 Hello, good afternoon everybody. I am Praveena from Amritha University, Amrithapuri campus and she is my colleague. Hello everyone, I am Vinita from Computer Science Department, Amritha School of Engineering, Amrithapuri campus. And let me brief about our university first. She is the founder of the university and chancellor of the university, Srimata Amitandamayi Devi and she is our sole inspiration about all initiatives, Amritha initiatives and we are Amritha's deemed university. It is an interdisciplinary multi campus university and we have around 100 programs including bachelors, masters and doctoral programs and there are around 13,000 students currently enrolled and we have 5 campuses located at Bangalore, Coimbatore, Cochin, Amrithapuri and Mysore and talking about the computer programming course. It is a common course which is offered in all the campuses and regarding the, these are some of the schools. We have 18 schools including School of Engineering, Arts and Science, Ayurveda, Biotechnology, Communication, Dentistry, Education Management and several other schools under the university and about our computer programming course, it is a common course which is offered across multiple campuses and I would like to explain it through the faculty web page which is already available for all the students and our faculty members and it is already available on the internet also. Regarding the computer programming course, actually our evaluation pattern is like we have some continuous evaluation pattern. We have a relative grading scheme whereas 50 percent of the evaluation will be done internally as a continuous evaluation and 50 percent is evaluated as final exam or end semester exam and this year onwards, 2009 onwards it is going to be 60 and 40. 60 percent is done internally and 40 percent is taken for the end semester exam. Actually we have a periodical exams, two periodical exams in a semester along with the assignments, tutorials, quizzes and other evaluation criteria will be followed by all the faculty members and this is done independently in all the campuses, all the five campuses and the final examination will be done in a synchronous manner. For example, we have a chief mentor, he or she will be the senior most person among all the teachers and they will be collecting the question paper from other campuses and consolidate it in the question paper and make it as a single paper and the final exam will be conducted on the same day in all the campuses and the evaluation and the result publication everything is done on the same day whereas the internal evaluation will be done independently which is for 50 percent. And this is the course page and regarding the syllabus, actually we are handling for BTEC and MCA and there is slight change in the two syllabus, MCA is little more advanced and this is the three credit course, we have three credit for theory and one credit for lab and these courses are conducted separately. For theory, we have a separate evaluation pattern and for the lab it is a separate evaluation pattern, it is a one credit course and theory is three credit course and this is the syllabus. We have three lectures and one tutorial per week and three hours of lab per week and the project works in other lab assignments, the students have to make use of the extra lab sessions available after class hours including Saturdays and Sundays and these are the course objectives and course description. And we follow the same course plan across all the campuses, so prior to the commencement of the course all the faculty members have to communicate and they have to synchronize the course plans along with the in semester evaluation criteria and the evaluation policy and examination dates. So, here this is the detailed lecture plan. So, for module one it takes 10 hours and like she explained in the morning it is a very vast syllabus, we have broad syllabus. So, there are so many topics covered in the syllabus, so it is very difficult for us to complete the all topics within 45 lecture sessions. So, we will have to take some extra sessions including Saturdays and Sundays to cover all these topics. This is the course evaluation policy and for theory we have periodical exams 35 percent carries and there are two periodical exams and class test and online exam carry 10 percentage of weightage. We conduct class test it can be either theory or online. For online exams we make use of module or this year onwards we are using our own software called Amidha University Management System. And whereas, we have question banks which is collected from all the faculty members and we can download it in the XML formats and any faculty member if they want they can utilize the papers or banks set by the other faculty. So, this is one of the main feature available in the computer programming course and we have 5 percent weightage for open book examination. So, where we will be giving a challenging questions for the students and students can get any book textbooks into the classroom whereas, the questions will be said in such a way that they will not be able to read and get the answers directly from the book it will be really challenging and the students find it very useful especially the brilliant students find it very challenging and they always used to appreciate such exams. And we are regarding the attendance 80 percent attendance is compulsory for all the students and if they have any exceptional reason they have to produce medical certificate if it is valid. And the quizzes are conducted in the classroom normally we conduct the quizzes in tutorial sessions we have there are two ways either through online exams or we will ask them to collect the questions like so as explaining the morning students themselves will collect questions and they used to conduct it actually it is not evaluated it is not included in the evaluation policy, but even though the students find it very useful when they share knowledge through the quizzes they collect questions and they ask they conducted among teams and they will be monitoring one of the class representative will be monitoring the points. And we have final exam for 50 percent and this 2009 year admission onwards it is going to be 60 and 40 this was done for the last year. And for regarding the lab assignments we have assignments posted every week and the students have to complete the lab assignments one week including Saturdays and Sundays and the next week we we evaluate the labs through a lab exam which should be conducted in the first hour of the lab. We have three hours lab and every first hour of the lab will be a test based on the previous labs. For example, suppose the last assignment is based on arrays we will they will have to write a lab exam which is based on a previous assignment which and the question will be entirely different from the lab sit. It is a different question which is not given as an assignment question. So, this is very useful and we can really understand how many students have really learned it without copying the