 Last time we had a meeting with the RC co-ordinators was perhaps more than one and a half years ago. So I am happy to welcome a friend from IIT Kharagpur. In this session I would like to touch base with all of you, first recapturing all the workshops that we have conducted with your kind help. Next, what is the current thinking and what have been the most recent FDPs that we have conducted in which some of your centers have participated. And last, how do we go from here moving forward? As all of you will recall, when we embarked on the large scale training of teachers in engineering institutions, we had a model where some remote centers were identified. We have more than 353 remote centers now and I am told out of them about close to 300 people are here. 245. The model of training has always been that for a particular subject for which training is to be imparted, each remote center would be requested to appoint a workshop coordinator who would be an expert in that particular area. Not all remote centers have experts of some stage in every subject area and therefore we never conducted a training program with all 353 remote centers participating. That was not envisaged also. What we have found is that as long as there are more than 200 remote centers, we can conduct a viable faculty development program using those. Once the workshop coordinator is appointed, we invite the workshop coordinator to attend a coordinator's workshop here. Essentially they receive induction into how that particular course will be conducted later by the faculty members at IIT Bombay or IIT Kharagpur or other external experts and the respective workshop coordinators at each remote center. For the main training workshop, anywhere between 30 to 100 teacher participants would register and after enrolling themselves, they will present for any face-to-face interaction that they have at the remote center. Typically it lasted for two weeks in the early models and subsequently when we adopted the blended MOOCs, we said one week equivalent work will have to be done by participating teachers online, which would be spread over four or five weeks and one week face-to-face interaction will be conducted at the remote center. So these are the models that we have been largely following. In the face-to-face interaction, the interactive lectures are transmitted from IIT Bombay or IIT Kharagpur and afternoon sessions including tutorials or labs etc. are conducted under the supervision of respective workshop coordinators at each remote center. Since the workshop coordinators have already been inducted very heavily into the kind of lab problems and tutorial problems they will have to deal with, generally we have found that these workshops, even though 5,000, 7,000, 8,000 participants attend, these workshops have been conducted with exactly the same quality and rigor had they been conducted entirely in any one of the institutes. There has been the strong point and that is why the government had supported this program with fairly large funding. Unfortunately it was obvious to us also at that time that this is not a sustainable model because the number of teachers in higher technical education itself is more than 3 lakhs. If you consider all professional education such as management, pharmacy, architecture which fall under AICT and in fact the AICT chairman here, he was here last week and he commented that his figures are about 4,200,000 teachers in all these professional 5,000 plus colleges. However he said there are probably 3,200,000 unique teachers. I could not understand what he meant by that but apparently there are some teachers who are on the roles of multiple institutions. One of the problems that he faces as AICT chairman is that he needs to identify unique teachers amongst them. The government will probably use other numbers and such things but in future all our FDPs can be attended by participants only when they are given their other number. So that will be obligatory. Now I come back to the more recent developments. Through all the last 3 years and we are very happy that with your help IIT Kharagpur and IIT Bombay have succeeded in imparting training to more than 1,20,000 teachers. Our target was 1,50,000. This remaining target has to be fulfilled. Unfortunately almost for a year there is no funding support from MHRD because funds to the ministry itself were restricted. Then a miracle man came there. His name is Mr. Subramanyam. He is the additional secretary in charge of enemy ICT. And after he took over he realized the importance of these projects and started releasing some funds. But before that when we were fund deprived we had discussed if you recall a model for self-financing. And all RCs have said that it is possible that people will come forward to attend a self-finance course. All remote centers have agreed that while they can take care of providing support, primarily the AVU support which is required. And I must not forget to acknowledge Dr. Kamal Bijlani is here. The tremendous work done by Amruta University in making that AVU available as an open source too. So thank you very much Kamal. So the idea was that if one week equivalent of face-to-face interaction has to be conducted at a remote center there is a non-trivial cost for providing that support. Each remote center has to organize the classroom, PA system, technical assistance, conducting AVU sessions etc. And what all remote centers have kindly agreed that if an amount of rupees 1000 per participant could be paid to the remote centers, the remote centers would be able to and willing to take care of these particular costs and provide the support. We had a tradition of supporting all participants in the FDPs by giving them TADA as per approved rates which was part of the funding approval from the majority. However when there are no funds we have stuck. Last year in fact the situation was so dire that we thought the entire T10KT program has to be discontinued. It is then that we decided to experiment with two FDPs which in fact were initiated at the specific request of AICT. What AICT found is that while teachers might know less or more about a particular subject, most teachers have no idea on how to effectively use modern technology in education and most teachers have no clue about the pedagogy such as flip classroom, such as conducting discussion sessions etc. So we were asked whether we could design two faculty development programs of two weeks each. And we said we would but we would like to make these FDPs themselves into a blended MOOCs offering so that large part of the work can be done online. In fact we were of the opinion that the first of these two FDPs can be largely conducted completely online, the foundation course in ICT. The second course which is on pedagogy does require intense interaction and therefore human interaction was perceived to be necessary. Unfortunately the funds died up to such an extent that we did not have even funds to invest in creation of these FDPs. It is a non-trivial cost of involving a large number of faculty members, recordings etc. Luckily through corporate social funding a company came forward SAP of India and they said we would fund the creation of these two FDPs and one time conduct of these FDPs. We took that recourse and announced composite FDPs because we could not afford to run two different FDPs. We decided to run a composite FDP of four weeks duration of which largely online activities would be spread over 10 to 12 weeks. We arranged human interaction, personal face-to-face interaction, not in a continuous one week process but on three weekends. We were aware that this might put some people to trouble but we also believed that by organizing these on Saturdays and Sundays we would not be impinging on their regular timetable in their own academics. Also RCs hopefully would be little more comfortable working on Saturdays and Sundays. Of course the people who actually work will be very uncomfortable but for the organization or institution a Saturday or Sunday is more easy to sort of regulate. We announced this and we said that