 So, welcome back after the break we will continue discussing this topic of gender and diversity focusing a bit more on the workplace communication of course technical communication both written and spoken and workplace communication are both interrelated but in since in the video module as well towards the end we focus more on classroom communication as well as workplace communication we are going to be focusing more on this in the next one hour or so. So, in the beginning of the lecture today when I started in the afternoon I was talking about how we are today communicating in a context which is much more global. So, we are trying to publish articles in journals which are read by people around the world which are published from major parts of the world we are participating in conferences where people from different parts of the world are presenting papers in many universities both public and private in India we are getting students from other parts of the world around students are going to other parts and in our workplaces whether these are offices banks R&D organizations industry these are also becoming more global we may be working with partners who are from other countries we may have clients who are from other countries we have investors who are from other countries. So, communication is becoming much more global in that context that we are talking more and more to people from so many different countries and nationalities and backgrounds. As a result of this not only universities and institutions like ours but many companies in the world also are offering training programs on diversity in communication. So, if for example you are selected for a position in Infosys today before you actually start working at Infosys you will be made to go through a training program on gender and diversity and that is something that is happening in many companies in India and around the world. Now, when we talk about these kinds of competencies generally we think of competencies only in subjects that is domain knowledge in different branches of science mathematics technology engineering and so on. But communication is also skill that one acquires one needs certain kinds of knowledge to communicate and knowledge of how to communicate. So, communication is an ability and some of us are naturally good at communication some of us go through a struggle some of us need to learn how to communicate better. So, when it comes to being sensitive in communication here also we are trying to say that these are issues relating to peace and tolerance and equality which are becoming very important in today's global as well and these also need to be learnt if we do not already know them. So, some of us because we have been to certain kind of institutions we are born in certain kinds of families we may be aware of this more than others. So, in many international schools which have sprouted in India also now as well as in companies which deal with global partners they are emphasizing skills and knowledge relating to what I have listed in this particular slide that we are not interested in and very narrow sphere suppose you are working in the software sector. It is not simply about software it is about how software can be applied to different kinds of needs. So, you need an understanding of the world to be a good software engineer you need to understand different kinds of perspectives because using the same set of programming techniques you may want to come out with different kinds of solutions depending on your clients needs. So, you have to weigh your perspectives we not only communicate knowledge we have to communicate ideas and as teachers researchers academics that is very important to us because we are not just communicating information we are communicating ideas which is much more complex which is much more nuanced and therefore communication is more complex. And those of us who do applied research we have to apply and take action based on our knowledge and because we are talking about STEM we are talking about interdisciplinary knowledge communication. So, because of all these intercultural communication becomes very important we have to be very careful to ensure that unconsciously you are not putting off somebody you are not rubbing a person in the wrong way. So, because we may not understand another person's cultural background we may not understand things from a person's gender background we may not understand things from another person's religion regional linguistic backgrounds there can be problems and those problems can then translate into difficulties in the workplace which means as a result the entire workplace may suffer. Therefore greater willingness to understand each other's socio-cultural background is very important greater willingness to communicate with them and ensure that your own ignorance or bias does not come into communication is very important in this particular regard. In general we say that all communications all forms of communication has to start from the basic idea of knowing who your audience is because we believe that the better you understand your audience your target audience whether this is written communication or spoken communication the better you can tailor your communication and make it more effective. So, whether you are a teacher or a researcher or an administrator communication has to do all of these things it has to enable us to be creative and critical we are not just like very small children nor are we like other kinds of animals which cannot think creatively or critically even many animals species of the animal world also can be creative but criticality is something that comes to human beings so we want to learn we want to understand we want to think about it reflect on it improve upon it criticize it come up with an alternative and so on all this is part of education you can do it better if you understand your audience's background their limitations their capacities and then communicate accordingly ok. So, if like it was mentioned in the earlier session one of the teachers mentioned that his students had some of his students had language deficit and because of that he tried to explain things using practical techniques which made it much more effective. So, that is an excellent example of how you understand your audience and modify your teaching strategy so that that communication becomes effective and that is what we are saying here that if you are speaking to politicians if you are speaking to bureaucrats if you are speaking