 I am the Development Coordinator of Indian Society for Technical Education looking after the projects of ISTE. We have about 10 to 15 projects in ISTE and I will be giving you a brief thing about what each project is and how we go about and do things. I initially take this opportunity to thank Professor Patak, who is a wonderful person and trying to improve the quality of technical education in the country through open source. See, before I explain to you about the role of ISTE and what ISTE is doing as a professional body, I will just say a few words about the current thing that we are into. As you all know, the Ashpal Committee and the Knowledge Commission, these are all the two major things, reports. The Government of India is contemplating and the Minister has already given a deadline of 100 days to go through these two reports and to give a roadmap as to what the Ministry should do to further the quality of technical education and generally education as well. And Minister on his own has taken a few steps as you all know that there will not be any examination at the end of 10th or things like that, he is going on his own. Based on the recommendations, recommendations rather of Professor Ashpal Committee's report and as well as Knowledge Commission's report, if you have the opportunity, please go through these two reports. It is available in the net and some of the points are contradicting and some of the points are very strong and some of the recommendations are very strong rather in the Ashpal Committee's recommendation. And since I am a member of so many committees, including Government and as well as Private Confederation of Indian Industries, ASOHM and things like that, they all not satisfied the way in which Ashpal Committee's recommendations are done, especially viewing this private sector. They are not happy with the comments which the recommendations are made based on the comments. They say that they have not been given ample opportunity to explain their role. One of the major objections raised by this CII's ASOHM and other things like that says that they should also be heard before the final recommendations or implementation is done. They say that what is wrong in opening up new engineering education or institution or universities, they are there to help the country to grow and to gain knowledge. But on the other side, they say the government side says that in the name of private institutions, you not only impart education but you all make this as a business house like your CII and other things. But of course, a few institutions are doing like that, but not all. So government has considered this as one lot and said that you all people, private people are like this and we are going to put our firm foot and say that you cannot do this. But if you practically see the position of various private engineering institutions, the way in which vice chancellors are appointed, the way in which directors and deans and principals are appointed, the way in which admissions are taking place, you can find out the real reason or the real motive behind the start of these institutions. For example, many universities where they have fixed the total number of intake per annum like the magic number 420, the number itself is not correct, which I believe. They say that 420 is the maximum and now they have added zeros and multiplied by two, things like that. We have universities where they are admitting more than 8000, 10000 and a private university in Punjab is claiming that they are the leading university in the country, private university in the country admitting about 16000 students. What will these students do? There are the teachers, there is the infrastructure. These are the questions which troubled Professor Yashpal may be and he has made a strong recommendation that not only the institutions which are responsible for this starting up of new colleges and making this as a business house, the people who are involved in giving them permission should also be punished and he has strongly recommended that there should not be any regulatory role for all the accounts of a technical education, which is a major recommendation. They said that it should not be there, it should be revamped and a new agency like National Commission for Higher Education and Research should be found. But on the other side, many experienced professors and educationist feel that if you have another agency controlled by the government, the same set of bureaucrats will go and sit there, same set of officers will get transferred from AICT and go and occupy the seats, the same thing will go on. What is the new thing in this commission which is going to come up? Is it going to be different from what UGC and AICT is doing right now? And it is not that easy to remove a constitutional body like AICT and UGC. This is the argument of the other side of the people. But on the whole, we are not interested in all these things, debates and views of individuals. The government is looking to revamp the whole system, that is very clear and it is going to spend a lot of money on making people computer savvy and improve the technology of education and basically the quality of technical education as a whole. Now, before that I will give you some recommendations of Indian National Academy of Engineering. These professional bodies, the role of these professional bodies are to point out the defects in the drawbacks the current system is facing and to suggest ways and means to the government to modify the existing system or to make bring out changes in the system so that the quality is improved and the drawbacks are pulled out on the loopholes are pulled out. Based on this, Indian National Academy of Engineering has made some suggestions and recommendations to the government of India before this knowledge commission recommendations was in place. People who are involved in the knowledge commission under the leadership of Sam Pitroda are the members of INAE and ISTE. These professors was got a long term view sat together and they made some joint together discussed a few points in the form of a seminar, conference, workshops and things like that and gave a thought as to how to improve the quality of technical education how to improve this information communication technology skills how to develop skill development run the skill development program for the school students or for the school dropouts rural youths so many things came to their mind and they put forward these things in a form of recommendations and they gave these recommendations and inputs to Sam Pitroda and they formed various committees on vocation education on architectural education on medical medical education things like that and finally you know that these recommendations are in the form of a report and Professor Yashpal has been given the responsibility to go through the entire education system of the country appointed by the M. H. R. D. only but then he's made a very strong recommendation as to how to improve the quality. Now before wasting my time I'll just go go through this presentation in general as you all know education is very important to us is a liberating force faster growth social equality and technological progress all these things ought to be there it's not only that you improve the technology or the technological growth there should be some social impact of education so globalization and emergence of a new society more dependent on knowledge and information technology have further underlined the importance of education pursuing developmental goals in order to keep this technological advances advances in control and subservient to the needs of mankind engineering education training requires reappraisal and prompt corrective actions what are the major issues in technical education some of the central issues in higher education globally are the growth demand for education throughout the life cycle for example you are here for the lifelong learning process after three years you'll be there in some other IIT or some other institution to learn what is happening currently and you will go back to your students I mean institution and tell the student that this is what is happening currently in the country now changes to higher education brought on by technological innovation now we are able to see this and they are capturing in the television I mean in the camera