there is no funding from MHRD. Since the funding required to create and run these courses at IIT and are being covered through CSR funding they need not pay any charges to IIT Bombay. However they will have to pay 1000 rupees to each RC for participation and additionally they will have to spend their own money to travel, stay, have food, tea. Nothing will be served by RCs because there is no funding. Actually I must confess that I was almost ridiculed by many of my colleagues who said that fact that you have actually created a habit amongst all teachers in the country that they can attain these training programs as lords with all costs taken care of by the government. So when you have actually created a habit of free funding of everything why do you think people will come? My counter argument was that if people see value in something they would not mind spending money. If they don't see a value they will not come. The value is twofold. One is if they successfully complete a training program then their certificate is of some credibility in their own careers. Second, actually in their teaching processes they would find such FDPs useful. This was my argument. I am very happy to report that more than 4000 teachers enrolled for these combined FDPs. 4000 is a good number that means there were 4000 souls ready to spend their own money to participate. We started the registration. How many remote centers participate in those FDPs? 125 remote centers participated. We advise all participating teachers to pay 1000 rupees to these remote centers. I am aware that in many remote centers where local faculty members themselves had enrolled the remote centers kindly excuse those participants from paying the fees. There are some philanthropic remote centers who said they won't charge any money from any participant at all. This is very nice and it is kind of those remote centers but this is not a good practice. A better practice would have been to charge 1000 rupees, collect that 1000 rupees and only if participants participate properly return that money later. And that is because anything free has much less value anywhere in the world. We have learned this lesson hard way. I would like all remote centers also to learn this lesson. This is precisely the reason why while the remote centers were willing to work with us without any money we said no they must be compensated for the efforts that they undertake and the help that they provide. So there should be no work that should go unrecognized. House are small and token there must be an honorarium paid to individuals who work to make such program successful. The FDP conduct was very very rigorous unlike in the past where primarily physical attendance and physical participation was a criteria. Unlike in the past where primarily feedback sessions that were conducted online and quizzes that were conducted online was the criteria. You will notice that in our past workshops a very large number of people actually succeeded in getting certified through proper attendance, diligent work in the remote centers in face to face interaction and proper submission of online quizzes centers. Now when you have much less face to face interaction how do you ensure that the same amount of diligence is exhibited by participants. And therefore we decided to up the ante and we said there will be weekly tests which would actually be tough tests. The tests were indeed the tests and quizzes that we put on IIT Bombay platform were indeed not easy tests and quizzes as they used to be in the earlier. Finally 2,100 participants succeeded in qualifying. This is not a small number this is almost close to 55% of the total people. Of course I would have liked it to be 80% but we realized some problems. Total duration for which people had to work continuously was too long. 10 weeks of working 8 hours equivalent work on every week is not always possible for all faculty members. There are certain other extinguishes. There are urgent requirements in their own academic institutions. There are family problems and whatever whatever. There are a large number of people who did not get qualified who actually attempted to do quizzes and online assignments for almost 4 to 5 weeks and then gave up. There is also a very sad happening which I must report to all of you. In one of the assignments where participants were required to upload a file and then that submission was subjected to peer review. A mechanism that is now available on the IIT Bombay X platform. Some of our teaching assistants associated with running of these FDP noticed that there were two submissions made by two different individuals which were very close to each other. That means one was copied from the other. They started working using some available software like the equivalent of Turnitin and so on. And in about 3-4 days they found 15 such submissions each one having at least two duplicates. That was a staggering blow to my concept of a teacher. As teachers we are supposed to prevent plagiarism, prevent copying in the exam. But if we ourselves are tempted I do not know what to do. The most hilarious situation was when one of the participants sent an angry mail saying that I was assigned this particular submission to check as a peer assessor. And when I opened it I found my own assignment submitted by someone else. Of course that could not have happened unless I have shared my assignment with someone. I mean how could somebody dream of the exact wordings of the submission that I have made. Either I have been completely lax and kept my files open and easily copyable on my computer. Or as a friend I tried to help saying this is the way you should write. And the friend not only wrote it that way but wrote it identically that way and submitted. I must also add that such is not an act of friendship. Such is an act of gross animosity. I will help some friend of mine by permitting him or her to copy an assignment only when I am an avowed enemy of that person. If I am a friend I would say please wake up this is not on. I am your friend and I am suggesting that you do your own work. I will help you to discuss with me whatever you want but you must write on your own. This happens in our lives with students. We have dealt with students for 50 years and temptation to copying is not unknown to all of us. However that it should happen amongst teachers was a sad fact. I did what I had done couple of times in teaching large courses here. I wrote to all teachers all 4,000 teachers that such cases have come to our life. Our TAs are working on each and every assignment to find out whether there is any similarity. If such similarity is found it is of course grossly improper. I would have no option but to A disqualify you immediately from the course. B report the matter to head of your institution and C report your name and your institution's name to AICT. However since this is probably the first time that you have been tempted to do this I offer you an alternative. The alternative that I offered was as follows. Number one, you must submit an apology letter stating what you have copied and from whom. That apology letter need not be submitted publicly because we did not want to hurt anybody's self esteem. So we created a separate submission place where all 4,000 people have to upload their letters. Everybody was required to upload a letter saying either I have not copied anything or I have copied this. Which means merely by knowing who has made that submission nobody will come to know whether anybody has copied or not. This is how we try to protect the identity and self esteem of all individuals. Second we said those who admit to having copied they will not be given a certificate even if they qualify. They are of course permitted to continue to benefit from this FDP and they can learn whatever they can learn for their own use but they will not be certified. Third because they are showing guts to admit that they have copied the matter will not be reported to either their institutions or to AICT. He will be surprised I got 228 or so submissions within 4 days. That means 228 teachers