to people who have a technical knowledge whether you have men and women in your audience people of different cultures in your audience all that has to be factored in into your communication then it becomes much more effective. In the context of diversity and equality which is what we are talking about in this module there are several things we have to ensure and I am mentioning these three here first is to ensure that in your communication existing conflicts of society are not reflected that is conflicts between communities between men and women between people of different background that should not be reflected here. So, if people of different religions are fighting those biases should not be carried forward into our own research into our own communication we need to avoid any misunderstanding. So, if you remember one of my lectures I mentioned about a class 5 textbook where the author had several sentences about the environment and in all the sentences the reference to human beings was always through a masculine noun or pronoun and therefore there was a misunderstanding on the part of the reader whether the environmental issues are dealt with only by men or also by women. So, since misunderstanding is to be avoided at all costs sensitivity and diversity issues become important here also because it helps us to be more precise and clear it also helps us to avoid misinterpretation. We suggest and lot of research also shows that bringing in diversity and equality issues into communication also ensures better learning. So, if for example you are using language which is not sensitive. So, some people will get put off and even though you may be you may have an excellent grasp of your subject they may not be willing to listen to you they may not be willing to learn from you because you are not sensitive to their needs. So, lot of experiments show that students or somebody who is reading or listening to something can retain that knowledge better if we avoid social biases in our communication. And in my final video module I also told you about some of the pedagogic techniques techniques of teaching what kind of language to use how to organize the classroom so that we can make the classroom much more participatory and enable everybody to learn. So, keeping those issues in mind I would like now to engage in a discussion with you about how you as teachers in your respective colleges and institutions identified different kinds of issues in the classroom that is we are focusing specifically on communication in the classroom. What have been your experiences what kind of problems do you face that we also face here problems of learning and communication in a developing country like India with enormous diversity where we have students coming from all over India and where there is also lot of inequality in terms of what kind of family background they come from income background they come from what kind of schools they have been to what kind of educational capacities they have qualifications they have and so on given this diversity and equity what kind of problems do we face in the classroom how do we tackle these problems. So I would like to know more of your experiences you know in our discussion now for the next few minutes or so. So those who want to respond to this question please raise your hand we will come to you. The difficulty is that I am teaching in a degree engineering college so basically what happens there are many students who have done their schooling from Marathi medium semi as well as from Convent so most of the time what happens those who have done their schooling from Marathi medium they used to keep themselves they are able to means they are having their own group Marathi medium students are having their own group and semi English medium or we can say Convent students are having their different group so how could we tackle this difficulty so can you just if okay so if you are saying some things that it would be beneficial for me okay so firstly thanks for these questions but don't expect that I have a ready answer to all these questions I am also learning to address these issues along with you we also in IIT experience these issues where students come from different backgrounds and we are working out different solutions but before I respond to your question about you know with reference to what we as teachers do to address similar problems I want to know from you whether you have done something whether you have tried something actually sir I am trying my level best to let them come together for example as English is there means compulsory language or we can say every now and then or whatever they are doing white or black that is in English so I used to tell them that okay just be we can say do not go with the group some or be sensitive that we must go forward with the help of only English language so instead of keeping yourself with the groups yeah just go forward just be habitual enough to be with English it doesn't matter that if you have a group okay within that group just go forward with English yeah and you know whenever they are meeting to their teachers I used to tell them that just you have to use English language okay so I found that improvement is there sir so if anything else from your side yeah yeah so this is a you know common enough problem because it's not simply a question of differences in language abilities but as you very rightly point out it also leads to formation of different groups who are segregated they don't mix with each other and that is problematic in an educational institution because in an educational institution we want people to learn from each other not only from teachers so a lot of learning happens between and among students so and people students acquire abilities from each other also so if students are getting segregated on the basis of semi English or English and Marathi medium that is definitely not something to be encouraged so the I just mentioned one or two ways of in which we address this here in IIT one is we have a system of what is called as mentors student mentors so some students who have these kinds of difficulties whether it is language difficulties or other difficulties we have identified a group of volunteer students who are senior students who are willing to go and engage with these students talk to them help them in their work in whatever way possible so the the other students are completely free to contact them whenever they want so I think while it is difficult at one go to make