and this can be directly put on the web education on the web for people to look into and make this program as an interactive things are possible which we have not even dreamt 20 years before so internationalization of higher education as you all know there is a bill separate bill for entry of foreign universities into the country people are still contemplating as to whether to allow these foreign into the universities to enter into the Indian arena or whether to put a restriction to them as to only these type of universities to come in it's again it's a sociological question whether the poor downtrodden will be able to join those universities and if you allow those universities to come into play in the Indian scene will they not suck the blood of the Indian public and make money which our already our private universities are doing so they are just thinking and a good solution will come out then access and equity this is more important that is why our reservation system is still there and the government of India has introduced the OBC reservation even in IS IIT's in order to make all the weaker sections of the society to bring to the bring on part of the system and give them an opportunity to study that is one equity part access to bring down the fees and to make them accessible I mean make them affordable that is one of the major policy of the government of India then accountability so we can talk much or together I mean days together about accountability accountability who is accountable are we accountable to the teachers are teachers accountable to the students are the private people who are managing the institutions are accountable to the public is public accountable to the government is government accountable to the public who is voting them so that's a million dollar question and it's very difficult to answer that one but since this term is very regularly used in all the conferences accountability but there is no clear-cut vision as who is accountable to whom we have to answer that question and ask that question and answer to our self then differentiation of academic systems this you must have heard about in the minister's speech and talk in Tamil Nadu particularly from Tamil Nadu you have four tenth standard we have five different schemes like your vocational stream you have a matriculation scheme you have general stream same students they don't know where to go and join what will be the future so last year they have made us announcement in government of Tamil Nadu saying that there will be only one stream intense standard and when they go to the 12th standard the stream will be different like vocational and the general academic institute I mean system then I'll talk about we can we can say so many things about the education how it is being done in the country what are the drawbacks what are the advantages how we go about because as we know we are very good in planning we Indians are very good in planning but we are very poor in implementing that is one of the drawbacks of the Indian system not only in education system in many systems that we face let me talk only about this electronic environment since it is a workshop on ICT national mission on ICT I'll say a few words about this electronic environment what it should be done how it should be done these are all the recommendations based on INAG and ISTE the availability of high-speed computers massive data storage and retrieval systems internet as an as an easily accessible communication medium and host of software tools open up the possibility of developing new and innovative teaching methodologies you can think of your teachers who have taught only using chalk and talk business but now we have a lot of technology innovative methods that we have we can prepare at home come and show them on the screen say this is about the nuclear system nuclear power plant it will look like this thing you can show the video and you can improve the teaching process using different methodologies these resources could be used imaginatively and skillfully to derive significant benefits to the following initiatives what are the initiatives preparation of I quality materials in the form of books lecture notes lively presentations then through innovative use of authoring tools graphics simulations then making lecture presentations more lively and informative through the use of multimedia tools and providing easy access to various information sources on the subject promoting off-classroom learning with appropriate flexibility to meet the requirements of various types of learners both slow learners and as well as fast learners then computer aided instruction which is the very old thing C.A.I. and C.A.M. we used to call in the 80s 1980s now it is online you can you can go to the every one of you has got the opportunity to go into the web when you are listening to me you can you can even if I give you the source you can log on and you can go to the particular web source a website and you can see for yourself encouraging creative thinking through complex open-ended problems and enable problem solving through the disposition of tools of computation graphics etc promoting the use of contemporary problem formulation and solution tools both in the classroom and as well as an outside classroom elevating the status of design courses through the use of computer aided design tools which are currently in use in industrial practice see there is one major acquisition of the foreign universities on the Indian system that we are very poor in three things one is the design it is not designed your engineering system is not design oriented that is one of the major recommendation pitfalls and it is not user friendly they say and it is not creative and problem solving this is the acquisitions given by foreign universities to us we are trying to solve this problem and already all the 80s have taken steps to minimize this and bring changes then enriching laboratory experience through creation of virtual laboratories and virtual reality simulations supporting collaborative learning through internet and web as a forum for interaction with peers enabling the student to do self assessment through online evaluation widening the outreach of instructional programs through appropriate distance learning modes this to be certain extent will reduce the requirement of well qualified and trained teachers but I have a reservation for this point that even though if you develop a good reserve teaching tools and things like that a good teacher cannot replace a good software or a good self learning material providing state of the art orientation programs in emerging areas of science and engineering which you are attending now orientation program like what are the different delivery modes for technology assisted education live TV TV telecast through edu said and I am the coordinator for this edu said program in the country and we have a consortium of content development in the under the banner of university grants commission which is not functioning effectively and as far as the technical education is concerned all India Council for technical education is given the responsibility to create content the software for the edu said edu said this program is concerned if you want I can tell you there are two parts one is the technical part hardware part like putting the satellite and giving them timing for beaming through the national network and things like that and I hope people from Amrita will be able to understand this properly and that's a hell of a job and we have agency to do that one and on the second second part of it is to create content for various subject and put this software part into the hardware so that it's beamed through national and the state network beam so that it will be it is beamed to all the remote and the remotest part of the country so that every student from village and the rural part rural place we have will have an advantage to have the best of the teacher in the country teaching for them but to my mind it's it's not giving the result as it is expected to give but you turn the TV instruction as you all know many private institute private commercial organizations are trying to do this course material on video and CDs which many of them have experience and it is very popular then computed instruction as you all know because when you start reading this