out of attending a lecture. I'll give you an example. I've interacted with many UG students, UG-CSE students and at least in two courses that are taken with them I realized that they would not attend any lecture because they said that the professor X, Y, Z, whoever is teaching too slow. So at least one reason given was that person teaches very slow and whatever he teaches is out of some lecture notes or book that is already available. So I can cover the same material in half an hour. Why do I need to go and spend one hour of time? So it's all, in my head it's all about the usefulness or what I'm going to gain out of this lecture that by the way, MTechs and PhDs are more, if you compare it with UGs, MTechs and PhDs are really more punctual in attending lectures, at least other lectures. I don't know why it has fallen off sharply this year. But yeah, so the point that I wanted to make is, I think we need to be able to first communicate that it is important for you to attend somehow. Once people are convinced, they'll be doing it without needing the stick. I think something beyond communication is actually the assimilation and conviction within which is more important. Communication can be done in multiple ways. There's a state which I come from as a saying, I believe it is there everywhere. You can take a horse to the river but you can't talk about drinking water. You cannot force a horse to drink water. You can take the horse to the water, you can bring water to the horse but that's about it. Ultimately it's the horse's mind which decides whether I should drink or not drink. To a similar extent, when extremely capable people are collected together where each one is capable of taking one's own decisions and live with the consequences. That is what growing up is all about. And we are dealing with grown ups and not dealing with school kids. And therefore each one decides in one's own way. What you said, by the way, makes sense in another statistics that is prevalent. 95% of the people who attend online courses, these are the statistics. We view majority of the videos in 1.5x or 2x, not at the normal speed. I mean have you tried that? Weaving a video at 2x or multiple speed. The point is that and this of course presupposes that the captions are being displayed. That means the contents are also being displayed on the side as text. And text you can read much faster. So people tend to read the text and because they do that, they do not spend time in listening to that person really. They just read that text. Curiously, if you just post text and there is no video, then it is not necessary that people will read that text. So life seems to be very funny. I mean the learning behavior, forget of the masses, but of individuals, is not very easy to capture. And I believe that what Prasad G. Shukumar says is true even for learners. So even an individual learner requires some external audit, like a class, exam or something like that. Professor Kandan tried that in his flip classroom by conducting a quiz in every lecture. I and Supratik did that for CS 101. We had 100% attendance of course. Because curiously, whether undergraduate students or postgraduate students, if there is a half mark or one mark associated which counts towards your credit or AABBB grade, etc., then somehow people tend to attend. That is correct, isn't it? So nobody misses such thing. We do not have unfortunately that privilege for this course, because it's a non-credit course. And would it make sense therefore to say that just, how do you attend the institute lecture? The institute elective? No, this course, there is an issued component, right, 791. Yeah, that has 80% attendance criteria. Oh, and attendance is compulsory. And that is enforced. And they strictly fail people if it is below 80%. Even if it is one lecture below 80%. Oh, fail. Wow. So who is the coordinator there? Professor Parthasarthi. Oh, Professor Parthasarthi. But there is a team of instructors, right? I think Prasundar was also involved and Viren Sethi is involved. Right. So, so many people are there. Now, you would be of course amongst those who would attend, not because of the 80% compulsion. But do you believe that largely the students who actually attend do benefit from that attending the lecture? So there was this one lecture which was conducted, Professor Asim Tiwari. Okay. So he had conducted a lecture on how to, how do you, so when you are reading a research paper, what do you exactly want to look into the paper? So what, I mean, how different, so the points being how to find whether the paper, or what is the new content of the paper? How is it different from the other papers? And what's the way of writing the, I mean, conducting the experiments, writing the observations and all those things. So things like that. Then, then another point was when Professor Sahana Murtishi explained about how do you give a elevator? How do you, what's the process of giving a very short description in a short description of your entire, maybe one year work or two years work in like one or two minutes or so. So that was real. I mean, we found that interesting. So yeah, there were a few lectures which were really interesting. And I guess they are helpful to the people who they really want to understand those things. So it all depends upon three things I believe, the topic and the discussion, the teacher who makes it interesting or otherwise, and the usefulness that is found by the students about the entire. These three things, if they combine well. The point is, suppose I am a student. Now, how do I anticipate whether these three things will happen in a class or not? Because I have to anticipate, convince