these different groups to mix it's it'll be useful if you can identify a few students from the different from especially the English medium group who can work and mentor these Marathi medium students that is one way of but also it's very important to not just look at ability in terms of language so as it was mentioned by somebody in the morning somebody in the in the previous session there may be a Marathi medium student whose English language capability may be low but who may be excellent at that particular subject so then the mentorship can be reverse also there may be an English speaking student who is poor at mathematics or whose poor in a particular area of mathematics so can we ask this Marathi medium student to help that student with those kind of problems so making sure that we recognize the different kinds of abilities that students have encouraging those skills making them share it that is one way in which we can you know make more efficient learning happen the other technique that I have used to myself is to go beyond just examination so one of the problems that we face is that those who are not good at English tend to do poorly in exams so then what we do is number one you can try to give them some projects or assignments so somebody who is bad at writing exams may actually be good at assignments or projects because there they get the opportunity to think to reflect you know to work on different kinds of ideas which may not be possible in a 300 word answer during the exam where you have a time pressure also so give them different kinds of assignments or projects and in IIT we can do that because we have more flexibility okay but something like that can be worked out thirdly you can also make them do presentations in the class where if they are not able to express themselves in English they can speak in other languages and see if they can explain and over a period of time they will gain the confidence to speak in English as well and finally fourthly we also have individual sessions as teachers or with our teaching assistants to explain things in their own language if they are not able to understand in English so that over a period of time they can improve so what we tell them is while we are willing to help you to understand certain things in the long run it is good for you because somehow India has gone in this direction of using English in higher language in the long run for your own career it is better for you to develop your own abilities so we will explain to you but you put in your effort to also write in English okay so variety of methods basket of methods will eventually work in bridging these gaps the session was very good the previous session was very good at least as such there is no question from other side as far as the session is concerned okay but would you like to share something about what kind of problems you face in the classroom in your own colleges while you are teaching with reference to the diversity of background from because you know Indian society is changing we have more students coming from rural areas we have a lot of first generation learners so in the medium English medium and so on would you like to share something of your own experiences also the students are from different background and they are facing major problem in English communication we are also facing the same problem because many students are from UP board and they are challenging this issue but in our university there is a slay bus of professional communication and faculty members are taking care of that part also okay so we have to design our strategies accordingly but again we are facing this issue because most of the students are from Hindi background and they are unable to compete as compared to English okay okay thanks for that what the two colleges discussed earlier we two facing the same problem students from their mother tongue languages they are not ready to they are lacking of interest in learning English and also scoring marks apart from that we also have the girls students who are not ready to accept to attend the special classes after classes they always come with some excuses okay so by in case of boy students we ask them to compose it we made them it's cumbersome to attend the classes but in case of girl okay you always think about it they are always considerable and always excusable okay they take this as an excuse okay what you are thinking about it here also comes there no gender and diversity okay yeah so that is where you know what we are doing becomes very important because we are using a technology which for which you don't have to be physically present in one particular place so maybe for the girl students who find it difficult to stay back after school hours you can think of other methods of teaching because nowadays we have a lot of online tools where students can learn of communication also in some of the schools are in Bombay I don't know what other cities in schools also teachers and students communicate outside of school hours if they want extra sessions for example they use some of the video conferencing Skype techniques through mobile phone and other kinds of techniques so I know it is not possible everywhere because not everybody has internet not everybody has a computer but mobile phones almost everybody has now so you can think of other ways also in some of this experiments being done both in India and abroad when these kinds of problems are there within neighborhoods they form groups so you can form smaller groups of four five girls who live in the same place and ask them to learn together and then come back and report to the teacher on the next day if they have any doubts so if you are not able to learn if you extend the learning sessions in the school in the college itself you can try out these other kinds of methods so that they can improve on that so that topic that the session going on is a sensational one and we are also accepting there is a general diversity all over worldwide but even though still we have a certain thing we address as thought we were just like that we address one layer in a she-form girl or woman and if we address the God we address what layers take as a man but can we make a change in this also is it easy is it possible yeah of course we can have but it's also a matter of faith you know because in some religions there's only one God in some religions there are millions of gods so and gods can be male female way in Hindu religion you have Ardhanarishwara who's both male and female