assignment. So, this is one of the best practice we have adopted since last year because most of the time faculty members find it very difficult when the to evaluate the assignments because most of the students copied. So, we had tried this since last year and it is going it is going to be it is going on very well provided we need to have faculty members to evaluate the assignments. So, sorry the class the lab test. So, what we do is the students do the lab exam and they will the output will be evaluated there itself and they will post the answers the program in our university management system course management system. So, that the faculty members can evaluate it later on we need not spend the whole time to evaluate the lab test there itself and the remaining two hours can be utilized for the next assignments. So, this is one of the best practice we have adopted and this are some of the lab sample assignments and this is some one of the sample quizzes normally in quizzes we give the predict the output questions which is really challenging some of the questions are really confusing normally they find it very difficult during placement time because most of the companies will ask very tricky questions in C programming language and we prepare our students for this also along with the course delivery. So, there will be a question bank prepared by the faculty members as well as by good students where they have to predict the output and explain the reason or justify the reason and even very good student brilliant students find it very difficult sometimes when it comes to a challenging question. So, this is conducted during tutorial sessions and we have such questions even for the periodical exams and end semester exam and this is a sample question paper this is a periodical exam which is conducted in last year and we have some theory questions which is not very direct and this will not be discussed in the class it will not be discussed and given directly in the class there will be some twist in the questions and part B is always part A will be some theory questions. So, that even below average student can score some mark and part B will have some challenging question where we have predict the output and this is for 20 marks 2 marks for each question. So, 10 into 2 becomes 20 and part C we have programming questions and this also will be since it is a periodical exam it is like simple, but for MCA and other PG courses this part will be really challenging where they have to attempt a challenging program. This is a MCA final semester question paper sorry end semester question paper and here also we have some predict the output questions and programming questions and they have to there will be some challenging concepts. For example, why do the array elements num of n i of num output the same result some questions will be given like this and they have to really explain the concepts behind this and since it is a common course for all the 7 branches this is our personal experience in the previous year faculty members were facing a very challenging. I would like to share this problem I do not know whether you have faced the same problem because sometimes some faculty will be too liberal and other faculty member will be very strict sir may not vertex may not find it difficult because I do not know whether it is done through TAs and it is examined by him, but we find it very difficult when it comes to 7 faculty 1 faculty is too strict. So, mechanical branch will get a very poor grade and EC branch may get a very high grade. So, in order to solve this problem last time onwards last year onwards we have adopted a new system we have a false numbering system which is done from the examination cell examination department. So, what we do is we will tear off the register number and exam department will put a false number on all the sheets in all the 500 papers and it will be distributed to faculty members and we divide the questions among ourselves. For example, part A will be taken by me and part C part B will be taken by her and part C will be taken by other faculty it can be 3 or 4 questions and it is evaluated throughout all the 500 sheets by the single faculty same set of questions will be evaluated. See if I am liberal I am liberal to all the 500 students. So, it is like that. So, the students are very happy with the system and it is we can really give 100 percent justice to all the students and it is completely unbiased. So, this is one of the best practice we follow for the common course and it is highly appreciated by the by all the department and even the physics and chemistry and others faculty members are following the same. So, after we started this and projects the normally students come with some of the graphics projects and some projects we have we give like problem solving to test the problems solving skill normally we give the problem which is given for ACM contest which is going which is it seems to be very complicated. So, students themselves came and requested that they would like to solve such problem. So, I do not know whether you have noticed this ICPC contest are quite difficult. So, such problems would be given to the students and they come with the algorithm and solutions that is one of the projects. Other project is the the graphics and other XML parser or something like that. So, students themselves will submit this synopsis and there will be a faculty team to approve the project and it will be evaluated finally by the main faculty and the supporting faculty we do not have TA's in the college. So, the faculty for the for all the faculty members is it is a very tedious task at the end of the semester we have to evaluate each student for 20 percent weightage of this project and these are some of the infrastructure and other computing facilities we have 11 computing lab including DSP and VLSI and power system lab and we have around more than 1000 computers in all the labs and these lab computers can be utilized by the students during extra time after 430 after class hours and even on Saturdays and Sundays our labs are open and we have a learning facility ISRO has launched eduSAT in 2004 and all our campuses are satellite linked and we have satellite classes transmitted from other campuses and other universities and this is very useful we can share the expertise and see the lecturers and the knowledge can be shared from other people also and our students are making use of this facility and we have Indo-US e-learning initiative here our university is collaborated with US universities and students are listening to serious series of lecturers from US universities like University of Buffalo and other universities and this is also made possible through eduSAT satellite and our campus network is accessible through VPN and even if we visit other Kambethur and Bangalore campus we can access our file servers and web servers through a VPN tunneling mechanism and this is available for all the faculty members and students with their login ID and password with their CWL which is campus-wide