myself that it will probably happen and then attend. Right? Oh, I said, topics are known. And who is going to teach what topic is also described. So that combined with the advice from seniors will be a useful input for a student to decide what. Of course, when 80% attendance is compulsory, I have to be there any which way. But rather than only being physically present, if I see the significance of that topic, teacher combination, I will probably be more alert. I think if all of this has to do with the alertness of the mind, that you prepare yourself for any activity, whether it is attending lecture or solving problem or discussing yourself. Am I right? So how do you maximize the alertness of the mind and how do you sustain the alertness of the mind? Of a learner. I think that's a good poser. Let me just write it down because I'll forget it. I believe this would be the million dollar question, right? For any educational system. How do you build and sustain? It's almost like how to build and sustain collaborative communities, which is part of this. So how do you sustain the alertness? Some good presentations with some motivational content. And maybe mainly that whatever topic is being discussed, because of internet these days, almost on those topics, we can also go and search things. So what is the additional thing which the lecturer is providing? Say for example, there is something that the lecturer through his or her own personal experience knows which readily is not available just by Googling it. So some USB should be there that makes that thing kind of memorable, even like some special point. So rather than plain slides, like taking it from some internet source or some book, that should be helpful. So the session should be made interesting, should be made useful. Something unique, something which I will not otherwise find. I believe that, or something that I've noticed over many years, that the reason why some students or all students find some classes interesting is because somehow the teacher is able to convey the usefulness. It's not really usefulness, it's just that, for example, if I'm teaching something, I should also be able to tell them, well, this is where you use this. For example, so right at the beginning of this class or course, you had made this promise that I promise you that we'll record a lecture now and we'll record a video later. And then I promise you that you'll have improved by the end of this. That's a wonderful promise and it actually creates... Motivates people. Yeah, it motivates people. But then somewhere along the line, I believe that people were not able to link how whatever is being taught currently is going to be useful later. That I think is very important. Good point. And there are two examples of that. Please don't mind my saying it. I think that the way we teach the lectures on punctuation and the other lecture on functional specifications. I mean, there was completely no motivation of why should somebody attend those lectures and how is it really going to help people later. By the way, in HS791 also, yesterday there was this lecture on email communication which I found that not many people were interested because people don't really realize that emails are something that are very important. So yeah, that has to be communicated. Good point. Because I have worked for some years, that is why I know that it is essential that you compose your emails nicely. Motivation is very important. Very good point. So one thing is the poll and secondly, as you mentioned the applicability. So for example, if a lecture is something like how do you need to read a research paper? That is something which students find interesting because it is related to them. But there was a lecture on mind maps. We cannot find how it is useful for us in our curriculum. So before the lecture starts, one should tell that this is how it will help you in your studies. So that will actually motivate us more. A poll is sometimes a very dangerous thing to do because often when I participate in my poll, in any poll, I am not necessarily reflecting my thought out judgment. I am tempted to act instinctively. And therefore, how do you, because I mean there is a huge lot of debate on democracy for example. So I do not know whether you have heard of Greek democracy where everybody is expected to put forward their opinion or everything that goes on. And that could result in a chaos. That is what Greek philosophers observed that earlier in the city states which emerged in the Greek civilization, there used to be a collection of all citizens in the evening and the issues will be raised and everybody has to say something or the other. And often chaos resulted. So going even to a smaller extent of a class, a poll is useful only if every participant in the poll actually reflects on the issue and then gives the poll. I believe it cannot be guaranteed so very easily. Particularly if you have to conduct a very large number of polls successively. Sometime or the other, the mind gives up saying, akadam takadam tikadam, put this, put that, put that, something like that. Wouldn't it happen? So one has to, but I understand the basic need. So what you are suggesting is there should be a mechanism to collect genuine feedback. Now poll is the natural thing that occurs to us. Would there be any alternative to poll? I'd like to add from my experience in the army, what I have seen the difference in teachings in the classes or the teachings what we conduct training in our institutions is we try to divide the lecture in parts or the topics which are going to be covered and that are conveyed beforehand to the students and they are available. So my personal