also so this is not so easy to bring about this change because it's a matter of faith also so in some religions they may believe that God is only the ultimate one who does not have gender in some religions they may believe that God is a male so while we can change the way in which we reference to go we refer to God we have to remember that it's also a matter of faith and you cannot impose things on people so let's go back to the presentation and then we'll have another round of discussion so thanks for sharing your problems almost all of you seem to have the same problem of language deficits and that's something that really we as a country need to deal with so we will do a few exercises like we did in the previous session so I was saying earlier that there are many companies around the world who believe that having a diverse work force is very important for them and I've given a list of some very big companies in the world and these are companies which have formal guidelines on gender and diversity sensitive workplaces gender sensitive communication and so on so it's not just something that I have cooked up or I it is interested in this is a demand from the economy and somebody like Gary Baker who's a very famous economist he actually showed how the more diverse of workplaces that is more people you have from different backgrounds the more innovative and profitable are companies the more homogeneous you are that is the same kind of people are there in the company the less innovative it is and what we also see is and there are some comments here from some CEOs who also talk about how in an age of global competition you need to be prepared to working with anybody it doesn't matter which country which background they are from if they have an idea you have to have them in your company that is how companies become organizations become innovative so given that diversity is given so much value in today's society how do we ensure that we bring this into a workplace communication aside from technical communication so we'll do a few exercises now as part of our tutorials so this will be a continuation of what we did in the previous session so what I'm going to do I'm going to writes give you certain problematic sentences which are not considered to be acceptable from a gender perspective or from the perspective of other forms of diversity and then offer certain solutions and then see if you can give me some answers so the first problem is something that I've discussed in my lecture where there is there has been a tendency for a very long time to use the noun man as a generic noun to represent all human beings so one solution we can give is to use alternatives to the word man alternatives to masculine nouns which are available so that we are more inclusive in our communication so the solution one that I'm giving you here is to use alternative nouns like human or person or mortal or humankind and so on which are alternatives to the masculine noun man and include all human beings men women third gender other gender and so on so let me take a sentence from a research article so the effect of PCBs so I will not explain what is PCB you're all from science and engineering institutions if you don't know you can still look it up the effect of PCBs has been studied extensively in rats and man so suppose I want you to use that solution one to replace man so what do you do the effect of PCBs has been studied extensively in rats and what do you say so can I get an answer from somebody rats and human okay rats and human okay can we take another answer from somewhere else the answer is rats and human yeah so the both of you are almost correct because when we use the word man in this particular case we are referring it we're using man not as a singular but as a plural that is we are referring to mankind or humanity or human beings therefore we have to say rats and humans okay it's not just rats and human because human does not refer to all human human refers to a characteristic of being human as different from being an animal but humans refer to people so it has to be rats and humans okay but you're right can we go back to the slide the same problem where we have the masculine noun man or men or its different variations we can also use what is called as an inclusive compound word or a descriptive word that is it actually describes what that work is about so for example we have a lot of words where man or men is used to refer to what a person is doing like a chairman okay or a workman and so on so in the examples that I've given you can see there is like some instead of chair men or chair woman you can use just chair chair a session can use chair person or you can use what is called as an inclusive compound word or a descriptive word as a presiders somebody who presides over a function somebody who is a convener okay so that is another way in which you can avoid the use of the masculine noun man so here we have a sentence that is the governor signed the workman's compensation bill the workman's compensation act is actually a real act in India so how will you change the word workmen so I will not I'm not going to go to you I'll ask you come back to you for the next question this is fairly simple the governor the correct answer would be the governor signed the workers compensation bill the reason I am putting it here is that the word worker has been available to us for centuries the word worker is much more simple than workmen why then do we use words like workmen which refer only to men when we have workers or both men and women and they have been workers for a long time so that indicates the origin of gender insensitive language because for a long time it was only men who were writing and they were referring to themselves therefore terms like work men workman and all came into existence even though a term a neutral term like worker actually existed but we simply did not use them okay so just to you know provide you an insight into how these words originated I was giving this example but I'll come back to you for the next question to take some answers now let me take let you can be you can have a different kind of solution so what we are trying to do here is to suggest that the kind of problems we face when we use gender insensitive language or gender exclusive language there are lots of ways in which we can rectify our language and I'm just trying to give you four or five different examples of how we can address the problem same problem in many different ways now