technology enhanced learning TL NPTL is one of the agency's project where they're trying to build up this CAI through this web-based education then web-based learning then virtual laboratory which is still in the primitive stage it has not come up very well then computed it a design simulation analysis tools and things like that then four of the suggestions for strengthening technology assistive teaching establishment of non-profit organization for technology and computer assisted learning which government of India is trying to do NGOs are also coming up establishment of distant learning networks which our Deepak Patak and IIT Mumbai is trying to do and IST like a role of a squirrel in Ramayana is trying to play a small role in helping IIT Mumbai to take this to the country that is what they have named is as e-outreach to reach the public we are helping them giving them a hand making available advanced computer-based analysis tools on the net in the open source and it is imperative that the maximum possible bandwidth on the information highway is provided to all technical institution this is another drawbacks many of you are facing or will be facing electrical power supply another one to technical institution should be at par with the quality of power supply to software industry so that they receive high quality uninterrupted power distance learning e-books are now the order of the day and they must be created centrally by appropriate agencies video conferencing that is why I put a question mark there is it happening in the country in institutions I don't know but it is one of the good practice webcasting through a you said it is happening and webinars web seven hours are called webinars or now technology technologically feasible these may be introduced wherever possible and generally to tell you about the Indian higher education scenario to cap it up in one slide I will tell you it started from nineteen universities in nineteen forty seven to three hundred seventy eight in two thousand seven and from twenty seven colleges to eighteen thousand sixty four colleges now see the rate of growth and how we have grown or we are already adding five to six universities and three hundred colleges every year to a education system since independence there has been a significant growth in the number of new universities and institutions of higher learning in specialized areas and this is the one recommendation by ashpal saying that there should not be any specialized universities in the country should not there no more like what you call this technological university exclusively for technology and agricultural university exclusively for agriculture and animal husbandry university exclusive for this one they should not be there that is one of the major recommendations I don't know how far the government is going to review this one the galloping growth of institutes of higher learning is visible from the fact that in between two thousand two and six one twenty seven degree awarding students have been set up while in the decade between ninety two two thousand two only sixty seven such institutes could be started the total number of universities today is around three sixty seven or three seventy eight whatever now if you see the table it will give you a enrollment rate how many colleges are there universities are there this is from the report given by the UGC and it is up to two thousand four and five and it is not updated after after that this is the one maximum which I could get from UGC website in other places then technical education particularly India with its vast technical education system can respond to the growing demand for technology and product innovation see there is a difference why I put this demand for technology globally because we are the people who are supplying human manpower manpower like a technology technology manpower is given by various other developed countries but manpower human manpower what I'm trying to say is to to manage or maneuver these tools we are supplying to the western countries and they depend on us that's why you have a lot of call centers and other business houses which are running business their business in India because of cheap labor and high quality of technical knowledge that we Indians have as is visible from the developments during the past couple of years knowledge industries around the world of making India destination for outsourcing the knowledge services including R&D software development and IT enabled services the country thus has created technological education system which is largely focused around undergraduate education there again I want to say we are very good in producing undergraduate people graduate with the BE degree we have large number of people but when you go up the ladder PG people are very less and particularly research like PhDs we produce only 500 PhDs in a year with a maximum population of say I mean input of say around six six lakhs intake every year we do but then the output of PhDs every year particularly in engineering degree engineering PhD is only 500 this we have to double or triple in the next coming years so that we can become real leaders in the world as far as technology is concerned the challenge at hand therefore is how to transform the engineering education system of India into a system of nurturing world-class quality in the human capital development alongside with the development of intellectual knowledge capital to support countries march on technology innovations to meet the requirement of rapidly changing technology and know how for the knowledge intensive industrial development now the key issues in technical and management education during the 11th plan would be a continued focus on see the planning commission things I had for next five years and they have a plan exclusively for education sector which I will read to you in increased intake capacity enhancement of quality together they have put this they want to increase the intake capacity but as well as they want to enhance the quality quality and quantity will they go ahead I mean together I don't think so and we have to struggle a lot if you want to do that then faculty development which is always a question always there will be complaint saying that the quality the quality of the faculty is not good and we have to devise methods and process and schemes to improve the quality faculty development that has been going on from right from the beginning and government of India still spending lot of money this is not done not a practice in any country they have to spend off from their own pocket and to upgrade themselves they have to spend it is the custom then optimization of resources through networking and this more or less we are doing because we are trying to put things on the open source and still we don't have the habit of networking with the neighboring institutes suppose we have purchased or we have a good infrastructure with us like like atomic NMR or very sophisticated machinery and laboratory equipment we don't want to share this with the neighboring institutes we want to keep it to our institute only this is one of the major recommendations in Yashpal committee saying that resources should be shared among the institutions in the nearby area then development of information technology education improving quality and quantity of research in technology as they already told research is done in only few packets in the country it is not the quality research which people are doing and modernization and development of curriculum everywhere there is a complaint saying your curriculum is poor you are this thing is poor and many people confuse themselves with curriculum and syllabus both are different and the syllabus can be upgraded every six months or so but curriculum have to be done for one particular set for five years or three years and international benchmarking as you all know the talk of the town is accreditation which is not a success in the country we have become a temporary member with Abbott under the Washington Accord only two years before they have given the time limit only for three years and after that we have to become a full member for that we there are certain formalities which we have to do and we have not done that so far that is one thing and not like the one which we have in national board of accreditation which is attached