experience when I see and compare it with the classes which I attend or the lectures which I view online, if they are organized and conveyed in starting that this is what you are going to learn out of this, then automatically interest start developing and you are able to relate each thread or each topic from start to the end that's I think what has been taught to us in this course or 791 that when we are writing a research paper, we divide ourselves in topics and then we relate and the same usefulness is applied in the lectures which are conducted in the class we are trying to convey a topic and if they are related in the sense in under some heads then students will automatically will be able to relate that has been discussed somewhere else also that in the mind goes away in between you are not able to correlate what is happening. So that's what we have been following in our organization where the topics which are being covered are listed on the side or they are visible to everyone at every time and once the topic gets completed they know that this is done, now this is started so they can correlate. Now if somebody knows something beforehand then he may not pay attention to that topic but if he doesn't know something or some part of the topic then he will of course pay attention to that topic so we might have audience from different field which may know something which may not know something so if that is done probably the interest level will be generated somehow. Good point. Actually what I feel is actually 830 class timing is good for me and for few other people but those of us who prefer to work at nights and all other they just ignore that there is not a credit post I mean there is no couples of attendance so why I should go I can just view some lectures or something and I can just go away but if all non-credit courses are in afternoon session say then I mean they can find some time and they can at least think of I should go and at least sit there if not present I mean if not my full mind is present at least I should go and sit there because they will be here near around That is just a suggestion. No I partly agree with you but I do not entirely agree with you I think it is a matter of discipline. I am also a Nishachar I rarely sleep before 3 o'clock and I do not normally get up before 830 but when I have 830 session my wife kicks me off the bed at 7 o'clock even when my wife is not around the alarm clock kicks me out it is a question of mental discipline I think I do not think it is related to If there is a credit course or something where I mean people will go and they will have more importantly if there is a quiz at 830 don't the Nishachars attend it everyone will go everyone will attend So again the question of Shiv Kumar's observation that external audit helps Yes I mean I am just telling that you do not want some external audit and you also want people to attend lectures right? So that could be a of course a reason In the end it boils down to the interest, what interest like it is whether it is marks or whether it is blood either way and both force interest but what we would like is for learning to force the interest above all now that apparently is is not a truthful statement about humanity in general that interest alone I mean we talk of self-learning example the great Ekulavya but there has been exactly one Ekulavya in 4000 years of Indian history so it is not easy to sustain on one's own the enthusiasm and curiosity some external that is why that Shivas remark on external audit I felt it was very apt that two unique things about Shivas his first email address in IIT Bombay was Shivas at Kailash which was probably the most appropriate email address anybody could have because Lord Shiva is supposed to be residing in Kailash our first server was named Kailash so his address was like that the second one is it he wants to say something so re-examine 830 slot but more importantly what is being stated is combination of self-interest and some external compulsion that would sort of help so what I feel is whatever points we do right here it do not make any sense until and unless we make a tendency compulsory or make it a credit post it is because till now we have been trained in such a way that we give importance only to the things which are posed upon us and which has some credit so if at this point we want to change it is very difficult and it won't happen and one more thing I have observed is I myself have forced myself to go for HS791 course and after going I feel that yes today's topic was interesting and today I learnt something so it was by force not by my interest so when I go then I get to know that it is interesting so what he is saying is that initially I might initiate an activity because of the compulsion but once I participate in that activity I will end up finding it useful in some way or the other but I am unable to initiate that activity based on the assumption that it will be very useful to and the main reason is we have been trained from the childhood to work due to compulsion right from the first standard, second standard everywhere and we cannot undo the learning of 11 years of schooling plus in your case 4 years of graduate studies which is also part of compulsion because in all Indian colleges, science colleges also I think attendance is compulsory, exams, credits, etc. it's a good point he makes it appears to me that the overall opinion of the entire audience is that you need to use a combination of attempting to motivate people in advance by giving outlines or dividing topics, etc. and plus adding an element of compulsion so both together will work, anyone will not be useful Sir I