like us were actually tempted to copy and submit an assignment. It's a fairly large number but considering that totally there were 4,000 as a percentage it is still not very large. What was more pleasantly surprising is that a majority of these 225 people continued to work in the remaining part of FDP. A majority of these people took subsequent assignments and quizzes very very seriously, completed them. When I talked to AICT chairman about this he was amused but he told me one thing he said father how easy is for us to admit a mistake that we make. I said it's very difficult. He said these 225 people have shown that they have the guts to admit their mistake. So I said I hope you are not suggesting that you should condone that. He said no don't condone it. So stick to your rules if they have copied one or more assignments they continue to get zero in that assignment. But what if those people have continued working hard and if on the basis of their score in the remaining assignments they are eligible to qualify. Then why don't you show a gesture that admitting a mistake showing that guts and still working harder also counts for something. I hope you all agree with this gesture and suggestion. We did that and I am very happy to report that several of those 225 people actually got qualified because they continued to work hard. I elaborated this incident because this has a lot of lessons for all of us. Number one we must prevent amongst our participants a temptation to take shortcuts. We pass all of you are aware that in many remote centers there has been a temptation to fudge attendance. People will come in the morning disappear. Suppose I am a teacher at one of your remote centers and I am a very senior person. I come there sign my attendance and walk off saying I have this important meeting there and you will find it possibly difficult to shout back at me because that's not an IIT. If I am your senior you have to be very respectful. In IIT system juniors shouted senior most. All of us were like that once and we are now at the receiving end. But that is not the general mechanism in other institutions. But this creates a very bad precedence because the other people are affected. All of this will have to be sorted out. We have to learn to discipline ourselves and discipline others but that is a long shot. Now coming back to these two FDPs. As I said the Miracle Man Mr. Subramaniam after he took over as the mission director he realized the importance and he started releasing funds. That is how IIT Kharagpur could actually conduct a workshop when we said ok we go ahead. You don't know on what Tender Hooks were there. When they announced the co-ordinators workshop we had funds just to conduct the co-ordinators workshop. There is no guarantee that after that the main workshop will be conducted. How funny it would have been if workshop co-ordinators from all of your places assemble at IIT Kharagpur, undergo a one week training and then go back and they are told sorry there is no workshop because no funds. Fortunately that did not happen. Now the project review committee has just conducted its important meeting recently and they have recommended that without any additional budget provision the project be extended by one more year. They have also approved the possibility of releasing some funds to remote centers. You will recall that all active remote centers were funded by the project to a very small amount. I think it was 2.56 lakh rupees or something, 2.8 lakhs. Now an additional amount of 2.8 lakhs was also approved to be paid in two installments for two years of upkeep and any upgradation that you needed. There is only unfortunately only one more year left. The project has been approved only for one year. So as per JFR we will be able to release only half that amount. But still that is about 1.4 lakhs per remote center. You are not expected to buy any new equipment. You can use this for upkeep maintenance and even for salary of any assistant that you want to appoint for the year or paying honorarium during the time when you take care of events which require a view interaction. And I will come to that in my closing part shortly. Now this amount of course is subject to the ministry PAB approving the PRHG meanings and then releasing the funds that we have requested. Tentatively we are supposed to conduct 8 more FDPs. 3 of them are to be conducted by IIT Kharagpur and we have requested that they continue conducting subject specific FDPs in the blended mode. Which means that there will be one week of conventional regular interaction at remote centers face to face preceded by about 4 to 5 weeks of online activity in the blended. Because they have lined up a whole set of 2 or 3 very important courses for which they will be announcing the workshops and they will be conducting. Again all of this is subject to approvers coming and funds being received. Tentatively the time for approvers and fund release is that by end of March hopefully on 31st March we may get a letter that the project is extended by one year without any further additional budget. Sometime in April end or May 1st we may get a letter that such and such amount is approved for this one year long process of which so and so is being released now. We have no clue of how much amount will be approved and how much they will release. But depending upon what they approve and what they release we propose to conduct these FDPs and we propose to empower all our remote centers with at least 1.4 lakh rupees a grant if that money is released. That money will be sent to RCs and they will have to give a utilization certificate. The utilization certificate could simply say that this money has been utilized either for maintenance purposes or will be utilized or is being deployed for appointment of people or whatever. Largely it will be open to which way in RC wishes to utilize these funds. But there is a caveat. The caveat and this was not only suggested by PRSG but by government of India nominee and even additional secretary also said this. He said that if we have provided funds small or more does not matter then the facilities created by using those funds must be available for other activities that the ministry and the project might conduct. I did try to tell the additional secretary and others that there are occasions when we conduct small one day workshops for example the green building workshop many of you have participated and we have some other interaction and so on. But he said no there should be an undertaking by the remote centers that they will be willing to provide those facilities for usage for such separate activities which may or may not be funded. So for example it is not impossible for the ministry IIT Bombay IIT Kharagpur to come up with a one day event or a two day event which is on a Saturday or Sunday. And we might request RCs to provide the AV interaction facility for assembled students and teachers. There will largely be students and teachers of either your own institutions or institutions nearby. So I don't see any dichotomy because this is an academic activity. There are four such separate activities which have been listed in the schedule that you have got. COHA is a name which some of you might not have heard. It's an open source package used for library management. IIT Bombay has undertaken another large project from government of India approved by ministry of culture in which we are supposed to create a national virtual library of India. The NVLI is supposed to be equivalent of an internet archive for Indian cultural heritage digital assets. You may be aware that IIT Kharagpur which is a partner institution in T10KT is also executing the digital library of India project on behalf of MHRD. And they are creating the largest repository of all metadata of all library books and journals and other things. We on the other hand will be concentrating on the manuscripts, museums and such data including of course cultural books and so on. There will be an overlap where we will be working together. The point in the context of our discussion today is