to the All India Council for technical education and this NAC is attached to the UGC there is a big drawback in the accreditation system of our country the person who is giving the certificate a regulatory body himself is the person who is adjudging the quality the same agency how can I see that okay I'll give you permission to start an engineering college on the other hand I'll say I'll check your quality what is this is not correct and this is not the practice elsewhere in the whole international scenario if you see the accreditation accrediting agency will be different from that of the regulatory body all the professional bodies are responsible for accrediting this one and this is also a major recommendations of ashpal committee that a ICT which is a regulatory body for technical education should not be an accreditation agency and the professional bodies like I I IST I Tripoli and things like that should I mean IWE instead of engineers IE sorry instead of engineers and IST and various other professional body should play a major role in accrediting these institutions given permission by the ICT but in our country this is the fate that the same agency is doing both the job without any success developing capacity new and emerging technology areas like the biotechnology you know this common example of nanotechnology but then people are into the system but the expected results are not there what are the achievements that we have done in the field of nanotechnology in the last five years if you happen to see that the growth is very incremental and it is not up to the mark and number of patents that we have achieved in the last five years is slowly growing and it's not up to the expectations strategic planning and management of technical education system and informal sector development this is the major area and major recommendations of ashpal committee and as well as knowledge commission's recommendation is school dropouts and rural youth have to be taken into account and they have to be trained and the skill development programs have to be introduced for these people to get to gain out of this which will create a large number of labor market and ICT has entered into a contract with INTUC Indian National Trade Union Congress to give skill development to impart skill development for the offsprings or the generations of these workers were still working as the workers and whose sons and daughters who are yet to get a job or still wandering for even one square meal INTUC has taken up a project with the help of Ministry of Finance and IST is going to help them into framing out the methods and training programs so National Knowledge Commission in its report to the nation has outlined the urgency of creating a synergy between education and research institutions of air learning this can best be achieved by strong knowledge infrastructure in university and institutional campuses India has all the resources and potential to become a regional hub for education which will result in an increasing number of students from neighboring countries choosing India as their preferred destination for irrigation why because we are the youngest nation the population between in the age group of 16 to 23 is huge large in the international scene globally if you analyze the data we have the English country so there is a lot of potential in this that is why international universities are looking for India maybe for different reasons but one of the main reasons is it's very young India is very young and education system the country is already being influenced by international trends and scenarios with a view to make education flexible and enable students to learn at their own time and pace distance and web based learning is planned in the various engineering and management institutions and with the help of professor Pathak many things will come in the open source and engineering education can get the benefit out of this and you can have a tie up and get the help of IIT Mumbai Bombay sorry at a bomb so that you know you get the you don't have to reinvent the wheel people are already there to do the work and you can share the knowledge educational technology centers of being established and strengthened as IITs at IITs NITs selected engineering colleges managing institutions and NIT tripletias these centers will take a preparation of course material and their conversion into multimedia software ready to be put online already this work is commands are started in various engineering college and they are duplicating I believe and if you have it's not bad that you produce two or three different lectures style for a particular subject that's that's a good idea but rather you don't have to start from the beginning you can in fact you can talk to these people who are already developing these programs and develop new programs where they are not preparing and they are not having expertise in doing this so now giving after a brief introduction about where we are where is the how we move about in technical education scenario what are the different plans of government of India and planning commission I'll just give you a few brief about what is the role that we as a professional body Indian society for technical education is playing to improve the quality and to help in various other projects now as you all know this is a society form in the year 1941 and in the year 1941 principles of engineering colleges at that time joined together and formed an organization called Association of Principles of Technical Institutions APTI then after that after independence they said that every sector should have a commission or committee or council to enhance the quality and to improve the output at the time university grants commission was formed in 1951 and they have they thought that a separate commission should be there for technical education always commission is more powerful than council commission has got a more authority then next comes the council next comes the committee and subcommittee things like that then they thought that since you have a funding agency university grants commission then we thought they thought that we'll form an all-india council for technical education medical council architecture council management council like that various councils are formed and they formed this in 1950 under the ages of APTI only and in 1968 they said there will be a separate independent body and coming out from this APTI they said that this will be named as APT I mean all-india council for technical education and in the year 1950 they are not given the name for the technical education council only in 1968 they gave the name for all-india as all-india council for technical education and the logo emblem preambles introduction all these documents were prepared only by this APTI then they said that okay why don't we dissolve this APTI then many learner professor said no need to do that we can rename this as Indian society for technical education let this be a be a mouthpiece for teachers and students and give them advice to the all-india council for technical education and as well as be ministry so that is how in 1968 it was rechristened or renamed as Indian society for technical education the major objective IST is to assist and contribute in the production and development of top quality professional engineers since it's a professional body and technicians needed by the industries and other organizations being the only national organization of educators in the field of engineering and technology IST effectively contributes in various missions of union government so the ministry of human resource development AICT department of science and technology ministry of information technology state governments and various other governmental agencies are well associated with IST for programs relating to technical education what are the major objectives formulate the general goals and responsibilities of technical education modify curriculum and educational processes to changing conditions how we do this because most of the teachers vice chancellors and students are our members so develop effective teachers and educational administrators improve instructional methods and practices and administrative usages and then enhance professional ideals and standards foster research as complemented to teachers then cultivate fraternal spirit among the