 Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. Welcome to the weekly discussions on Aview. My name is Ramesh Guntha. I am development manager in Aview team. Today, we are going to have a talk from Dr. Deepak Phatak, IIT Bombay on National Teacher Empowerment Program. So, the agenda going to be, sir will talk about the workshops he has been conducting on this program for first 10 to 15 minutes. Then you all can have a chance to ask questions and then sir is going to explain how the individual universities can take initiative and be part of this program and conduct their own workshops. And then after that you will also get one more chance to ask questions. So, before that let me take you to, let me talk about few points which would help you have a better experience of Aview. I am sure many of you have logged in earlier and tested with our support team, tested your audio and video devices. And it is very important that you test your camera, mic and speakers before the session. So, that when you have a chance to ask question, everybody would hear your voice and see you clearly. So, now please watch the red dot. So, this is the teacher video where you will see the professor Phatak. And for whatever reason if his video or audio is breaking, you please press the refresh button to get smooth audio and video quality. If your voice, if the audio voice is too low then please check your speakers. And if you have a question and you want to ask professor Phatak, please click this hand raise button to raise your hand. And if you no longer have a question you can click the same button to release your question. Once you hand raise your question mark will be appearing next to your name everywhere. And professor might select you and then your name will appear just before the just below the professor's name in green color. And to for everybody else who want to watch the interaction, they should select the student video tab to see the selected viewer. 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So, please watch for the mic and the cast mic buttons. Have a pleasant session and I am going to invite Dr. Fatak to continue. Thank you very much. Good afternoon everybody and welcome to this program which Amruta has set up for interaction with large number of universities. Today I am going to briefly talk about an exciting project that we are doing at IIT Bombay under the national mission on education through ICT. We are all familiar with the Indian demography just to briefly reiterate. We have some 370 million Indians under the age of 20 which means all of them are looking for greater opportunities. And many of them are looking for greater opportunities in higher learning. It is in this context that we need to look at the entire Indian education system. And the need of the hour is very clearly to scale up everything. Now when we scale things quantitatively it is said that quality often suffers. We in India wish to scale up not only the quantity, but also the quality. This has never been attempted on such large scale anywhere else in the world except perhaps in China. And that is because China and India have great commonalities in terms of very large number of aspiring youth. It is in this context that we try to look at the quality enhancement issues that concern all of us in the higher education system. There are many efforts that have been going on in the nation. We decided to concentrate on teacher as the most crucial link in this entire chain of educational process. We believe that if we could empower a large number of teachers that should reflect in the quality of education everywhere amongst the students participating in the higher education program. A brief background on this, we looked at the IST and QIP workshops which are typically conducted for about 25 to 30 participants who assemble at one place an expert teacher or a few expert teachers elaborate on the subject that is being discussed. And at the end of two weeks those 30 teachers go back empowered and hopefully use whatever they have learned in their own colleges when they teach. Unfortunately with literally lakhs and lakhs of teachers required to be so empowered this model was not workable. We had set up a distance education program in IIT Bombay in year 2000 earlier with satellites and subsequently using the AVU technology of late. We believed that we could use this distance education effectively in order to empower a much larger number of teachers in one go. I am going to briefly describe how we attempted and where we are. The context of course is engineering education after all we are faculty members from IIT Bombay. So, we understand engineering and technology education better than other education. But the reason I am sharing these experiences with you is because I am convinced that this methodology and this approach and the technology that we use can be very effectively used in any branch of education. The project methodology revolves around constructing a hierarchical set of empowerment. Ordinarily we would like a teacher an expert speaking to other participating teachers to be interacting with all of them. With 1000 teachers you will appreciate that this will not be directly possible. So, what we did is we created a hierarchy at the next level by engaging remote centers. We identified these remote centers such that at each remote center for the subject that we wanted to cover we had expert faculty members. For accommodating 1000 participants we decided we will need about 30 to 40 remote centers. So, that at each remote centers physically about 25 to 30 teachers or 40 teachers could assemble and they could be mentored by the coordinators appointed at the resource centers. This model many of you would be