that ministry of culture has decided and I suppose IIT Kharagpur would also agree that we would like to train library staff of more than 36,000 college libraries and more than 30,000 public libraries in using COHA for their library management. There are many institutions which have adopted COHA IIT Bombay also is moving towards COHA. But that's an effort that needs some training. Now this training will have to be provided to library staff. It could be your own library staff but there will be 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 15 people. But there will be library staff from public libraries in your towns, in nearby towns. There could be college library people, school library people and they will have to be trained. COHA training is not an extensive two-week kind of training. It's typically a one-day training followed by one month of work that they will have to do at their places followed by another one-day refresher. We have organized such things and we are creating MOOCs for providing such training. And in the blended MOOCs fashion, we would like to train a very large number of library staff. So although I could convince the secretary that this is an additional work, you would agree that this is a work. Probably in the realm of our own academic activities, there is nothing untoward. There is a project again by the government of India which is called the 7 million lamp project. My colleague, Mr. Chetan Solanki, led a project where nationwide deployment of solar lamps of 1 million lights was achieved in a record time. Now they have been approved to do a project to create 7 million lights. Each light or lamp will go to a small rural family where there is no electricity and the children cannot study. And they can study only in the night because during daytime they are not free. So the 7 million light is an important project. How it concerns us is as follows. Unlike a 1 million model where majority of the things were actually purchased and training was given to local people for maintenance and repairs and so on. In this model, even the local manufacturing is envisaged, local repairs is envisaged and record keeping of all deliveries, deployments and feedback is also envisaged. This is not going to be spread across the entire country. Some states have been selected. But in those selected states, at the level of every block, there will be some people who will have to be trained. We are working out how vocational training can be given. But more importantly, training for data capture, training for data recording will have to be given. We have told the ministry that we will be very happy to use our large outreach through remote centers to provide such training. This could be a two-day training on Saturday, Sunday, spread over two weeks or something. The details are being worked out. There is a project Shunya that is going on in IIT Bombay and there are many other institutions which are participating. It's a green building project. We had run one awareness workshop for half a day earlier. We might wish to do something similar again. There is an important program which is almost becoming like an FDP, which we are trying to work out with the help of another CSR funding, J.P. Morgan. The program is called College to Corporate and I must spend two minutes to tell you what exactly the program is. As you know, bodies like NASCOM have been constantly telling us that when we try to train our students, only 25% of our graduates are employable in their opinion. And that is because our students when they pass out, they either lack the basic skills or lack the basic understanding and they are not ready for the corporate world. Among several shortcomings, it was pointed out that our students do not have effective communication skills. They do not know how to appear for interview and so many such things. J.P. Morgan and IIT Bombay is working to formulate a program called College to Corporate. Now this College to Corporate program is meant primarily for third year and fourth year students of every college who would be pitching for a job. So it will start with how to prepare for interview, how to give interview, what should be your body language, etc. And later on coupled with specific skills which are required for different corporate segments. We have not yet worked out the details but if this program comes about, then at selected remote centers we would like to run this program. Now this is not a government funded program. This is meant for students both from our institutions and from other neighboring institutions. In the initial period J.P. Morgan would like to limit it to some 100 or 150 institutions so that their own students who can be monitored subsequently on how do they in their interviews for example in campus placement if they are trained like this and what was the judgment of the teachers of the previous interview, are they benefiting or not etc. Again although I have called it extra work, you would agree that this is actually one of the most desirable activities where our students will benefit from our institutions. I have listed only three or four here. I do not even know what new things will come up. But the government wishes to have an undertaking from all remote centers that for such important activities which IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur would undertake or for some reason if Amruta Institute is running a program for example the avu facilities could be made available. You are familiar with the fact that a large smart India hackathon is being conducted. Many of your colleges would have students participating in those. The hackathon will run for 36 hours and it will run in 22 different cities. In each of the cities there is a panel of judges. A large number of teams are actually participating. I think there are more than 28,000 or 32,000 students participating making it one of the largest hackathons in the world. Now if such hackathon preparation requires any interaction either by IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur or some experts from the ministry with all teaching community across the country don't you think it is reasonable for remote centers to contribute? Because this again meant for our own school. So such things will happen. I mentioned the hackathon because this is not 22 centers in the 22 cities where the hackathon is being conducted are not necessarily our remote centers. For example in Mumbai the center is Wellinkar Institute. So the Kamal is here in fact to set up all the mechanisms. I have been appointed as the chief jury for the event so I will be addressing all panels of judges on 1st of April and we will be interacting with them on 1st and 2nd every half an hour every one hour. Now when such events happen it is natural for the ministry to expect cooperation from remote centers which have been funded however lightly it may be but this is government fund. So I hope that is acceptable to all of you. It's not a problem. As far as these FDPs are concerned these two FDPs have now been reshaped after our interaction. Just to tell you the concluding part of the composite FDP that we conducted out of the 2100 participants who received certification at the end who had announced that top 200 participants will be paid a SAP award of excellence, small amount of rupees 5000. But it's not the amount it was the recognition. As would happen in any large class when you want to draw a line between the grade A and grade AB it is very difficult because everybody is just 0.5, 0.25 marks less than the other one. So we could not shop at 200. We could find a break point so to say in this course at 253. 