teachers administrators administrators industrialists and professionals bring about effective linkage between technical institutions industry and society and award honorary fellowship awards prices for furthering the objectives of technical education what is the structure of this there is an executive council at the national level which is selected by or elected by the members of the society then IST is a membership of more than seventy two thousand two hundred fifty members as on date and two like fifty five thousand student members nineteen eighty institutional members and one thousand twenty faculty chapters in an institution minimum of twenty five teachers should join together and form a chapter and then about thousand one hundred twelve students chapter throughout the country minimum of fifty students should join together to form a chapter what are the major activities of IST curriculum development updating whatever the ACT proposes in management in hotel management engineering in arts and culture all these curriculum are framed with the help of IST because we have pool of experts in IST they join they form a committee and they make the recommendations to the government and the government will have accept as it is or make modifications according to their requirements the ACT sponsors short term training programs for engineering teachers and practicing professionals right from nineteen sixty eight this program is running till to date like short term training programs in the technical education field subject area we don't teach we allow teachers like you to organize a workshop in your area suppose you are an expert in computer assisted instruction CAI or the network computer networks you send a proposal to us saying that we are interested in conducting a short term training programs for about 25 to 30 teachers based on the requirements of the particular area we allot you the program with the pen and give you financial assistance for about a one week's time seven days program actually it is only five days program Monday to Friday Friday program we give around 1.35 lakhs for each program like this we conduct 300 programs every year we get around the 3000 to 4000 applications every year there is a committee to screen all this and area wise requirement wise subject wise and currency based on the current requirement of the currency of the topic they select the courses and be intimate and the funding comes from mh rd through a ACT right now preparation of course materials teacher manuals and other institutional sources source materials under ISTE LMP Indian Society for Technical Education learning materials project this is there from 1997 Swiss Development Corporation has funded this program is funding previously it funded and after this Pocron bomb testing they withdraw this facility and AICT is now supporting and if you are interested in writing in a book we will publish through different publishers and you can write to me I'll we'll go through and we'll give you support for writing the book that's for short-term training program for teachers special short-term program for teachers industries and other professional organizations like plumbing electrical technology and wiring like a lower level this thing we give training for our special program for industry like cat cam we give them special training program also then seminars we conduct a lot of seminars workshops conferences on topics of relevance of technical education we don't conduct you are going to conduct and we give only funding and of course we give you help in organizing these courses information technology oriented programs like ICT like e-learning content development and things like that then conduct of entrepreneurship awareness camps for end teachers and students for both teachers we have a separate program funded by national science entrepreneurship technology technological development board under DST there is an agency and for teachers suppose you want to become an entrepreneur after your degree we help them as to how to become an entrepreneur with the help of DST and entrepreneurship board we conduct program awareness camps about 100 awareness camps throughout the country for students and about 150 to 200 programs for teachers then project formulation like foreign collaboration if you want we can develop a project and implementation and appraisal we've done a lot of appraisal and field by feedback study for UK Indo US studies and Indo UK REC studies and things like that then preparation of directories on technical education facilities and expertise that is available in the country where to get the grant how to get the scholarship how to get a grant to go abroad how to go about getting funds for doing projects all these things we put it in a manual and we give it to the teaching community then we have a publication of a bi monthly IST newsletter which will put all the activities pertaining to only technical education and publication of the quarterly Indian Journal of Technical Education and publication of why this is going to celebrate its 37th year this quarterly Indian Journal IJTE then ISTE handbook the learning materials in engineering and computer science now we have extended to other faculties also then various monographs different reports government reports and recommendations reports major aims and objective is to develop the student in the case of students the personality development and the case of faculty the career development we make them and mold them into a good professional and engineer then we have different types of memberships honorary fellow membership which is selected by us and it is honored on them and life membership then annual membership student membership and an institution can also become a membership of a very meager fee see the annual membership fees around 250 rupees if you go to a cinema you have to pay more for this to viewing a cinema in a major city you have to pay 300 rupees or 350 rupees but whereas to become a membership in ISTE you just pay only 250 rupees then we conduct national convention of ISTE students for students exclusively we conduct annual convention and for teachers we conduct an annual convention every year in the month of December and during that convention a national seminar is also conducted this will be conducted for three days and it is more or like a more or less like a Mela where all the teachers from the country they assemble there discuss their views and it's a meeting point like we have right now 15 sections that are functioning in various states and we have an international collaboration like South and Central Asia UNESCO cooperation then with the Canada India institutional project we have a tie-up with them then industry institute linkage of kept from Canada government we have a linkages then then with the continuing education program like common with learning common with of learning association of continuing education program in at the international level then we have with the funding of Swiss Development Corporation and the department of electronics under the sponsorship of World Bank we have published around 45 learning materials and still the project is going on then the World Federation of Association of College and Polytechnics we are members and we do work for them recently we have become the member of the International Federation for Engineering Education Societies and we are the member of American Society for Engineering Education where they are publishing a journal which is going to celebrate is 100th year I had sent a copy for all the participants which will reach today or tomorrow you can have a copy of that and if you want to subscribe for that one that journal which is going to celebrate its centenary here here you have to pay 5000 rupees if you pay directly if you are an IST member and if you are going to do that through IST for four issues per a per annum you can just pay only 350 rupees and journal will be at your home and remember there are only two articles in this hundred hundred years which has come in this journal only two articles from India has come in that journal and such a good journal exclusively for engineering education on engineering education I should say how to teach various subjects like that that journal you'll be getting a copy of that and if you want you can write to me I'll send it to you then what are our