here we can use a gender specific pronoun to identify a specific gender or a specific person that is sometimes we may want to mention the gender we don't want to avoid gender some in some cases we want to be specific we want to refer to men or women okay because that's part of what we want to explain so sometimes we want to avoid gender all together we want to be neutral sometimes we want to be specific so suppose you have a question like this repeat the question for each subject so that he understands it so it may be for example a researcher who is doing research among human subjects among human beings so I'm giving you a questionnaire I'm asking some questions and I want them to understand before responding so I will give this instruction to my assistant who is carrying out this research so I will say repeat the question for each subject so that he understands it suppose I want you to rewrite this question using a gender specific pronoun to identify a specific gender how will you rewrite it what is a gender fair way of doing it because I have talked earlier in the video module about gender fair gender neutral and gender aware okay so how will you do this in a gender fair way so can you fill up those blanks repeat the question for dash dash so that he fully understands it gender fair way would be each person each person I am asking you to imagine a situation where you want to mention a specific gender in such cases it cannot be called as gender biased so the correct answer would be repeat the question for each male subject for each male so we are sub male subject so in that case one is being gender fair because if one knows that one is going to look at only males or only females in that case you can be specific because if you say repeat the question for each subject so that he understands it we don't know if the subject is only male or they are both male and female therefore it is ambiguous and ambiguity is not acceptable in technical communication whereas if we want to say that the subjects are only male then one can say repeat the question for each male subject so that he fully understands it okay in that case we are being fair we are not being biased okay yeah so thanks for your response let's go to solution 4 so there is another way in which we can do this we can as we did in the previous session we can use plural nouns and pronouns so long as they do not change the meaning of the sentence okay be careful they don't change so the same sentence I will take repeat the question for each subject so that he understands it so here we are assuming that subjects can be both male and female and third gender so what how can we use plural nouns so what how will you rephrase this sentence what will you put in that blank repeat the question for dash so that they understand it yeah for the second question repeat the questions for the peoples so that they can understand it see we are using the word subject now subject is a technical term that is when we are doing a survey we are referring to the people among whom we are doing survey as a subject so which means that you cannot substitute subject with people because people is a very general term so can you think of an alternative answer it should be repeat the question for each male and female subject so that they can understand it no I am asking you to use we are using we want you to use plural nouns and pronouns so the plural pronoun is already there so that they they is the plural pronoun okay so one ways as you say you can say repeat the question for male and female subjects that's so you change subject into subjects you make it plural okay so that's one way of doing it any other way of doing it without bringing in gender without specifying the gender all all yeah so one of the if you remember one of the things that I mentioned in my video late my lecture I said avoid mentioning gender if it's not relevant so then we can just say repeat the question for all subjects so that they understand it okay so that's also a correct answer thanks can we go to the next question please now there's a fifth and a sixth way of doing it also so one could use a third person so we know what first person second person third person we studied it in primary school I you and then he her they and so on so we have a sentence here which says this so this is a instruction suppose you are going to the RTO office to get your driver's license without going through the agent and paying a bribe so you can say you have to say this the driver should take his completed registration form to the clocks window and pay his license fee so we would like to avoid the use of the word his which is used twice because that sentence assumes that all the drivers are only men okay now in a gender fair way how will you rewrite this so you have to fill up three blanks here by using a third person pronoun plural singular I won't say that I leave it to you but you can guess which is the correct one so where shall we go driver should take their registration form and take their registration fee okay so you got it absolutely correct first shot okay that's the right answer so we are using third person pronouns here so instead of and we are using the plural form of the noun so instead of the driver we are saying drivers should take their completed registration forms to the clocks window and pay their license fee so we are using a combination of the plural form of the driver which is a noun and the plural form of the pronoun his which is there so when you change something from first second person like his and her to sorry when you change the third person from singular to plural automatically the gender becomes you know you don't specify the gender of a person it becomes gender neutral that's one way of doing it so changing it from singular to plural pronoun makes it gender neutral or gender fair okay so we take one more here instead of third person in solution 6 I am asking you to use first person so again we'll just the principal investigator for this report has upended data tables to his summary so suppose I have a project from the Department of Science and Technology Government of India and I am the principal investigator so I have prepared the report of the project and I am sending a report with this sentence so gender fair man gender fair rewriting of the sentence using first person how do you do it we have appended data tables to the summary of this report okay I won't say whether you're right or wrong you're partly correct let's take up another college