253 participants therefore were declared to be awardees for the SAP award of excellence of rupees 5000. In addition we actually this was not just A grade this was the cash award but the total A grade count was about 350 plus people. So these 350 people were recognized as excellent performers. Why I mention all this is that all participants were told that if you are in the bracket of excellent performance and if you are willing to participate as our associate faculty in future conduct of these FDPs do let us know. More than 250 participants who belong to this top 353 category have come forward to join us as our associate faculty. Please understand that if we have to train 3,20,000 teachers in two years time in just these two FDPs even our current model will break down. We will have to run like a military machine one after another and these workshops will cannot be conducted using only our teaching assistants. The teaching assistants or associate faculty who will monitor the discussion forum online who will interact with them using A view will have to be much larger in number. We cannot depend only on our remote centers because not all people will be able to come to remote center for participating in a face-to-face interaction. We are now experimenting with a new model which will deploy in the first FDP that is the foundation program for ICT. That model is some 100 participants from 20 cities or towns or villages. We are saying at least 5 participants must come together to form a group. They must belong to a particular city, town or village. They need not be a remote center. They come together, they set up the A view facility in their home, their college, wherever and they interact with the designated associate faculty in a predefined slot. So an associate faculty can interact with 100 such participants who are spread over 20 different places at a predesignated slot, clear their doubts, jot down the important queries that they raise, consolidate these and pass them on to ICT Bombay for further discussion. So it is a further distributed model for which we will be testing A view. Well this might be a news to you, but we might be actually having an equivalent of 5000 remote centers. At any one time any 100 are active interacting with one particular associate faculty. Fortunately the client side of A view is downloadable and usable. Cummins team has provided a self-testing facility for A view which is very much like self-testing in sky. So we believe it should be possible to do so. We will continue to deploy our server. This is one model which we wish to experiment in the first FDP which is an FDP on foundation of ICT in education. As I said we will run this largely as a MOOC program supported by extensive monitoring of discussion forum and such associate faculty attending on face-to-face requests on a group-by-group basis. We'll consolidate that and we'll possibly have one or two large A view broadcast stations where everybody can pass. The second FDP however will continue to be the one which would require intense human interaction and that is where we propose to conduct the second FDP at least in the first two avatars in regular remote centers. We do hope that at least some of these 253 top performers are from your remote centers. If they are they naturally are entitled to become workshop coordinators. If you don't have any get some people trained immediately because we must have a workshop coordinator who is well versed in this pedagogy. Need not be an expert in electronics or computer science or metallurgy but has to be an expert in pedagogy. We may invite such associate faculty members who have agreed to work for us to attend the session as the local workshop coordinator in any nearby remote center if that remote center does not have such a special at least to begin. So this is the model with which we are going ahead. We have also agreed that there will be no free lunch anymore. Each participant will have to pay a fees or a charge. We all decided in our last meeting and I am just sharing that with you. The charge will be close to about 1500 rupees per FDP. This will have to be paid to IIT Bombay. This is not to be paid to remote center. This has to be paid to IIT Bombay. This is a charge which will be levied to every participant who wishes to get an FDP qualification of course based on one's own work. We are still not decided on what will be the exact amount. It will probably be about 1200 plus service tax. That is what we are not sure how much will be the service tax. Our committee in IIT is actually looking at it as what would be a reasonable amount to pay. In fact I would like to know whether you believe this is a reasonable amount or not. When we conduct these FDPs and wherever remote center participation is required during the next year that is subject to the approval by the government the FDPs that IIT Bombay will conduct in this fashion will be completely funded. That means the participants coming to your place for face to face interaction both for IIT Kharagpur regular one week interaction and whatever intermittent interaction we plan for the second FDP of IIT Bombay the participants will be paid TAA. The appropriate remuneration and complete support will be provided to RCs from the funds that we receive. After one year we do not know how this will happen but this is generally the motor software. Now in the context of these plans I would like to get an Avdakha feedback from all the remote center coordinators who are present here just to do a what I call a cross check on the assumptions that we are making are they valid invalid and how they are. So there will be a formal feedback at the end of the course we are still in the process of finalizing it but this is a quick as I said of the feedback that I would like to have from all of you. First of all do you agree that if a little additional funding is provided remote centers will be willing to undertake as the government desires that you will support the activities which are not strictly the FDP activities but other associated activities meant to enhance the academy. The second the FDP model that we are initiating in the next year IIT Kharagpur will continue to offer expertise courses in specified areas if the funds are released they will conduct three workshops in three specific subjects one of which they might want to announce immediately almost they are announcing good so they are ready with that the situation is not very dissimilar from last time I think they just have funds to conduct a coordinators workshop right now and we will do that and we will hope that the government release funds for conducting the main workshop so they will conduct these three workshops we on the other hand are going to conduct these five or more workshops there will be a pair of workshops one is the foundation course on ICT as I said the PRG has recommended that you should actually run it completely online so if we do that we could run it with much larger number of participants I would not put it beyond the possibility of even 20 or 25,000 participants participating in the MOOC portion of the foundation course this is not dissimilar to we had 60,000 students for some of our courses when we run them globally on edX so it is entirely possible however the qualification rate may be lower and that is what we want to buttress through this mechanism of associate faculty the question that I have in mind for all of you is number one how do you think this idea of running these two FDPs to train more than three lakh people over the next few years will work out is the idea of conducting the foundation course largely as MOOC and the pedagogy course as a MOOC come blended MOOC portion with face to face interaction supported at remote center do you think it is feasible there will be support as I said from the remote centers so it would be treated as any other workshop that is conducted and as long as funds are provided the funding support will be provided for that activity whenever funds are not provided after one year we will see what will happen my guess is this activity is too important and critical the government understands it AICT understands it and I am very sure that all of us together will find out some funding support for continuing this activity after all we still have a very large number of teachers who are uninitiated into both the specifics of a subject as well as the jandal panel the last question is 1500 rupee a reasonable fees or is it less or is it more it is more let me utter some numbers and you can raise your hands