would like to add that at least in IIT like one of the most premier institutes in country we would not like to totally encourage this kind of behavior because like if you truly want to make India into a developed country we see that ultimately what's required is initiative by people we need entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs like they are not forced to work in socialism they work by their own interest, their own drive out of their own choice so this kind of behavior where we are encouraging like working due to compulsion at least in premier institutes if in a place like this things like this are like encouraged a lot other institutes will follow and it will become a norm so I think a combination is a better thing in fact the combination is the only thing that will work a whole lot also depends upon the generic environment prevailing in a particular place or an institution even in the developed countries by the way it's always a combination for example plagiarism is not permitted, students fail in the course if they copy they actually fail that means there are people who still copy they actually have supervised us because there are people who will be tempted to look into the neighbors thing see human mind can be tempted very easily to take shortcuts and therefore some external audit or compulsion is a must but whether to base it entirely on that that is not a good attendance like many places is not compulsory so Dr. Abdul Kalam had quoted a beautiful example I think I had mentioned it but let me repeat it it also depends upon the environment so you would like things to be primarily at least in institutions like ours to be primarily determined based by the initiative that people will take you expect everyone to take the initiative let me tell you it does not happen because of this reason you see we have been trained for too many years not to take initiative we have been trained to submit to certain rules procedures etc we get used to that and our mind therefore stops taking initiative same thing about creativity there are schools which actually give you less marks if you don't exactly reproduce the answer that the teacher had written on the board now how can we things be more stupid than that any wording that you use can be re-ordered can perhaps be better worded but if that is the rule and that sticks in my mind if you write anything differently you will get zero marks so I won't do that and therefore I will forget my creativity I think in some ways like this this can relearning needs to be done once for someone comes here and to some extent how it can be promoted is by providing some kind of like other kind of incentive rather than like compulsion by having a bonus kind of mechanism like if you do if you don't do it's fine but if you do then you will get some kind of a bonus in CS 101 we found the AP grade you know your A, A, B, C and there is an AP grade provision that worked as a bonus Supratik decided to conduct a contest and it says only those people who clear this contest will be eligible for AP grade provided they get an A grade otherwise what was surprising to find is that a large number of people who eventually landed up with an A, B or even a B, B grade actually participated because they did not know what grade they will get but the incentive to be recognized as an AP grade caused almost 65, 70 students out of the class of 400 to participate in that contest it was a tough problem that he had designed and there were a fairly good number of solutions in fact I remember still there are two people who solved that problem correctly but did not get an AP because they did not get A they got an A, B but you are very right so some kind of a bonus now here is a critical question for a course which has no credits for a course which has no grade except pass and fail what kind of bonus can one think of and there is one more point which you made I will write it down here as D learn to reach this level right yeah you have made that I had two things to say the first one is related to the poll that you said some mechanism of feedback so there is this very interesting thing that professor Sethi does in 791 so at the end of his lectures he sends out a mail saying that you need to send me a small email in which you have to tell me what you claim to have learned out of this oh I see which I think is a very interesting exercise it does not make it compulsory but if somebody tries to do it you really have to think hard and find out what what I claim to have learned out of this I think that's a wonderful thing to be implemented in every course but in my course people don't even read emails so writing email is the higher level of activity so that is the point right if people find the course interesting and if they find it engaging they would really want to attempt that and the other thing about the point that he made that I believe that one way of making the course courses like this communication skills where there is no set curriculum as such maybe we could ask students what is it that they expect out of this course at the outset so what is it that you expect out of this course and then come up with suggestions as to how you feel you could something could be done to improve you in so and so area so people might have different suggestions out of which the most common ones could be implemented very good point I think in some other forum professor Kavi Arya was mentioning that with students who come to him for internships they actually ask them to read novels, English novels just to improve their communication skills so I don't know how much we could do it in this course but that could be one of the exercises