familiar with even in IIT system when I teach a course for example for 500 students I have a large number of teaching assistants who are typically post graduate students of M. Taken PhD. We decided that we could emulate the same model instead of research scholars and students being teaching assistants. We would expect that the expert faculty members at remote centers could fill in exactly the same role of being the teaching assistant to the expert faculty. After choosing the remote centers carefully we invite the workshop coordinators from these remote centers for a one week physical interaction at IIT Bombay. So, about 30 to 35 coordinators from these remote centers come here and the expert faculty here together with these 35 coordinators decide on the methodology the syllabus that is to be covered. Please note that we would like the courses to be taught for empowerment of teachers not necessarily only in the style of IIT Bombay, but also in the style in which these teachers are required to go back and teach in their own universities. So, we respect the syllabi and the examination systems which are prevalent in their own universities and colleges. We take cognizance of that and it is this coordinators workshop which decides what should be the total coverage. In short our ambition is to fold firstly to cover exactly whatever these teachers are required to teach and secondly add to it the spice in terms of the methodology that we follow at IIT the rigor that we follow at IIT the difficult problems which we post to our students at IIT. In short it is this combination which we believe will truly empower a participating teacher to go back and utilize whatever methodology they have learned for that particular subject and use it effectively while teaching. In short when the main workshop starts these thousand teachers assembling at about 30, 35 remote centers we deliver the lectures from IIT Bombay. These lectures have been prepared by the expert faculty here after the interaction with the remote center coordinators. So, they contain the material which will be immediately useful for the participating teachers. The lectures are heard using a view in different classrooms across the country at remote centers. In the afternoon tutorials and laboratory sessions are conducted at remote centers under direct supervision and mentorship of the remote center coordinators. In short we believe that we are able to deliver a course of two weeks to all thousand participating teachers exactly as if they would have attended the course at IIT Bombay itself. Our experiences show that at the end of such a workshop collaborative teams get built up. These 30, 35 teachers who attend at remote centers are requested to form into small teams and to contribute to the contents of that particular subject in terms of either learning material, teaching material or question back. We believe that this collaboration can be sustained for which we set up, we propose to set up we are not yet released, but we propose to set up an interactive portal. Incidentally all the course contents including tutorial problems, laboratory exercises, lectures including audio video recording of lectures are subsequently released on this portal in a completely open source manner. So, that anybody and everybody in the country can access and use this material. So, the important aspect of this entire program is to open source the contents and as I said earlier the collaborative teams which are built up will subsequently be able to continue to add to these contents. In fact we expect the collaborative teams to grow in future not only other teachers but even students can participate in contributing more and more to the knowledge of a particular subject. Here are just a few snapshots from some of our previous workshops. This is a remote center. You can see a large number of teachers participating from this remote center. When we conducted this workshop there were about 30 remote centers. This is another remote center. The audio video quality that we were able to deliver through AVU was very good subject of course to the availability of adequate internet bandwidth at the respective remote centers. It is at this juncture that I would like to stop and request you to raise any points raise any questions. I will only say one thing in conclusion. We have successfully conducted six such workshops. The average attendance in each of these workshops has been more than 700 people. The largest attendance was on a database course with about 1039 teachers and the feedback that we have got from all the participating teachers in all workshops has been excellent. The IST President Professor Shetty once remarked that if we were to empower so many teachers using conventional workshops it would have taken us decades to do that. With this I will now stop at this juncture and request participants to raise any questions. I see a question from Santh Gargay Baba Amravati University. What do I do? Yes I can please go ahead. Very much so sir if you could kindly email me the details and send your email ID I will ask my colleague staff to compile the information that is required and send it immediately to you. We will be very glad to provide any assistance. In fact in the second half I will be talking about exactly how different universities can set up the hubs like what we have set up in IIT Bombay. That will tell you a few things about how you can do this set up yourself and you can conduct such workshops and such classes entirely on your own amongst all the participating colleges. Hello please go ahead sir. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much sir. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. In fact I will be speaking on it during the second half and thank you for your observations. I now have a question from BPS Mahila Vishwajidyalay. We are going over to the BPS Mahila Vishwajidyalay. I have a question from BPS Mahila Vishwajidyalay. I will be going over to the BPS Mahila Vishwajidyalay now. Hello sir. I can barely hear you. Will you please talk a bit loudly sir. Thank you. Should I cross it? Yes I can. Thank you very much sir. But if you recall I said at the very beginning that the fundamental objective of this interaction is now to empower all universities to precisely set up such hubs as you are talking about. In fact I would like at least 200 universities in the country to set up their own hubs of the kind that we have set up in IIT Bombay and start delivering such empowerment program themselves to all their teachers through their own local means. The objective today in fact is in the second half I would tell you in which way IIT Bombay can help you and other universities to do such set up and start acting on your own. I will go one step forward sir. While we have experimented with engineering education and engineering teachers there is absolutely no reason on earth why we should limit such large scale empowerment only to engineering education. You take science education, you take commerce education, you take education in law, you take education in arts everywhere what you observe in terms of paucity of expert and experienced teachers prevails. And therefore I believe that the need of this kind of initiative is everywhere in every field. And of course to give you a short answer we will be very glad to provide any kind of help that you need to set up such a center at your own place and we would like to ensure that you are able to do that very quickly, very easily and very cost effectively so that you can run such programs in various subjects at your own place using your own expert faculty. I will comment on that in the second half sir please bear with me. Is there somebody else which is the one of the better universities here but they are also a remote center in our case. Is there any other place which is not a remote center here but which are good this Krishna institute which is the Krishna institute this one no this one. I would like now to go over to Krishna Institute of medical science deemed university I would like to see if any of our friends there would like to offer some comments observations or raise a question over to you Krishna institute. Hello sir we can see you on the screen I would request you to offer some comments or observation over to you Krishna institute of medical science ok for some reason we are not able for some reason we are not able to get the audio from the Krishna institute. We will now go to Periyar many a by university at Tanjabur let us see if there are some people who are willing to offer comments there over to you Periyar university. Thank you sir the question that I wish to raise is that would your university be interested in setting up such a hub as we have at IIT Bombay and in turn try to conduct such workshops for participating teachers from the affiliated colleges and other colleges in that region so that you yourself become a knowledge giving hub that was that was the reason why I wanted to ask you whether you would be willing to do a activity on a larger scale at your place on your own. Thank you very much we will be getting back to you yeah ok friends so this brings us to the second part of our interaction where I would like to briefly inform you about what it takes to set up the hub and how IIT Bombay and Amruta would be able to help you. So first I will repeat my invitation to all universities in the country to participate in this exciting experiment and I am specifically saying that this experiment that we have done has succeeded in ensuring through the feedback that we have received from thousands of teachers that all of them have benefited my request to universities is would they be willing to take up this methodology establish hubs at their own place on various subjects not only engineering as I said but even in arts commerce science law whatever field you want and then use this exciting technology to communicate with thousands of teachers in your own region helping them to become better teachers. So essentially set up hubs like IIT Bombay what does it take to set up the hubs so let me write down some of the things here how do I switch to this so essentially a hub requires an expert teacher and I could say a group of expert teachers rather than a single expert teachers some audio visual equipment to transmit the lectures live some equipment like a whiteboard where I am writing things like this here and some internet bandwidth the backdrop of this hub would also require a server which will run the entire a view software this would be connected on internet and it could go to a large number of remote centers it is possible to locate this server in your own place at the same place where the teachers are teaching but it is not necessary the server could be located anywhere all that I need is a good connectivity between the teacher who is teaching and this server for example today I am talking to you where I have merely some audio visual equipment and some place where I can sit down talk and write these things as notes to you in fact I am giving this talk from my regular laboratory if we can spend about half a minute I will request my colleagues to show you the actual environment what you may be seeing is only me with some kind of a green background and something before me where I am writing there is actually a PC screen in front of me and a keyboard as you can see but if you look at the entire room where I am giving talk from well this is