and then I'll come back so the answer is I have appended the data tables to prepare summary of this report okay so thank you for that answer that's correct so we would have been correct so the IPS Academy endure please if you see the sentence it talks about a principal investigator which is one and we also use the word his which is a singular third person pronoun so therefore if we if we had mentioned the principal investigators then we would have been correct since V is also first person but it's a first person plural so in this case I is more appropriate since we are talking about one single principal investigator the reason I included this example even though it's fairly simple is that you can see that the gender fair or gender neutral version is actually much more simpler as a sentence so when we write in technical communication we are asked to be as simple as possible not to make it too complicated we have to be as clear as possible so in some ways as you see there by not being gender sensitive you're also being very complicated the principal investigator for this report has appended data tables to his summary which is a passive voice which is a very long sentence whereas the other correct version is actually a very much simpler sentence and a shorter sentence also okay so that's also another advantage of using gender sensitive language we can also use what are called as double pronouns that earlier we looked at examples like his and her himself himself and herself which are pronounced pairs or we also as one of your colleagues said they are called as bulky pronouns now you also can use double pronouns where you just write s slash he which makes it she or he so this you can use when you write because it's very difficult to pronounce those words you can't say s slash he okay while writing we can use those while speaking we can say he or she he she him and hers and so on so in this particular sentence each supervisor will be at his workstation by 8 a.m. this may be an instruction given to a person working in an office so you can just say each supervisor will be at his or her workstation by 8 a.m. the final solution that's given here is to use an article so we all know what pronouns pronouns are I me he his they and so on but we also have articles which is a and and the so like in the solution 6 that I offered we see that substituting a pronoun with an article also makes the sentence simpler so in this particular example we are saying after filling out his class schedule the student should place it in the registrar's basket so here we are referring to the student as a male whereas it may be a female as well so here the solution would be to say after filling out the class schedule so we are using the definite article thed student should place it in the registrar's basket which which completely avoids the gender issue all together it doesn't even bring it in because it's not relevant to us okay so what we have done in these 8 examples is to take the problem of using gender specific nouns and pronouns to refer to all human beings and then see how we can modify those sentences to make them gender fair gender neutral and so on so like we did in the earlier session I would like to you to ask some questions either to me or to other participants and to share your experiences and here we are going to share experiences related to 3 issues so I would like you to raise some questions and share experiences on teaching communication of research either in conferences papers publications books and so on or in everyday workplace communication related to administration how we communicate with each other related to running of an institution so in the morning for example one of the participants mentioned about a letter from us which actually was not following our own rules so then it is possible that such kind of communication issues with reference to administration between and among you could be there in your institutions also so I would like you to share experiences of those and also based on my lectures if you have any particular questions or clarifications you can ask them now yes is better during the session we have learned about how to go with the gender differentiation and how to form sentences when it comes to the teaching assignment for the students how best we can explain to the students that taking as the examples of your assignment okay so the examples that I gave are fairly simple examples from everyday kind of communication that we have so you will have to design specific examples from your own communication context what kind of emails you send out to your students what kind of letters you send out what kind of forms do you have make them fill up so and what kind of questions do you ask them in the classroom in the laboratory in oral or YY exams and so on so you will have to find out the context in which these are applicable and then redesign the language so I cannot give a more specific example unless I know the specific kind of communication that you are involved in some examples of sentences if you can give me then I can tell you how to modify those sentences and one more question sir like the students after understanding this when they present it in the examination like during the examinations how they will be presenting it in written form because they got habituated listening to us the way we present it and the same thing they may be repeating in the examination yes written form yes for explaining them the students a better way okay so see these kind of changes in communication do not happen overnight so these are things that have to be sort of drilled into all of us for over a period of time before we modify the language because we as you said we have become habituated to writing and speaking in particular ways so one suggestion that we give to our students here is to have a checklist so just as you know when suppose you are publishing an article you will be given certain guidelines about what style to follow how to provide references and so on so we suggest that even for addressing gender and sensitivity issues you can have a checklist or a set of guidelines so that when you whether you are writing an answer in an exam or writing an assignment or writing a project report you can actually see whether these guidelines have been met or not I do not remember now whether I have given you those kind of guidelines in the list of material that we have uploaded but if you go to some of the journals in your own field or if you go to the professional