future plans distance education mode of technical education through e-learning various training programs you can we are planning to do through e-learning process and development of information tech informal technical education system then is to establish a technical education national staff college which we don't have so we have an academic staff college under the ages of UGC but we don't have a national staff college for technical education either we have to go to IITs and disturb them or IAC for their training so we are planning to have a national training college staff college so that around the year we can give training for set of teachers regularly then carrier planning personality development of students and faculty development for teachers and to create a national database on technical education system I would like to say a few words about this we are in the process of creating a national database for example if you want to know how many civil engineers are there in Pune then we can we can give you the details with the address and email ID everything and if you want to find out how many m-tux are available in the city of Salem we can give that we are planning to do that already we are the work is commenced and we'll be sending emails to you to get your inputs as well then enhanced number of short term training program for technical teachers from this 300 sttps we would like to increase it to thousand 800 to thousand we have already given a suggestion to government of India the it is under process so develop mechanism for periodic professional refinement of faculty members apart from this training programs short term training programs and all the other things if you have any suggestion like how to improve periodically the professional refinement you can write to me so that we'll take this recommendation to the government of India so you do like this one two three four it'll be useful like that you can give your suggestions can compile and we can give it to them so we have another scheme like visiting professor scheme if any one of your professors are interested in this visiting professor scheme IST will select them and this they can spend this 20 days in an institution in two or three institutions nearby we'll pay them a TAD and all the necessary honorarium to them because now people say that experts are not in large number in a particular area so if you have a few experts in that area we can give them we can support them they can go around and teach instead of giving them see these facilities will take a long time to implement so immediately what we have thought is what we thought is we can ask some professors to go and visit a few engineering colleges nearby the entire expenditure will be taken care of by IST and we can do that then these are all the publications as I told you newsletter every bi it's a bi-monthly newsletter then IJT Indian Journal of Technical Education you can send articles if refereed articles or ramen review articles or research articles will publish in that journal and the editor of the journal you can you can simply write to me we will send we have a reviewer review team we'll send it for review blind review and we will publish in the journal then this IST handbook which is very popular and then we have a lot of other CI, CEB, Canada Institutional Cooperation Project books which are all free of cost students primer for all students chapter we give them free and this learning materials project is under this project if you are interested in authoring a book you can write to me or you can even help take the help of another professor or your colleague so that you can author you can co-author you can make him or her as a co-author and write to us and we take all the expenses initially we were giving one lakh rupees for the author once when they give the complete manuscript to us which is nowhere in the in the publishing field except popular article popular writers we give them to encourage teachers we give them one lakh rupees as soon as they give the complete manuscript to us whether the book is printed or sold or what what not we just give them one lakh rupees as a token honorarium and 10% of the royalty will also be given to them like that we have about 35 books published are in the market but I don't know how far it is selling that's a different question then working professionals learning project this is a project for people who are working in the industry if they want to get themselves trained and preparing manuals for them giving training for them there is a special project called as working professionals learning project it is functioning from Bangalore if you want any details out of this you can write to me then there is a you into UK REC project which was completed and this British Council has given the project to us where the UK government given as given money to NIT REC professors at the time to exchange programs like 25 to 50 teachers from one particular REC will go to various institutions in UK spend around one year there get them get themselves accounted with the latest technology and come back here and teach this is an exchange program and to study the impact of this exchange program they have given this program to me to analyze I think I have time then technical education education system ISTE micro Bosch occupational training centers we have established in various engineering colleges about 49 centers we have established and this is for school dropouts and rural youths you just started this one with the help of ministry of human resource development you've done this various packages we are then entrepreneurship training I told you for engineers for teachers and students and these ADP cells which are formed by the mh rdm formed by DST and the Ahmadabad cell EDC we are the certification agency for them that's a minor thing we just give our logo to them and we certify them that's all and there is other projects which we are currently running is the ASW journal of engineering education project and we are also the strategic partners for them and for international conferences we give them inputs from here and whenever they come here we are the strategic partners whatever help they want to conduct programs both in India and as well as in other countries we help them logistically and we are the first agency to come out of USA for this journal and we are the people who distribute this we print the journal here we distribute this for the entire Asia Pacific region then type hack mission we are there for identification of type hack core projects and lot of other type hack mission projects we are all IST is involved in various projects whatever they want we will help them all possible ways then IIT again M it is B IIT Bombay E outreach project and we are very happy to be in this project I would like to say that because Professor Prathak is doing an extremely good work and what we have done I'll tell you they have developed about 10 to 15 content in the CD and they have put this in the open source and they have given training for the various engineering college teachers and people from industries as well now we entered into IIT Bombay only because of Professor Prathak and E wanted IST as an independent body to find out and give them a feedback of as what the teachers feel about this 15 CDs that they have the content that they have developed what do they want how do they feel the exact feedback not like technical one they want only the feedback of the exact content what is their expectation are they fulfilling their expectation of the teachers they want to do a feedback study we have selected six DVDs which they have selected which have developed given these six DVDs were given to 35 to 40 participants of each of the short term training programs conducted in various parts of the country like Nirmah University one in Magastra another one in Kerala another one in Kit Bhuvaneshwar so these 40 teachers who have undergone this course use this DVD and during their course of one week training and they went back to their institution use their DVD to their students in their teaching process for that particular subject and after that we have framed a feedback form and we've given it to them now we have we have collected around 70 to 75 percent of the feedback from them apart from this I have selected two more institutions from south one is SRM University