the glimpse of that room could you please take this laptop and take this camera and show them around so you see this is just a plain laboratory all I have is a camera in front of me and even that large camera is not really required I am using it merely to record a good quality video of what I am speaking if you do not want to do that recording merely a webcam is good enough unfortunately it is the webcam through which you are receiving these pictures and therefore I cannot show you the webcam itself but it is an ordinary webcam that can be used for doing this kind of lecture delivery the next question is how can we help so here is what we can offer we are preparing a document on methodology in about 20 days time this document would be ready and we would be circulating so motto this document to all the universities this document will contain not only the methodology that we follow but also the details of the equipment that are required to set up this hub the equipment that is required to be set up in the remote center and the way the participation of various teachers is organized for the two week workshops second we along with the amruta people would be glad to provide support to set up the equipment any hand holding that you may require we could be we would be able to send if there are not too many people simultaneously asking for this we would be able to send our expert technicians from both these organizations for a day or two to visit your universities after you have assembled all the necessary equipment we would also be able to provide the support during your workshop that you conduct for the first time so that everything works smoothly the third thing we would like to do is provide access to our proposed portal the hardware for this portal is under procurement in about two and half much time we would be setting up this portal this portal can be accessed by lakhs of people that is the scalability that we are arranging for the underlying hardware this will house a Moodle software which is actually a learning management system extensively used in most varieties and many other institutions we will provide direct access to this Moodle which can be a common Moodle used by many and we would help individual universities and colleges to set up the Moodle on their own additionally this portal which is a jumla based portal will permit interactive groups to be set up across various subjects and across universities these are the three things that we propose to do immediately if any one of you has any additional suggestion of how we could help we would like to take that into account and decide on exactly how we go about it in conclusion I will only say that let us build a nation where dreams come true there are just too many capable young people in this country who are dreaming perpetually who are ambitious who are capable and it is our duty as teachers to provide them with the requisite opportunities before concluding I would like to say that when I go back and examine our own journey which has been a good ten year journey we were supported extensively in the initial phase by Typhak who sponsored some preliminary pilot projects for us and subsequently at Dr. Chidambaram's behest when we decided to make a large scale proposal it was the ministry of human resource development and one particular person I would like to thank profusely is Mr. Sinha who has been as big a dreamer as any one of us he has supported this particular project this particular experiment large number of other experts who endorse our views and subsequently a large team at IIT Bombay which has permitted us to successfully conduct more than seven such workshops of thousand teachers each it is this reason why I feel convinced that whatever we did can be done by any one of you after all expert teachers are available in every university there may be few in number but they are definitely there why should it not be possible for the university to find out such people locate them convince them to conduct such workshops bring them to some kind of a central hub or permit them some basic facilities so that they can give these workshops from wherever they are and it is in this context that we will be setting up the documentation setting up the requirement in terms of equipment the most critical requirement eventually would be a good internet bandwidth if all of you come out on to the national knowledge network you will automatically get a large bandwidth but I would submit that individual colleges participating at remote centers do not require more than one mbps of internet bandwidth which is routinely available practically in every nook and corner of the country if the universities decide to do this I am very sure they can change the landscape of quality in all their colleges in all subjects and amongst all the teachers thank you very much I am open to now additional questions I have a query raised from Gujarat with the apit I will be now going over to Gujarat with the apit unfortunately I am not able to see anybody from Gujarat with the apit there seems to be some problem with their video may I request them to speak so that I can check whether their audio is working over to you no I am sorry I am not able to get Gujarat with the apit let me go to some other user I have another query from Gargay Baba Amravati university I have another query from some Gargay Baba university I will go over briefly to that university over to you thank you sir in fact I would request you to ask anyone of your colleagues to send us a short email so that it remains on our radar and the moment this document is ready I will of course be emailing it to all the vice chancellor of all universities but I will specially mark a copy to you personally