 Good morning everyone. We have the pleasure of having Professor Sukhatme with us, ever since we forade into other core engineering courses starting with mechanical engineering department, Professor Sukhatme has been coming over on every event to encourage us and encourage all of you. I request Professor Sukhatme, Professor Gayatonde, Professor Sridharan, Professor Prabhu, is Professor Vedula here? Yes, please, please come over. So let me begin by welcoming Professor Sukhatme. Thank you sir, thank you for coming. Professor Vedula head mechanical engineering department. Thank you. Professor Gayatonde was essentially creator of this stream of mechanical engineering courses. And of course, both my colleagues who show it is over the next two weeks. I not only welcome them, but thank them for taking all the efforts. Thank you so much. Professor Kannan Mautgalya is going to be the first speaker of the event. And I kept him at the end that is because he is not really a guest. He is the overall coordinator for all national mission projects at IIT Bombay including this one of course. So I am very happy to welcome Professor Kannan Mautgalya. You have to speak of course, but I will still formally welcome you. So you are part guest and part host. Without further ado, I will hand over the mic to Professor Kannan Mautgalya to give you an overview of the entire mission project set that we are conducting here. And those which are being conducted nationally. Professor Sukhatme, Professor Gayatonde, Professor Vedula, Professor Arun Kumar Sridharan, Professor Prabhu and of course, Professor Phatak and all the participants and the dignitaries who are visiting representing their respective institutions. It gives me great pleasure to invite you all to this inaugural. I want to give a brief overview of this National Mission on Education through ICT. It was inaugurated in 2009 February by then the HRD minister Mr. Arjun Singh in Thirupati. It has a total budget of 4612 crore out of which 60 percent is reserved for bandwidth. And through this every university gets one GBPS bandwidth, 75 percent of that money is given by the mission and 25 percent from the university. And because it is a big order almost 2800 crore BSNL is given a huge discount of 95 percent. So, bandwidth is available to the universities at almost 1 percent of the cost. So, that is one of the major objectives of this mission to provide connectivity. Second one is to create content that is about almost 1800 crore. And it is that fund that head that supports activities like NPTEL and this talk to a teacher project of which this 1000 teacher training program of Professor Phatak is a part. Of course, the third component is the low cost access device and this was launched recently on October 5th. It is named Akash and then hopefully it will receive you will receive that. In fact, the mission director Mr. N. K. Sinha has written a letter to all the vice chancellors of universities. In fact, he has written also to principles of every college asking you to identify the need that you have for such a device. And you will have to spend only half the money which is 1138 rupees. So, at a very low cost a complete computer system will be made available. It is an amazing thing one always compares this low cost access device with something like iPad. iPad is of course, lot more expensive it is 40000 rupees. Of course, it has better GUI and stuff like that. But on the other hand it can never become the computer because Apple will never allow iPad to cannibalize this MacBook Pro on which they get lot more money. So, they will always restrict the capabilities of iPad. On the other hand the low cost access device that is developed by the mission will have no such restriction. And in fact, we expect ARM Cortex A8 based processor to be available in the pilot stage itself with it should be available in a couple of months. And in fact, much better devices will be available. So, the letter will be coming from Mr. Sinha. I would want all the college principals, directors, institute directors, vice chancellors to please give your feedback as to how many devices you want because the more the number we order the prices will be lower. Of course, here the prices fixed at maximum price is 2276 rupees. So, I take this opportunity to convey all this. I mentioned 1000 teacher training program of Professor Fartek actually at the beginning everybody thought that will this ever happen. Now, I think yes I agree that it is a misnomer to call it 1000 teacher training program because Professor Fartek is thinking of a 10000 teacher training program in the summer. And so, I think I am really delighted to see that this experiment is working very well. And one of the concerns that the project approval board had at the time, MHRD had at the time was will Professor Fartek restrict his courses only to computer science IT. So, I am really delighted to see that maximum number of courses seem to be coming from mechanical engineering that it is indeed a great pleasure to everybody. The idea is that that we teach the basic courses in every subject. So, that the students the reason is that the students when they come to first year BEB take they are as good as students going elsewhere. Let us say to IITs or NITs, but we are unable to provide good teachers in all the universities all the colleges uniformly and it hurts the students badly. So, the objective of this program is to provide basic engineering courses at least in the first year to everybody to start with. So, that the students are on par and once they get motivated they can do very well in the rest of the years also. So, from that point of view the basic courses first year second year courses are seemingly important. And the other benefit that is expected to accrue out of this exercise is that the thousand teachers who participate in this will come and participate will contribute their question paper, their syllabus, their examples, their projects and the whole thing will become a huge