basically ask people what they want to do related to the point of reading English novels I would like to point out that and this is a generic statement about the M.Tech class about 10 to 15 percent of our students in M.Tech P.A.D. level not so much P.A.D. but certainly at the M.Tech level are extremely poor in English extremely poor now this is not a course in English would it make sense therefore just like we used to have a mechanism for students who clear JEE but are poor in English and therefore are poor in physics, maths, etc. they used to be given a one year make up course they would be admitted to IIT but for them the course would be 6 years and not 5 years and now 5 years instead of 4 years and they are given one year coaching in physics, chemistry, maths and English is just coaching there is no courses or something they are registered for one course or two courses just for them to get a feel for what a competitive course in IIT is and those grades are carried forward in their subsequent one of the courses used to be CS 101 which I used to take almost routinely and I would find that the students major problem was in understanding English lectures they come from an environment where they have studied like I studied in Hindi all my life there are people who studied in their native languages and had problems so we had to conduct special lectures in Hindi and ask them to review the recorded lectures in English so that their English improves now coming to this class since CS department has decided to hold the communication skills course in the second year would it make sense to discreetly ask all first year M.Tech students when they join asking them if they wish they can give a competency test in English just your ability to articulate yourself in English and if they are advised hey baba your English is not good enough you will not be able to benefit from the entire M.Tech program as much as you could otherwise and therefore in the first semester itself including the winter take some corrective action and if that corrective action is facilitated by CS department jointly maybe with HSS would it help such 10-15% students what is your opinion? why only for CS? you can make it for all branches yeah I will suggest it to Parsharthi but I was thinking of implementing it from this July for the CS students at least why I said CS is because that is something that is doable at the departmental level there need not be a consensus and so on but you are very right because if you take let's say 10% students out of 100 students about 10-12 students definitely need corrective measures and there could be another 15 who would benefit but there is no course or no such thing so we have to keep it optional however how about conducting a plain competency test in English articulation at the beginning of the first semester itself for everyone and for one's own benefit I mean there are no marks or anything like that so I give a test I come in as a first year M.Tech student I give that test and I make my own judgment and then the department says if it is better than the score then it is fine otherwise something is wrong here is a corrective mechanism that will be made available by the department you use it at your own discretion would that help one more suggestion is if it is in English or language proficiency course many times we see that mainly actually undergraduate students but even M.Tech students many times they do write these like exams like GRE, TOEFL, CAT once they are done with their courses here so the amount of enthusiasm or interest they display in those learning those things because that has got a direct impact on their post IIT experience they definitely take a lot of interest in that so in some manner if those courses some kind of courses are facilitated by IIT itself or some external what people do is they actually go and subscribe to some external agency like say IMS or some other GRE, TOEFL, some so those agencies some kind of facilitation done by the institute itself I think would have a much greater attendance rate than just a course okay I just realized that we are two minutes past our end time so close here thank you very much for the entire course and enjoy the semester incidentally although you need not circulate this information but the TED Talk submission which is all submissions are obligatory I am not going to look at it from the point of your passing of failing students there were two students who had not submitted the LATIC assignment I don't remember their names but one of them was wrongly pinpointed here I forget the name the second person is he here today no the second student so please if you meet him apologize to you on my behalf he has submitted all assignments except this one as compared to our first friend who has rarely submitted any assignments so while those two names were mentioned explicitly in the class I extend my apology to the second student whose name came up only because that particular assignment of LATIC files he had not submitted otherwise he is one of the most regular students and that is why he looked very baffled when he was named I can now sense that so I am sorry for that and I propose to submit the grades the moment the ASC makes that interface available in case there is any problem or anyone does not so just check that I mean you of course are there on the module see the problem is it's almost like asking please raise your hands if you are absent now how do I know if there are some two people whose names do not appear anywhere in the interface but they are registered by some where I do not know how to handle that but except that of course everybody passes in my course thank you so much