if you say that number is okay I will start in descending order 5000 rupees it's a two week FTP the physical duration does not matter when you run a program as MOOCs or blended MOOCs there is a small digression but it's an important question because all of us all of us connect academics with duration which is the biggest nonsense because we expect all our students to study exactly the same material in exactly the same duration knowing fully well that each student is a unique student with unique habits it is impossible for all students to learn exactly the same amount of material in exactly the same duration and yet for hundreds of years we have been enforcing them our mindset has become duration so like a course 40 hours course the hours does not matter what matters is how much an individual learns we are still mapping some duration and our duration has been mapped as per the AICT approved norms for FTP they understand a two week FTP they understand a four week FTP they don't understand an FTP in foundation so for their purposes we are defining the FTPs to be two week FTPs each of these two FTPs are two week FTPs the way it will be conducted is that for the first FTP majority of the work will be done online which means it will run for five to six weeks yeah you had a question recently the national program they have stated clearly that FTP is for six days and they have been engaged for six days with FTP but on a FTP you have to check it for two weeks most of the institution we are relying for the tenure of ranking so we are interested in conducting two weeks or a six days kind of an FTP program so what's your take on it? six days is it? yeah because the six days workshop in fact FTP workshop many faculty members they are preferring it in fact two weeks they feel it is little longer academically they feel that it is little difficult the problem is when you say one week you still talk about a physical week where they have to attend physically that entire six days when we say a two week workshop the physical interaction will be limited to one week only the remaining one week is to be task completed over four or five physical weeks now the national ranking framework and all others have to go by what is conventional they are not yet aligned to the fact that a whole lot of activities fully or partly would be done online in which case the concept of a duration of physical proximity does not make sense I'll talk to Professor Suryan Prasad to find that out but I have no hesitation in saying that if this two week FTP which is endorsed by AICT is conducted it could definitely be taken to be equivalent of two FTPs in that now okay in that case all right sir this time I have required the six days of video on that they require only the one day FTP program this afternoon this time last year it was there next year there will be some other option are we going to define academic strategies of the country based on year to year changes in such options let us do what we believe is best and we'll work that out but we digress so I started with 5000 rupees sir and there was no taker so everybody believes that we keep our teacher so poor that they can't afford to pay 5000 rupees for a two week FTP all right there is a question regarding because there is a TQ program in entire country actually they take I think 500 to 1000 rupees maximum so I think 5000 rupees is very yeah I agree with you I said I will just wait for additional numbers I am not stopping you actually they also provide food and other facilities as well earlier you providing such facilities to the participants but you should please understand I think I must clarify this again we were not providing government was funding so we are providing so I think this program should be under TQ no I think you are completely on the wrong track this is not a sustainable model you cannot run it for 10 years 15 years a sustainable model is one in which the beneficiary pays do you take 5000 rupees as fees from your student and feed him throughout the semester while teaching him do you do that no no you expect student and his or her parents to pay large fees why because you believe they will benefit we believe that faculty members will benefit from this program and they should be willing to spend money in fact I commented sometime earlier that we together without realizing it have created bad habit amongst our colleague teachers where our teachers have come to believe by such comparison that they take only 500 rupees and they also feed then let such people go and be fed in those workshops that's not the point the point is we are still trying to see what is an amount that could be considered reasonable it has nothing to do with whether food is funded or not etc. etc. we are talking about a fees that someone would pay if I am a student of 8th standard or if I am a student of 30 year engineering I shall pay my semester fees expecting so many courses to be learnt the amount of 5000 rupees is not arbitrary by the way if you look at an equivalent of one semester long course that is the fees we charge our students about 5000 rupees per course calculate and you will find out that roughly amount should that I would like to support my RC coordinator colleague sir actually from the duration word he might be expecting what will be the direction of online interaction that he might be interested in what will be the duration for online interaction and thereafter the participant has to supposed to complete the assignments so together what will be the duration of online interaction and then what will be the duration given for the assignment purposes on this thing in the digital world there is no distinction between online interaction and the assignment that I do myself every second that I spend on the activity whether on my own or through interaction is to be counted towards work that I have done for that FDP we are saying an equivalent of 8 hours per day of work has to be done when such work is done for 10 days which is 2 weeks that means a total of 80 hours of work done by me whether I do entire 80 hours alone whether I do entire 80 hours face to face whether I do part face to face part online has absolutely no consequence at all now that is exactly what we want all teachers and all students to understand we have to get rid of this notion that interaction counts anything that I do alone on my own does not count that is not correct in fact we know that among our students also maximum learning happens when they apply their mind to solve a problem they are not necessarily in front of us when they are doing it so what do we want to do? we want to maximize the learning of not just the students but also of the faculty these notions are not easy these notions will have to be conveyed properly to everyone so let's come back to that question 5000 rupees is incorrect is not acceptable what about 2500 rupees? sir how much ever it may be the money that is acceptable at two things one is the topic should be advanced topic which will be more beneficiary for the faculty I am not talking about the advanced topic the FDP for advanced topics will continue to be conducted by IIT Kharagpur and IIT Bombay will also join I am only talking about these two FDPs just these two how many faculty members do you have in your college? we have 200 out of them how many have attended the FDP that we just conducted 15 if all 200 people are not well versed in these technologies and pedagogy your entire affiliation and accreditation will be in jeopardy within two years AICT is going to make it obligatory for all teachers of all professional institutions to be well versed in the use of ICT in education and to be well versed in the pedagogy additionally they are making it obligatory that no new teacher can join duties unless the teacher is inducted through an induction program we have been also asked to design something so I am only talking about these two FDPs I am not talking about the general level so if these two FDPs, 5000 rupees is passe 2500 is also not acceptable let me come back to the figure which I had mentioned actually 