repository of knowledge and it is going to be available as a open source not only for the people who participate, but also for all the people in the country and in fact all over the world. So, I am really delighted that this experiment is working very well and for this experiment to be successful it is important that everybody participates seriously. Please if there is any problem in getting the reception or something like that please do not go away, please stay back and help us improve, give feedback so that we improve. After all it is governments money, it is taxpayers money, it should be used properly, please do participate. I remember one shortcoming in the last course, we went there to went to some places to review, we found that the questions asked by one centre was not received well by other centres. That is one centre, other centres cannot hear questions posed by a centre and of course it is a, whereas whatever is spoken at IIT Bombay is received very well and of course IIT Bombay can also receive any questions posed by a centre. So, obviously it is a technology problem, it needs to be improved, but until that time we should come up with workable solutions. In this particular case I requested that IIT Bombay repeated the question posed by the centre and anyway IIT Bombay's audio is heard very clearly. So, I think that is a workable solution. So, we cannot wait for a perfect technology to come to get started with whatever technology we have, whatever shortcoming we have, we can work with that provided we use it properly. So, I request all of you to do give your feedback, do participate, do contribute to the repository and it is after all your course. So, with that I would like to conclude my brief speech, I would like to acknowledge the mission of M H R D because the objective of this mission is to raise the levels of education in the country. It is not, it is not just IIT's, NIT's, engineering colleges, not only government colleges, but all private colleges as well and not only engineering colleges, science, law, commerce, all kinds of colleges. So, it is an amazing initiative and I would like to thank Mr. Sinha in case Sinha who is now the additional secretary technology enhanced learning M H R D for his vision. I would like to thank M H R D secretary ministers and all the officials for giving this opportunity. Thank you very much. Thank you Professor Kannan for lucidly elaborating the mission objectives and we are of course glad that mechanical engineering department has taken the lead. After all mechanical engineering department is considered the mother of all engineering. So, it is only proper that they take the lion's share in the introductory courses. At least that used to be so 40 years ago when I did my engineering, but in those days we used to study engineering for 5 years. Now, it has been reduced to 4 years and sadly some of the important courses have been scrapped. I am very glad that we have Professor Sukhatme here with us and I will now request him to give his inaugural talk. Professor Sukhatme. Professor Patak. Sir Mokgalya. Sir Vizula. Sir Gaitonday. And the two main persons of this workshop. Sir Prabhu and Arun Sreeran. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure to be inaugurating this to be present at the inauguration of this main workshop. In September I had the pleasure of inaugurating the co-ordinators workshop which preceded this main workshop and today it is a pleasure to be back again for the second phase. At that time I spoke to about 30 co-ordinators in a room in which those 30 co-ordinators and a few other people were present. So, it was the traditional way of speaking with the people whom you are interacting right in front of you. But today now I am interacting with about 1000 close to 1000 teachers and the 30 co-ordinators all over the country and I have another 20 or 30 people right here present. So, I have to keep that in mind all the time and old timers find that very difficult you know to think that there are also 1000 people watching you by whatever you are saying. But that is the reality one must get used to it. Now I am going to repeat some things that I said in September because they are worth repeating. What is the purpose of this workshop? Why we conducted and so on. And there are some other things which I will say which are I did not say perhaps in the co-ordinators workshop which was held in September. The first thing and which probably has been said but is worth repeating is what is the purpose of holding these workshops? It has been said but I think different ways different people will say it in different ways. And why this workshop in the subject of say heat transfer? The purpose of holding these workshops including this one is to improve teachers understanding of the subjects which they are teaching have already taught and will continue to teach wherever they are located all across the country. That is the purpose of these workshops to improve one's understanding of the subject which one in turn has to communicate to students. The focus in these workshops will generally be on core undergraduate subjects like for instance today is heat transfer thermodynamics has already been covered I believe fluid mechanics is following. So most of the courses will be core some may not be core there will be elective courses which are widely taken those will also be offered. And once the teacher who goes through this workshop this main workshop 10 days which we are talking about we hope that the person concerned the teacher concerned and there are in this thing as I said 8900 will go back and teach their subject better because of that understanding that they have developed during the course. Now at IIT Bombay not just at IIT Bombay but across the country distance education is a wave and when it first came people felt that distance education means basically recording videos and making those videos available to as many people as possible record what you say and make that available