and another one is Shastra University from Thanjavur I have distributed this DVD to them and asked them to give the feedback on this I'm getting excellent feedback from them of course a few suggestions also have given so I'm here to make make a compilation of this and I'm going to support submit that report to professor Pathak and based on that he will modify here and there and this project is going to be a good success there is simultaneously there is another one which is going on an NPTEL in IIT Madras they are doing all they are also doing a wonderful job but this one is particularly open source and their speciality of this is you don't have to pay any money for this and only thing is you have to spend time to go through that one and learn you can find this on our eoutreach website where you registered online and you have a list of workshops available and you can easily download them or watch them on your computer so they are available free for everybody to use and a professor Pathak's dream is to conduct workshop like this thousand workshops not spending time like this over through open source and through this web education web seminars it's got a lot of good ideas of course as I already told you in the beginning as a squirrel played a role in Rama and we are also playing a role in this national mission of ISTE I hope this project will have a very big success and the name given to this project in the whole thing is a Caliphia and we are not going to ask any Guru Dakshina out of this that's free the second part of it's not put in your brochure that the sad part of it purposefully they have not done it and other project is that mhre TVET project government of India has given about earmarked about 560 crores for this and they don't know how to implement this and about 20 meetings of so far been conducted and another next meeting a draft paper and approach paper is also there if you're interested I'll faim and email it to you if you have any other suggestions you can send it to us and next project is IUCE India project like Indo-US as a Indo-US communication I'm in center for engineering education they have already conducted two courses fully sponsored by Infosys in at Infosys campus 600 trainees were trained in the first workshop and another 600 to 650 trainees were trained in the second workshop faculty from us all the way came from us gave lectures demonstration everything and I am the country coordinator for this IUC project I made a good suggestion to them both they on during the workshop both the workshops 50 people from us came then I asked that question don't you find experts in India to train them there was no direct answer from them one drawback is that they are not they were not involving any of the IIT professionals or teachers and professors here next workshop will be held in same Infosys where large amount of IIT professors are going to take part and only 50 percent 25 to 50 percent of the US professors will be there this will minimize their expenses and as well we can involve IIT professors they are they are more than the professors were working in US I am very confident and next one is the EGRU project EGRU wanted to give them a certification project for engineers they're very weak in engineering fraternity so IST is helping them to bring about changes in their engineering stream and to give them training on distance education they are going to introduce civil engineering, electrical, computer programming things like that it's going to come in a big way then there is an INTC project I told you that for skill development of school dropouts and workers sons and daughters they are going to give training then skill development project of MHRD this is a separate section on the skill development which we are involved then there is a columbian exchange project tomorrow there is a meeting at New Delhi columbian government would like to have exchange program with ISTE they want to send 50 teachers every year to columbia to train their teachers and we are going to sign an MOU tomorrow and I'm the country coordinator for program coordinator for that columbian exchange project tomorrow and we'll be selecting 50 teachers based on their requirements whether they want from civil or IT or computer science or mechanical we'll be sending them for one month and regularly we'll be sending them we have not worked out the inner details of this exchange project these are all the various projects that we are taking whether we are conducting in ISTE and if you want if you're already a member you can write to me for details you can visit our website if you're not a member and you are interested in becoming a member write to me and thank you for your patience and if you have any questions I'll be very happy to answer all your questions thank you as we all are aware of I think there is some power problem second is the Washington Accord I think why they're given as Washington Accord we can frame our own Accord no Indian Accord or something I don't understand why very very very good because NBA committee I think last year they came to PhD campus I am my department I was surprised to hear this name why what is this and they are telling this is new system they're following and so on I was surprised why they are giving some other name and we can frame our own set of measurement techniques I think because in India the system is entirely different in university is different why we have to follow at some other system good question let me answer that one first question I will answer about this as you said I also agree that you need a lot of infrastructure for implementing this as you said program but you get subsidy from AICT and you get subsidy from government if you want to set up ISRO is the agency which is setting up which is which will give you the system it doesn't require big big systems you know just an ROT is required that is read only terminal or receive only terminal and if it if you want that to be an interactive system busy only terminal is will not cost you much only a computer system and antenna that they will if you are interested you can write to them they will ISRO amadabad they will come and install that's free you don't have to spend anything and if you want an interactive system like when when you put a system in your college there is a specific time for that you have to ask your students to come and assemble there as set of small video camera like your webcam is enough so that will capture the figure of the student and there is a small device which will take the voice also the student who is listening to the lecture can put a question to the teacher who is teaching during the time that is interactive this thing that will cost a little bit more than your ROT that also subsidize that that facilities also subsidize and you will get it you can write to them show your interest they will come and give you free of cost but in my opinion there is a drawback I'll tell you suppose if the lecture is 10 to 11 now we are in the field of cable TV any time any moment while you travel you watch your favorite movie on your mobile on your laptop on your palm top everywhere and if you ask the student to come and sit on C only in the small screen that will not work instead you can put this you can put webcasting and it should not be synchronous program it should be asynchronous program any time as and when you like if it is webcasted there will be love and viewers your TPR rate whatever this visual this thing or TRP TRP rate will increase for this one only but moreover this is a expenditure department education is an expenditure department as far as government of India is concerned but it is income department as far as the private department private colleges are concerned so views vary so it cannot be matched but it was done on a good intention nowhere in the world it is a separate satellite for educational purpose only India has put this exclusively for educational purpose this edu-satism exclusively for education purpose thanks to column he has done the objective was to take these multimedia things get the good teacher's lecture to the remote place through the small device with the help of a satellite if it is beamed through the central beam and a professor like Deepak Pathak or X or Y who comes and gives a lecture that can be viewed by a person who is sitting in Kanyakumari or