associations for example there is the IEEE or there is American Society of Mechanical Engineers so these organizations professional organizations have these guidelines that when you communicate what you should verify what you should check for so that your language is not biased or it's not insensitive so telling your students that in writing an exam or an assignment you have to follow these guidelines that makes them much more conscious of these issues when they write okay let's move to the last question okay students when they enter into the corporate world whatever the learning that has taken place in the classroom and that too will be totally different to that when the work when it is in the work environment yeah how best we can suggest yeah this is in fact a very major issue because a lot of studies done by industrial bodies like FICI and ASOCHAM and CII as well as more academic studies show that there is a big gap between the skills that are required when people join a firm and the skills they are taught in the work in in in the educational institution so and this applies both to communication as well as to the domain knowledge in different fields so this is a much larger problem which requires that there is better coordination between educational institutions and various kinds of organizations which employ people but what we would suggest is at least that educational institutions make some effort to find out what kind of skills are required in the workplace and see if that can be incorporated into your own educational curriculum syllabi strategies and so on so and that applies to communication also because this is seen as one of the big gaps why a lot of students are not employable is because they may be very good in their fields but communication is lacking so here again we need to find out exactly which kind of communication skills are required for which kind of jobs and then see if we can impart them not only through special courses on technical communication but also through the way in which you teach your own courses so if you remember the inaugural session on Monday professor mark Fatak mentioned this point he said don't think of communication as a separate course in itself communication skills has to be imparted in each and every course that we teach so if we can ensure that people communicate better their own subjects in which they have better knowledge then they become better communicators and that also matches well with the requirements of communication in when they join an organization for a job okay so thanks for those questions we are going to take this question from KMEA engineering college Alua but before that I would like to say that the next couple of questions I would like colleges to think of sharing their experiences because so far you've been asking questions and that's understandable but we also expect that you are teachers so you are like us and you face similar problems and we imagine that you also would have tried to come up with solutions to this kind of communication issues so if you face communication issues in the workplace in your own institutions how do you attempt to address these problems if you can share them that will be very useful for all of us so we'll go to Alua now one good thing about this technical communication workshop was that we were able that is the main problem we faced with the students they when they come for the project or a structure in that work when they ask for the structure of the abstract or structure of the report they want to write we don't have a like an SOP how to actually structure the format but when when we go into this technical communication workshop we actually got the actual procedure or yes or how to give the structure to guide them okay that was one of the main advantage we got out of the structure thank you yeah so that's in fact you know that's one of the things that we we all try to impart to our students the structure is extremely important because the structure gives a form to the content it may it organizes the material in a particular sequence and order which makes it much more comprehensible and easily understandable for a leader or listener so the structuring of a report or of a presentation is very important I'm glad you got that out of this course thanks for the feedback sir in writing the technical papers may know how to mention me and I okay this is this actually depends on different subjects because in different subjects they have different preferences so and it also depends on the preference of a university in some universities for example when you submit a thesis or a dissertation you are allowed to use first person like I me and so on in some institutions you are expected to use third person like you know you are you are referring supposed to refer to yourself as a third person like the researcher and so on so the answer to your question is it depends on the guidelines that are given so some professional associations some journals publishers universities they all have their own guidelines of how to use I and me visa we referring to ourselves in the third person like the researcher you have to find out the guidelines and use them appropriately okay when we are going for anti-plagiarism how to avoid this me and I problem sir okay anti-plagiarism so that is see what I think you are what you are referring to is when we are rewriting other people's ideas of materials in one's own words okay that's what you are referring to so that we make sure that when we are representing somebody else's ideas we are not copying or we are not unconsciously indulging in plagiarism and in this case actually using first person like I me and so on is helpful because it helps you to organize your thoughts in your own words whereas if you just reproduce what somebody has said then that becomes plagiarism but if you begin thinking of it in from your own point of view that I am saying this that I wish to make this argument I wish to suggest that this should be interpreted in a particular way I wish to report this result I have observed these experimental results if you say it in that way it becomes easy to avoid plagiarism also and it avoids the gender problem as well I would like to ask one question based on the teaching where like in some of the curriculum or syllabus which is having a basic concept but sometimes what happen that frequently the application of the version in a curriculum which comes so up to your knowledge that within a how many period that we have to update