and that is to some extent of course an additional way. But gradually it became clear that some things cannot quite be communicated through videos even to tell a person how to teach you need to be interacting with that person and if you need to interact with them you cannot record something and just send him a disc or a cassette of that you need to be talking to him while you are doing that job. And therefore you need a mix of communicating at a distance and yet being able to communicate by audio and video for at least part of that time. So you need both a personal touch and you need a distance touch and you need a proper mix of these. The mix that has been conceived at IIT Bombay under this project which we are handling for the ministry is one in which there is a generally not always a 5 day coordinators workshop and in this case a 10 day main workshop. And we feel that in the 5 day workshop the coordinators come here they are made to work they are given problems which they have to solve we see that they are solved correctly we means the instructors in charge. And then when the scene shifts later a few months later to the remote centers those coordinators are at those 28 I think there are this time or 30 remote centers with about a thousand students who will in turn then be receiving lectures from IIT Bombay and in the afternoons having tutorials which will be conducted by respective coordinators and problems which they will have to solve. Nothing like solving problems to understand a subject you can go on lecturing as much as you like. Finally, you have to solve problems correctly that is what engineering is all about. So, we feel that this mix of 5 days here for 30 people followed by 10 days of intensive lecturing and tutorials at remote centers is a very effective way of reaching out to a large number of people a thousand is the rough number which we are reaching out through these workshops. And it is become very necessary to do that because the number of teachers the number of students has grown gigantically in India for the last 30 years. It is a wave it is a revolution almost you might say quantity wise we are doing all right. But what has suffered is quality and the purpose of such workshop is to raise that quality that is really what it is all about people are there they have been hired they have not perhaps quite been able to understand the subject well enough yet they have to teach it can we improve their understanding. So, that they in turn can raise the quality of their lectures and therefore, the quality of the education which they are giving to the students in their respective colleges. So, that is the purpose and this is an effective way of reaching out to large numbers otherwise one would never be able to come shall I say reach out to a thousand teachers at one stroke it is just not possible the traditional way you would have 30 of them spend 50 at 15 days with them out here at IIT Bombay or at some other place and then the numbers are too small to have an effect on the large problem that we have all across the country. So, that is the purpose of we feel that this kind of distance education or distance learning combined with some personal learning is an effective way of reaching out to teachers and it is an important way of raising the quality of education in the country and that is the key today. If India is to go anywhere we need numbers which we have got we need quality which we do not quite have yet and we need to move for it. Now, quality is a very vague word of course, if you want to teach a subject you must understand that is understood I mean it does not require any great statement to say that it is a necessary condition, but as in mathematics we say it is not a sufficient condition that one still teaches well a good teacher needs to do much more than just understand the subject. By the way understanding the subject itself is a big enough job, but then to be able to convey it to the student is the second part of the problem. And therefore, while the necessary condition can be satisfied by us through such workshop the sufficiency of that condition can be ensured only if you who are hearing me as teachers take up the next part on your own. So, what is it that we expect from teachers we means I am a teacher what is it that I as a senior teacher expect from you who are in the business now and will be in the business for years to come. What one expects from teachers today if quality is to go up is that they must approach their jobs which dedication, seriousness and sincerity that is a necessary part also if you want to lecture well no one should under rate the importance of these when it comes to teaching. Before every lecture however old you may become before every lecture you need to sit down and plan what you are going to cover what material you are going to cover during that one hour which is coming up. You need to plan out what problem you are going to solve or on the during that lecture. You need to anticipate what are the likely questions and how you might answer them. You need to feel if you are a teacher a little nervous before every lecture whether you are 30 years old or whether you are 60 years old. If you do not have that feeling that you are going in and something is to be done well you will never approach it with that seriousness. So, seriousness, dedication, sincerity and a careful planning of what you are doing has to go into every lecture. However many times you may have taught the subject that seriousness must never never go into teaching and taking a lecture. The day it goes and you say I know the subject what is there I will just walk in that day you should always say that is not the reason why I stopped teaching I have retired but I am just saying that. Now, remember also that since we are talking of engineering we have to cover applications in our course. So, while one tries to do the theory in the class one has to constantly have numerical problems which deal with some applications and