hope to see the first possible IIT Bombay like hub coming up at your university itself we will now be going to the next university here is there a chat K I I T says we have currently a Moodle server for learning course management which is very good and there they will also be able to participate in the workshop to assist in shaping dream of this country oh Dr. Sikand Das from K I I T university Bhuneshwar thank you very much for your comments and observations there is another name from H G B A U also that is the same university okay okay then I have a BPS women university they wanted information for setting up center is sent in terms of infrastructure yes very much so we will in fact our document will cover everything from infrastructure to equipment to methodology that should be followed at such hubs we still have about five minutes so if there is any other observation let me see there are a few people who are participating perhaps they are silent so far I will urge them to speak their mind I will randomly choose a couple of institutions for a possible interaction I have here central university of Karnataka in I would like to go over to the central university of Karnataka and see if any of our colleague friends has an observation to make over to you Karnataka thank you very much there are some additional queries or the question is can you have Dr. Fatak's e-mail I am sorry I did not realize this let me write down the e-mail for you it is D B P for database Fatak as they call me or dream big Fatak it is actually Deepak Bhaskar Fatak at it.itb.ac.in however since I get about 200 e-mails a day every day it is possible that I might miss out some but there is a team dedicated to handle this which is the e-outreach team I will give you the e-mail ID of e-outreach e-outreach at it.itb.ac.in there is another e-mail ID that I would like to give my entire team which handles the audio visual equipment under the leadership of one Mr. Sajjan Kumar Dixit is accessible at e-studio at it.itb.ac.in please feel free to send an e-mail we do not mind at all if you send the same e-mail copies to all three we will make sure that at least someone responds and you get to know whatever queries that you have about I have about 3 minutes left so let me see if I can go to some person perhaps somebody is connected from Mangalore University let me see if somebody is available at Mangalore University I would like to get a brief comment from someone at the Mangalore University is not publishing let me go to Kranti Guru Shanti Krishna Varma Kachcha University yes I can see some friend from the Kachcha University may I request you to offer some comments please over to you I am sorry we were able to see you sir but we were unable to listen to you and suddenly your video blank out it does not matter we will have another opportunity to interact let me go over to Gandhigram Rural Institute which is a deemed university and see if some friend is there from Gandhigram Rural Institute no the video is blank so I suppose we are not able to see some people perhaps over time we would be able to Gandhigram yes I can see a friend in Gandhigram Rural University would you like to offer some comments sir over to you I can I can I can see your chat comment but I cannot hear you perhaps you do not have a mic if you have a mic would you please care to speak in the mic I am sorry I have to interrupt but your mic is possibly muted or is not connected I can see you smiling I can also see you speaking but I cannot hear you will you please speak loudly I think there is some voice that is coming I request you to kindly speak a bit loudly sir over to you thank you I can hear you please continue sorry for interrupting you sir we heard you very briefly but we could not sustain that audio link perhaps because of the inadequate bandwidth but thank you very much for participating I would request you to send an email and send some comments and observations that you have on the whole idea that I have proposed thank you so much we will get back to you may be some other time I think with this we will close up the interaction with this dear friends I would close this interaction let me tell you that I was as excited to share these experiments with you and the positive results as possibly some of you are and I look forward to the day when this country has not one hub at IIT Bombay but 500 of that 500 universities each one of which tries to spread the message let us never forget that why we are scaling up the number of students and teachers and in spite of the fact that many of the teachers are less experienced and do not have the necessary expertise as was observed by one of the colleague participants it is in our hands try and do something about it to try and provide those teachers adequate inputs so that they are empowered to do a better job good day and thank you very much I will now hand over the control to our moderator. Hello everyone thank you very much Dr. Phataksar thank you very much for your inspiring talk and I hope and pray that all universities in India take this initiative and start setting up their own hubs and start spreading the knowledge at their from their universities to the nearby colleges and with this we conclude today's session and please send your comments and suggestions and feedback to avuatamruta.edu and any help you need in setting up avu or conducting or hosting sessions you can you can we will be more than glad and willing to help you in any way possible and we will also come to your place set up your servers or machines for you and we will provide any technical help for you to help you get going ok sir thank you very much thank you very much for your time have a good afternoon Jai Hind. Good job sir.