the curriculum one course which we are teaching over here where actually it is required to include some basic concept okay but sometimes what happened that in our industry various version of the syllabus which comes so it is required to update frequently or we have to keep as it is which contains a basic concept okay no I think see both are required especially undergraduate level students have to be strong in their concepts if you're not strong in concepts then you know it's very difficult for you to sustain yourself in any profession but updation is also required because knowledge is changing very frequently these days and you so you need a balance of both but as far as the communication technical communication skills is concerned it's always better to find out what kind what is expected from industry since you're asking about industry what is the kind of skills that they expect of course it's not possible to keep changing every six months or every one year because then you know we are just following trends and we are not focusing on fundamentals so conceptual rigor is very much required so in different subjects or different fields depending on the job potential also one has to arrive at an optimum combination of constantly updating the syllabus vis-a-vis laying a strong foundation one thing I want to say here is that in this particular example question that you have raised it's important that we don't get lost in the constant demands that industry makes of us because industry or companies will come for placement and they will say today I want this skill tomorrow I want something else and we keep chasing those and we don't forget to focus on the fundamental concepts and theories and methods of any particular subject so constantly one has to keep trying to find out which kind of skills lay a strong foundation among the students and which are required to get a job in the job market so maintaining that optimum combination is somewhat easier in an IIT because we have more flexibility in changing our syllabus and what we teach nobody is going to ask us but I know you all have board of studies and you know all kinds of academic councils so but keeping that interaction going between the employers and your own colleges even if you can informally introduce some of the updates I think that will benefit the students in the long run sir I would like to share my experience of teaching communication skills okay and I have observed that if you if we talk about gender biasness so I have a personally experienced that girls are far better than boys in learning communication skills as well as they take it as a very important subject as well as they understand that in career communication skills are very important okay to build their or to to proceed their careers in a positive direction okay that is my observation okay and I would like to ask a question also could you please throw some light upon hello yes could you please throw some light upon differentiation of why why the girls are better understanding in communication skills okay and they they they have seriousness of the subject and they understand that it is very useful for their for building up their career okay yeah I'm actually I don't know much about this but my mother has a theory my mother says that you know once girls grow up and get married then they are not allowed to speak so much that's why they are better at communication before marriage you know because that's the only chance they get to speak okay so I'm not sure if that is a good theory but I think maybe there are other factors and one needs to research them but I think because you know there is there are all kinds of issues these could be issues related to how confident students are about communication how curious they are to ask and find out about different kinds of problems to obtain knowledge it could be related to the gender balance within a classroom so for example sometimes teachers tell us that if there are more girls than boys in a class than boys tend to be shy and not ask so many questions if it's the other way around then girls are you know hesitant to ask questions it also depends on family background it depends on what kind of educational institutions they have been to and so on there are a number of factors so Gujarat of course you know because Gujarat has had a longer tradition of education so it is possible that the gaps between boys and girls are not so big as it is in some other states so I don't know if it is peculiar to your particular area or it is more common to the state but it's an interesting question that you raise and I haven't really seen any evidence which can help me to answer this because one finds different kinds of situations in some cases it's the boys who speak more in some cases the girls who speak more okay but I suspect that there is a combination of factors which explains this but from our communication perspective what is important is firstly that you make sure girls don't stop communicating after some time and you ensure that boys also are able to communicate and share information how to ensure that everybody is able to share and communicate that is the strategy that we should be striving for I wanted to ask one question how much amount of plagiarism is acceptable in a technical paper okay well theoretically zero okay but see what happens is sometimes there is especially when it comes to technical communication you can only express something in a few ways you cannot explain things in many different ways so it is possible that somebody else has written about the research that you are doing in exactly the same way likewise much of the plagiarism software also includes references and bibliography as plagiarism so if somebody else cites an article and I cited it will be exactly the same so I think about Jen I don't it differs from one institution to another but generally about 20 to 25 is regarded as acceptable because these can happen by accident or this can happen by coincidence but anything beyond that is regarded as not acceptable but theoretically it should be zero okay okay so thank you thank you so much so I with this we come to an end we conclude this session so I think there will be other people coming in later I also wish to thank all of you for giving us this opportunity to share our own experiences and the kind of teaching we do in this class to all of you and I have also learned a lot from all of your questions and sharing your experiences thank you very much go and enjoy your tea thank you