that is where teachers have to keep on innovating. One should not be doing the same problems every year, year in and year out because the applications of a subject keep on changing as you go along. If you take the example of heat transfer for instance which is the subject we are dealing with here. In the old days when we studied radiation the standard problems were on furnaces furnaces design exchange of surfaces in a furnace heat transfer between furnaces. So, on the standard problems which we did if you wanted to be more complicated you brought in some gas radiation. So, that you have both internal generation or absorption of radiation within the space of the enclosure that was the furnace. But so many other fields have opened up in recent years which we need to explore for instance space as an area was unknown till 50's the first satellite went up in the late 50's and suddenly a whole new importance came to radiation. Temperatures weren't high in space and yet radiation is the only way by which heat is transferred. So, you have got to do all your calculations with the same equations at much lower temperature level. So, if you brought in problems involving space say keeping a particular component at a certain temperature in space or finding out in order to dissipate its heat what steady state temperature it might achieve or if you wanted to do more problems you have to bring in the satellite is circling the earth it is going through a cycle in which it is partly in the sun and partly not in the sun. So, there is a slow transient of about 90 minutes it keeps on cycling and so on a variety of problems in radiation can be thought of and need to be brought into the curriculum. More recently for instance the old days convection force convection generally meant flow through pipes you know 1 centimeter diameter pipes 2 centimeter pipe dittus bolter equation or for laminar flow you know nozzle number 4.36 and things like that. Today for instance I mean you know you need to talk about heat transfer in micro channel because cooling of electronics equipment miniaturized equipment cooling of ships etcetera has become very critical. So, suddenly you are talking of heat transfer in micro channels where the correlations are different where the two phase flows are interested in life in problems which are of interest today. So, there are in engineering while the subject matter and the equations do not change the applications the problems which you deal with need to keep on changing. So, a teacher cannot say I did this 20 years ago and I will still teach the same thing 20 years later at least the problems need to change if nothing else and they can be changed if you just keep reading the literature a little and so on. There is no reason why that cannot happen that is a very important part of the teaching a subject keep on updating problems and deleting some of the more classical older problems which probably are little outdated in terms of applications. So, that is one aspect of a teacher that he has to have sincerity he has to stay updated and he keeps needs to alter a rough thumb rule which I for a basic course like heat transfer or even thermodynamics is at least 10 percent of the content of the course should change every year. Basics do not change unit is thermodynamics the first and the second law cannot change you cannot do much about that or deriving the general equation for an open system or closed system etcetera that does not change, but the problems can certainly change and that is where the innovativeness and the interest of the student comes if you can bring in something new that is very important also in teaching that kind of dedication is needed from the teacher and then finally although you have got the material the teacher is also like a magician you know when he appears in the classroom he has got to present it well presentation is everything you go to a movie the movie may have a good story, but if the actor is useless the movie does not get far you come out as a useless actor you know sorry I am slapsing into Marathi acting was a character but the story is a story so you need to have an ability to present what you are saying the teacher is also an actor he does not like to tell others this, but he is also an actor because he is facing 60 or 100 students he has got to do a little bit of shall I say being able to do a little bit of how to present so presence means presentation means where to stand in the class whether to stay at one place or move around in the class whether to interact a little with people in the front row or back row or not to interact with them whether to ask questions occasionally to a student who is sleeping in the class or not to ask questions you know things like these are also part of your ability to keep students shall I say interested in what you are doing presentation also means using the black board well or using a disc I mean a pad on which you are writing well it is very important to write carefully on the black board or on the writing pad which is in front of you one should never ever scribble on it teachers must note this never scribble on it never write in one corner another corner a third corner and do some you know something you want to say something say it well on the board by writing it carefully because whatever you write you will be surprised is written by students in their notes that is what appears in them if you feel something is important make sure you write it on the board or make sure you dictate it in the class and tell them please write down what I am telling and dictate it slowly because those are key sentences you want them to go in and you therefore need to write them on the board in order to that they make an imprint in the students part so presentation of a subject is also a very important part of what you do so what I have tried to say really during these few minutes that I have been speaking to you I hope I have got few minutes what I have tried to say to you is that quality