1440 do you think that will be a palatable sum? can you raise hands? yeah not 2500 not 1400 but 2000 any specific observation on this figure this number is important because through you I am trying to reach the minds of a large number of our faculty colleagues across the country so you are speaking on their behalf so please speak carefully Sir one observation just I want to add here because we are belonging to several models of institution everywhere a common thing comes what is the exact need and application of such certificates from that need the amount can be always associated because even if you mention that AICT will obliterate most of the institute if you don't have that much of knowledge among the faculty members the money then automatically comes system as a standard that what I am going to back and where I am going to use those certificates at this moment we are really misunderstanding and probably we are making the value of the whole affordability is low with a free feeding feeding free is not at all in the picture the picture is coming where I am utilizing this certificate with utmost dignity and utmost value so this value addition directly comes with the proportionate announcement and the things you have said the inclusion of those certificate in some of our model of evaluation as I am belonging to NIT in NIT it is misunderstood that where I should be using those certificate I should not say misunderstood because we have no framework where really I fit my certificate in proper place so I have to beg to person please understand this knowledge level then they come back in other way I have more freedom options to get it but sir the utilization if it comes then 5000 even 10,000 will not be a matter at all so I hope sir it should be more respectful and most utilization thing sir I think a very important point that is made and we will use this particular argument to conclude the debate on the numbers the argument is that not just the participating teachers but also their institutions must very clearly understand what is the value of such certification if it is perceived that the certificates are very valuable either for the career of the individual or for recognition of that institution the amount will be no bar so even if it is 5000 rupees either participants will pay or their colleges will end up if there is complete non clarity about the value of that then people may hesitate in paying even 1 rupee is that correct do you think that if the AICT issues a circular endorsing these FDPs it will create some proper value system in the minds of people yes NB accreditation actually the chairman AICT mentioned that this has been told to Professor Suresh Rapprasad and I will be also writing to Professor Suresh Rapprasad and Dr. Nasa that training of the faculty members in the use of ICT should be part and parcel of the accreditation process now it will take time but we believe that during this year it will come as one of the parameters in the accreditation and performance of the institutions which the NB accredits I believe if that comes that itself will show a value in fact chairman AICT was of the opinion that if NB makes it obligatory and puts a parameter that what percentage of total teachers in your institute have been trained in this foundation course in pedagogy then that will become a parameter in both your national ranking as well as accreditation then he says most probably the institutions will be willing to pay the fees for such participation of their teachers because it makes an impact on the institution is that a correct observation by you? good so you see the value addition has to come from top well you please help me in working out the details on the ground and wish me good luck while I tackle the top okay yeah please online courses offered by Osera yes digital learning but they are charging almost 10,000 rupees for it for a four weeks course I think so I think that way also this two weeks program with 1500 rupees is very amazing you see we also did not want to burden people till such time that the value is universally seen and people start accepting it and the institution starts sponsoring it we are in a flux and we are actually trying to move forward so it's called kickstarting a process for kickstarting many of us would discuss this believed that if we put a number like 5000 or 10000 it may deter people simply from coming so that is the reason why we thought of some 1450 but one thing we are very clear giving something free will deteriorate its value so we'll be in fact requesting even IIT Kharagpur to charge such a fees for all participants even though it may be funded fully funded but yet every participant should be charged this fees if they are going to get a certificate of two weeks equivalent of FDP approved by ICT last one sir last FTV was conducted for four weeks no that was because we did not have funding to conduct two different FDP yeah that is okay my question is different at the end of that FDP we receive a mail there is no such role of RC and the team so we want to clarify it what is the role of RC as it is a orientation program for remote center even the certificate was not issued to remote center coordinator and system administrator everyone you can find out so just clarify on this I will clarify this as long as the conventional FDPs are concerned or workshops are concerned we always have a workshop coordinator appointed from each RC since these two topics or the composite topic for this FDP was conceived for the first time in the country there was obviously no expertise either available or expected from remote center even in IIT Bombay the expertise is being developed as we speak it is only in that context that we have stated that RC has no role to play only in that context however the RC's role in supporting the conduct of the workshop is well recognized but we decided not to give any certificates per se because all the certificates in the past were based on the fact that there was an expert workshop coordinator at each remote center who coordinated the workshop all other people although they provided valuable support it was always considered ancillary to the academic purpose served by the workshop coordinator so this was the reason why these certificates were not given however we will make sure that at least in the second FDP which we will run now we will have a workshop coordinator from each RC either a local expert who has done this FDP or somebody from the associate faculty from a nearby institute who for the first time will recommend RC to appoint as workshop coordinator since there is funding we will pay the honorarium to that person and honorarium to all the remote center people without any problem but we have to together work out on what should be the strategy of long term sustainers believe me whatever we do we will not be able to train 3 lakh people in one year and it is obligatory to be trained and we can see that there is a requirement by the way the school departments are after my blood saying why can't we train 9, 10, 11, 12 standard science and maths teachers because they would benefit exactly from this kind of pedagogy and this kind of methodology can you guess the numbers? all of you all 3 lakh people in engineering colleges will have to become associate faculty to train crores of those school teachers we have no choice but that's a later part sir I want to share my experience in the last workshop that was in BLSI one Jadupur faculty member she was attended so after the completion of the workshop she said in 2 weeks certificate there is no value for Jadupur university promotion case for each promotions they need a certificate for at least 3 weeks workshop provided by NITouble cheer these weeks will be always somebody was saying only 6 days is adequate you are saying 3 weeks somebody is saying 4 weeks is not good enough I will again say the physical duration does not matter except for some certification but what AICT has clarified to me is that a 2 week FDP where 2 weeks equivalent of work is done is very much recognized by AICT and will be recognized for