login we have a single sign-on mechanism authentication mechanism where the same login and password can be used for the file servers proxy the campus LAN and other facilities and we have Wi-Fi connection extended to the classrooms and the hostel so that the students can work even when they are away from the classrooms and campus and internal it is available for the faculty and students in the computer lab and faculty rooms and every faculty has personal web pages which is available on the web and it is a sharing mechanism if I have handled a subject in previous years any faculty can refer to that and they can get the help from senior faculty members and there are few more information which will be explained by my colleague, Vinita. Hello about the other information that we have been using like last year we saw like we were running the C programming for the all the branches seven branches and we found like many failures at the end of the semester they were finding it very difficult and when we trace the problem it was like some of them were coming from the computer science they had already done their computer science in the 11th and 12th and they had enough knowledge about it so they were doing well and some of the students had nothing no zero knowledge about the computer science subject as such so what we did this time like we took a bridge course on C program in computer programming for a week before we started the regular course for all the other students regularly we took a bridge course for a week where we covered up to say like for loops we gave general introduction about what is computer and we showed the hard disk what is there inside the computer how does how does the data store what is data what is memory what is hard disk all these details we showed before every other student reach the campus so like then we started with the basic computer concepts and even they started executing these programs we gave the basic idea of how to run a program how to log in to system how to use Linux how to compile using GCC via editors all these we made it very familiarized I mean we made it familiar to the students in a one week gap so we covered up to for loop's concepts I think so this gave them a kind of confidence to take the course when everybody came back in and when we started regular course they didn't lag behind they didn't like they were finding it okay to cope up with the other set of students so this was a very great success like nearly 100 students out of I think 500 hundred students had registered for this course and it was it was it was a kind it was a success for us so now we are fine we are not finding that difficult we are finding it better to handle the course and of course there are people who are not able to understand and we take classes on Saturdays and Sundays and like when we take classes on Saturdays and Sundays it's a class classroom like this I stand here I execute the program and they parallely do with me so it's an informal session like if they have any doubts they can raise they don't have to hesitate asking questions to us so this we followed and it was very successful for us and like we have as she said we have a university management system so like this we started using it this year onwards it's like we have the whole database here so it is easy for us so so this is the management site we have like see that gives me the details of what are the courses that I'm handling and I can upload the notes they can upload their assignments they can have I can give online exams and the grading is also done easier here everything will be graded and that will be put in the grade sheets and the grading is done and all the reports are generated from by the ohms okay and also we used to use model we used to use models we had uploaded our courses and we had all these online exams through models that was also quite useful for us and we have Vidya it's a digital library digital information repository this is this is accessible to all our campuses this has a this has large it's a repository of all the videos audios ebooks lectures so the students can always access this and get help from the repository okay thank you any questions is the depository accessible to all or it's only limited to only to add four campuses you're not proposing to open source that portion as well maybe we can it's right now it's for four campuses it's over the side so do think about it and do check up because that could be a significant contribution to the entire effort by Amrita the whole idea is to Yeah No, there is there is a significant problem at MIT course for the bad a long description of Vijay Kumar actually MIT wanted IIT Bombay to join them and we said we have no problem but they said it will be under MIT banner and we said it should be either under IIT Bombay India banner or it should be a joint banner so if we are contributing why should the name of my nation not been there they said they have some issue however please check whether you have legal permission to replicate everything what they have on any server there are there are variations in that is why we said right from the beginning that we shall use the creative commons license by attribution the license makes it very abundantly clear that any material can be taken can be used can be modified can be distributed can be sold can be done anything with it as long as you attribute that this material is is from such and such place we believe that is the best license to have now make sure that MIT has that kind of license and one thing I'll tell you about these firangs everybody exhibits this they will generally not tell you for a long time in fact they will encourage you to use this use that that this applies to Microsoft licenses or Oracle license or whatever and suddenly after five years or ten years later when you and all your students and all your teachers are used to using all of that they will suddenly say case five in international court at Hague or something or give me fifty crore rupees or give me five crore rupees or something even if they don't ask for money it is bad in principle I believe MIT courseware is relatively open source but it is good to check these points we have suffered a lot because of this early in any case if you have a question bank of this type and open source who would definitely like you in fact please take this as a open request will make that request formally also that in this unified thing you make it available what we'll do is we'll do two things we'll download the contents and merge it but we'll also maintain a link to your site so it that link may not be able to permit people to access the internals but at least we'll provide a link to your institution where we acknowledge that this matters from this place we'll say the major main page link to the contributors is is on the web that this would be true for all the institutions and everything because that is one way of spreading you know that me and my institution have done this we'll request the concern of the audience thank you thank you sir