requires many things to some extent others can ensure it like this workshop can ensure that you are understanding of the subject as a teacher therefore you are obviously going to be able to present it well to others but quality also requires that you be serious about what you are doing teachers have to be extremely serious about how they present their material they have to plan before every lecture in presenting their material quality also means presenting that material effectively in the class through oral communication as well as through the board or the power point whatever you are using effectively so it means many things a teacher's job a good teacher's job is not an easy one it is widely misunderstood but it is not an easy one it requires very competent people and ultimately if it is done well you do get the appreciation of your students wherever you are students finally do appreciate and that is the reward for whatever you do in the end that appreciation which you get from students so I will end with telling you a short story it is a fiction but still it is a story there was this old professor it retired about 20 years earlier it is 80s but still in good health moving around in the country he was sitting there and one day he was going let us say he was at some airport and sitting waiting for his flight to be announced and while he was sitting there a young man in his 40s walked up to him and he said sir do you recognize me the old professor said no I really do not he said I am so and so he taught me about in 1975 I was in your class in third year he taught me heat transfer he said oh that is wonderful where are you now Vijay so he told him he said sir I am now a small scale industry I have I have a foundry I do investment castings I make products which are widely used in the automotive sector I have little knowledge of heat transfer also in what I am doing and so I am very happy with what I am doing so he said good good that is very nice Vijay very nice to see that you are doing well and Vijay was like a successful industrialist well dressed you could see that he was already travelling in business class and so on and things like that so then Vijay said something more about 30 years ago and then it came back slowly to that professor now that he was telling more detail he said you know in my third year I had lost interest in my studies somehow as a good student when I joined the engineering college but gradually my interest lapsed when I started missing classes not you know attend take notes and so forth my performance was sliding and you happen to notice it and then one day you called me met me somewhere alone not in the presence of others and you asked me what was wrong why were you not coming to class why are you not attending to the lectures why do not you try coming to class that is what you said just come just attend it will make a difference otherwise you know there is always this danger you might fail a course and things like that and you are not that type of student so we just said you know you told me all this and the fact that you had noticed it was something that itself struck me and I started attending classes and sure enough I mean you know passing was never an issue for me I did well and here I am so I owe you I owe you a lot that you helped me back to where and prevented me from straying the course of action which could have been bad for me so you you have been an inspiration and then you know while they were talking you know suddenly an announcement came and his flight was announced I said sir I hope you do not mind but I have to go my flight has been announced so it is sure so you know it is good I met you the old professor said and then while leaving in the traditional of course Marathi Marastrian way he just went down and touched his feet that was the incident and as he left the old man was looking after him and everything had come back to him that you know this he could remember the boy of 30 years earlier he could see it now because everything had come back to him and he was happy that some way he had been there while leaving Vijay said sir you were not just my teacher you were my mentor you were my friend you were my philosopher you were my kind that is the biggest compliment that any teacher can be any student can pay to his teacher so as he left again I lapsed into Marathi the old professor looked after he went away he also smiled his eyes slightly few tears in his eyes also because of the emotion generated and in Marathi he said Sarthak Vandana that those who do not know Marathi will have to ask the translation from those who know Sarthak Vandana he said that to himself Sarthak Vandana that is what teacher teaching is all about one can convey through workshops the essence of a subject one can improve on one's understanding finally a teacher must feel that what he is doing is important is worthwhile and that somebody is going to benefit and pass on that message to others for generations to come then only will quality come up then only will our nation become great and that is what we all aspire for that is what we look forward to so let me close this I have been extended lecturing a little the professors when they start speaking are dangerous people but let me again conclude by wishing all the teachers who are listening to me success in their careers and I like to wish this workshop also all success in what it is trying to achieve thank you so much thank you very much Prasukat Me every time he speaks he always adds something different and something special and there has been a privilege for most of us who have been here at IIT Bombay I am very happy that a large number of teachers across the country got a glimpse of what a great teacher is made of to begin with I will first thank him for sparing his time I would like all of us to remember I think the gist of his talk was about three things the first and foremost is that teachers must approach their job with dedication and hard work there is no shortcut