cash and other things that is the clarification that AICT has given all that we need is to AICT to officially issue a letter saying that these FDPs are endorsed by AICT will do that this is in context with the thing which you have mentioned about 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th mathematics and science I want to make a mention over here about 2 and half years back government of Maharashtra has run one program for I guess for Solapur and Riger district then education secretary Mr. J.S. Sahariya he has conducted that program and our remote center we were only remote center in Riger district and the program for mathematics teachers for 9th and 10th standard for one day and around 80 students from Panvel Taisil have attended that mathematics program conducted by government of Maharashtra education ministry very nice of you and in fact all of us have the school education in mind I would only request you to one consider such so much of participation in wherever you can influence the nearby school teachers and school children God alone knows much of the problem that we face with our students in engineering colleges is because certain things are not well done in their school curriculum that is why we are supposed to do that but believe me if we lose our focus forget training 3 lakh teachers in our professional institutions will neither train them nor their school teachers so let us remain focused here each RC and each college in fact should continue to work with the associated schools and colleges I will comment on it in the afternoon session as Dr. Kamal Bijlani mentioned yeah for the selection of the coordinated course pedagogy course definitely a problem mainly because most of the engineering college faculty is members we are not doing any B at courses or anything related to pedagogy related thing but the point is there was a program offered by Vipro few years back they offered a mission 10x let me I understood what you are saying we will not accept a workshop coordinator selected by a remote center for the pedagogy portion of FDP unless that coordinator is one of the 253 identified associate faculty who have qualified in precisely the same FDP and has come among the top performers among 4000 students if your institute has a set of such people you are welcome to select any one of them if you don't have let us know we will allocate one of the persons from a nearby physical place to physically come and work with you and you will have to provide all support to that workshop coordinator as if that workshop coordinator works for you that is the only way and then ensure that at least a few interested faculty members from your remote center participate in this FDP so that for future conduct of FDP you have a local workshop coordinator we will not go by any certification any expertise claimed etc etc we will go by hardcore performance in the FDP that we ourselves conduct is that okay? yeah clear sir one thing regarding certificate which we are giving to participants signature of workshop coordinator is there if it is possible to include signature of remote center coordinator also this may be better in the certificate which is issued to participants no that is not correct because remote center coordinator has administrative role it is like saying that the degree certificate that I give apart from the director vice chancellor the office superintendent should also sign let us not see when I work as administrator here I have no other role I provide administrative support to people who work okay so I think let us leave it at that the remote center coordinators are well recognized not only by me but by AICT and by ministry let that recognition stand after all they are providing the most valuable support for the conduct but they are we are all anonymous actors okay right thank you excuse me sir from university of petroleum there are don't we have a blackboard platform on which our faculties have been trained for online courses and there are like courses environmental studies design thinking are running on blackboard so I think we are not much you can say concern about the pedagogy and the latest ICT tools but definitely we are concerned about the some of the technical subjects and we we are thankful to IIT they have conducted fluid mechanics workshop and then structural and then control system so we are looking for such workshop if you can organize even though if you ask for participants fee we are ready to pay even though our faculty is not willing to pay our institution can offer them okay there is one small mistake that you are making you are speaking primarily from the point of view of your own institution and yeah I appreciate that it is the job of each one of us to safeguard the interest of our institution but please understand that when you come here as a remote center you represent thousands of teachers in the vicinity not you are issued alone that is why you are a remote center of IIT Bombay not because there is a one-to-one understanding between just your institution right sir coming back to your second question I already clarified that for that time being IIT Bombay is going to concentrate on completing these two FDPs and ensuring that large number of teachers are it is not that we cannot offer workshops in specific engineering subjects like IIT Kharagpur I believe we also have enough expertise in different subject but it is just that we have developed an expertise on conducting these workshops which IIT Kharagpur as yet does not and that is the reason why we have requested them please continue to do very good work on the advanced topics which they have been doing it is not that in future they will not offer these FDPs it is not that in future we will not offer which are core specific subject but since last one year we won't have any subject last one year there was no money that I understand that is why I suggested even though you ask money from the RCs means from the faculty come on yaar are you able to give me 42 crore rupees even with 253 RCs then it is too much divide 42 crores by 253 you give me that money I will say bye bye to MSRD and we will run our own business okay sir okay please understand the enormous amount of support that the government of India has been giving this program don't underestimate that which are spent on TADA and Honorarium and so on I have a team of 300 people working here day and night who do you think pays their salary we have a large staff in IIT Kharagpur in spite of the fact that not a single faculty member either from IIT Kharagpur or from IIT Bombay who has been involved in any one of their workshops not a single faculty member has ever asked this question is there any Honorarium for me not a single faculty member just a tradition in which we have been built up but as I said we should never accept and accept work from any individual without due recognition as long as government funding was there just like remote centers and the participants were paid for Honorarium was paid with due recognition to the services rendered by our faculty members but in last one year when I ran this FDP for example my faculty colleagues were not taken a single price of Honorarium for running this FDP because they knew there was no funding so please understand that like most of you we are also committed but there is a timetable and there is a priority we are not saying no special courses or subject courses and we are not saying only FDPs alone but given that one year and the amount of funding that we will get this is the timetable that we have drawn and in coming years as I said I am very sure that in some form or the other the government will continue to work that incidentally these FDPs will be conducted under a new banner called Pandit Madan Mohan Malvi scheme for teachers and teaching we have got that center established in IIT Bombay that will be the banner funding will be from NME ICT that is how we will continue why I mention that name is that scheme will continue for many more years and we hope that government will continue to fund in some respect or the other thank you