to preparation for every lecture and the fact that teacher has to be like a magician and actor to make a good presentation and a good impact on students and finally the biggest reward for a teacher is not the honors and money that one gets while those are important but it is a recognition perhaps many many years into the future when a student remembers you for the small but important mentoring that you provided I think there is no equivalent honor and equivalent recognition than that some of our young teachers may not appreciate the importance of it but as the time passes you will understand the need and the importance so thank you very much for Sukatme of course the main subject here of heat transfer he did mention one most important thing is that while the basic concepts for any subject transfer might remain the same the applications would change and therefore the examples that we use ought to change and I think this is the message I would like all of us to carry because we do sometimes tend to teach based on our own past experience without spending time in investigating new things that have been happening around us as he mentioned a lot of time and effort has been spent in conducting this and a series of our workshops the coordinators workshop which was conducted by both my colleagues where for 5 days they engaged with 30 28 coordinators these coordinators are like teachers to the other teachers who are assembled to participate in remote centers and they will be interacting personally with them in the afternoons we do believe as Sukatme said that this blended model would turn out to be a very useful model especially given the scale of 800,000 teachers there does not appear to be any other model to work you would of course understand a whole lot of preparations that go on in conducting such workshops to begin with I would like to thank the coordinators of our remote centers their institutions and more particularly their colleagues their technical assistants and other people in those remote centers who have taken a lot of trouble to put together the edifice at which the physically participating teachers would be enjoying this workshop would be learning this subject and would be doing those tutorials so thanks one and all in this institute itself we have a very large support base to begin with the two colleagues that I mentioned I must thank them they have been working for quite some time preparing for this course first interacting with the coordinators understanding what is the syllabus that is prevalent in almost all universities what kind of questions are asked in question papers and tuning their own course structure to those things so I am thankful for that I must specially thank Mr. Gayathonday because I was not very sure as to how much of my colleagues from other disciplines will take to this blended mode of empowering teachers he was the first one when he taught this first course he was quite encouraged and one of the reasons for his encouragement he claims is that the infrastructure support services provided by the project team was very good and it is this point that I would like to mention at the end to thank my own colleagues here we have a very large team indeed it is led by four very senior managers can we pan the cameras please start with Dr. Mukta Atre yes many of you would know her name because she is the one who handles almost all interaction with participants along with her junior colleague Mahind Parmar there Kalpana is our manager who is in charge of contents and her works impact her and her colleagues works impact when we release all the contents on our portal Jaya our finance minister this is Jaya Gayathonday is not there okay as you would know well not all of you would realize but you know this is a very large activity even financially we have to release funds to multiple remote centers collect their accounts statements verify them ensure that all participating teachers get their traveling allowance get money to be fed at remote centers money spent on equipment and salaries here is a tremendous amount of work she has only one assistance and I think between two of them they do the job of an entire accounts office we have technology experts led by another manager Sajjan Dixit here is Sajjan he works constantly to ensure that the quality of audio and video is absolutely as good as possible and we can see that through the interaction that I had earlier we had a glimpse of very good quality of course thanks again to Amrita University's AVU tool very useful there are many others in fact we have a team of about 45 to 50 people some of them engaged in development of associated technologies like low cost liquor devices and so on so I take this opportunity to thank all of them I will conclude only by saying this that this workshop for empowering teachers is only a first step what we do expect is to create a large collaborative group in every such subject which will not only contribute to the knowledge contents which are useful for learning of the concerned subject by many more but that collaborative group will continue to enhance these knowledge contents we propose to put together all the contents of this workshop for example after editing not only the audio video lectures but all the submissions which are made by participants and everything will be put in open source but I would also request these 800,000 odd teachers who are participating not to forget this collaborative effort continuation which is very vital even after they go back to their institutions they should continue to contribute participate in the portal that will be released ask their own students and other colleague teachers to participate to create a sort of pan India large group of active collaborators who will enhance the examples, the tutorial problems the project problems etc which larger and larger number of students and teachers can do so thank you very much with this we come to the conclusion of this brief inaugural session thank you so much