Timbaktoon that is objective that was the objective but then I don't think it is working now in a full swing as it used to be now that coming back to Washington a car Washington a car like that we have our own system of accreditation as I told you same agency is doing the accreditation job right now accreditation is a nightmare for our institutions you have to create a lot of certificate and documents is why is that it should be friendly see it should be friendly right now the answer for your question why not our own standards why we should follow these standards see that is an international standard if you have your own standard which is acceptable by the international standard right see they have formulated a standard not only for Washington Washington is the place where all the engineering educators joined together and they found since the accord was signed in Washington it was called as Washington accord that's all the engineering educators in the world throughout the world accepted saying that there should be a uniform standard to be maintained in any institution based on the teacher suppose you say teacher how will you judge the quality of a teacher in an institution your views may vary and his views may vary my management if I'm at from a management I will say okay this fellow is good looking good his English is good even if your if his content is not good let him manage but that is bad you you need to have sound content knowledge and if your English is poor that's okay but over a period of time you will improve but if you have only English don't have content that is dangerous you cannot survive you must be very good in your subject then later on if your English is poor you can take the help of our English professor and you can become a good in that one right that is why international standard has been accepted by various con various other countries okay this will be the standard and if you are acts if you are accepting for this standard to be followed in your country you become a member for that this members of this Washington Accord will come and see whether you are following certain standards or not initially they came to India they said no nothing doing it is not correct your NBA accreditation process is not correct just by seeing your documents you can't judge the quality of the institution yes that is why that is why so now they say that it is not based on your inputs even they have changed initially the standard was based only on inputs you have this classroom you have so many computers you have this X by Y meters of seminar halls so many hostels so many faculty their qualification one one two three four like that they have done but then those are input based now they have taken on given only weightage for this input only 25% remaining 75% is for outcome based now it is outcome based assessment so far we have been following only input based two three officials from AICT appointed officials will come to our college and say whether you have this land document show me where your stamp in it where the rubber stamp in it where you signed all such clerical details they will look into that which you can easily forge which people are doing it but what is the output how many students are placed okay now you have taught we are teaching are they learning that they should see we are first is we are teaching okay how many class of us you have how many periods for this particular subject all these things they were they used to judge based on that now they have changed okay whatever you teach how much they have learned output based now it is outcome based assessment is there and we Indians we only told them okay you make us as a member come to our country see how we do so they have given okay fine you be a temporary member after that only they will it is not necessary that they will come and say that according to Washington accord they have been accredited not like that our country is going to assess you based on the recommendations and standard derived or given by a Washington you got the point are you satisfied or but there is a separate thing for as to how to go about this outcome based assessment this thing even people in AICT do not know how to do this and it is available in the net and you can go through that if you are particularly interested in accreditation that is your talking about this outcome and so on sometimes what we may be concentrating is okay they are constant that is this accord according to this accord they are concerned about the past percentage so we have to improve the past percentage I think the complete scenario changes the way of educating my students and play again I'll go back to the school conducting exams I have to train for the exam make him pass I will you see there are various ways of evaluating a student it is not only because of only the end of semester examination that you okay you have scored eighty-nine I can show you number of candidates who have miserably failed in IIT JEE who have scored more than thousand one hundred marks out of thousand two hundred in plus two why see the evaluation system varies the in IIT JEE they evaluate your understanding your knowledge but in but in other state government examinations just a remembrance if you know that okay this if this question comes I like this answer and if I twist and ask you a question as to solve this simple rule with a simple rule you will miserably fail that is what this IIT JEE people who can think and apply the formula and they solve the problem that's why they say your education doesn't have problems solving skills they're accusing us but that we have to in a way we have to accept that also moreover there are other reasons for this a large huge amount of failures in JEE because for a few seats so many people are applying and the competition naturally will be more and the general feeling is the approach is different evaluation approach is different from various government agencies and in Punjab government up and the Punjab government has said that it is enough if you it is doesn't matter if you fail in three subject like max English and science these are all the main thing and you'll be given I would be promoted but thanks to Kapil Sibili say no examination up to 10th see people will have if you are not evaluated you will lose interest see there should be and I am not far or against I'm say that there should be some form of evaluation otherwise the teacher will lose the motivation to teach the students will have will not have any motivation to read see just because you have a few cases of you know disturbances in some part of the country that people are pressurized there's a lot of stress and things like that try to find out ways as to how to reduce that stress unless you teach how do they learn see most of the time people will be watching surfing net and seeing movies only how many of the people how to get out how stuff works on all this website is there how many of the students find out go to the net and find out how this thing is working what is the distance difference between 8080 microprocessor and other things no they don't do what is the difference between optical zoom and a digital zoom how to buy a good digital camera what is SLR what is digital SLR if you want to go through things are available in the net but how many people are doing that that's another question so quality definitely will be enhanced if you give them more opportunity like this that's why professor Patak has done a very good job of giving you a notebook so you meddle with that sometimes you listen if you board if you get bored now you meddle with this and do this right thank you very much and if you have another question I mean some more questions feel free to ask me please sir whether ISTE provide any assistance for B schools as such you know okay yeah see we have about 30 staff members in ISTE and a large amount of membership we manage only with 30 people and all the salary of this 30 people come from aid of government of India aid we don't collect any extra money from anybody and we have to be accountable for every single pie we spend three different auditors are there you have to do that and we get money only students students pay 120 rupees for four years to become a member for 120 rupees you can just imagine out of that 40 rupees will go to the section suppose you are a student from Tamil Nadu and if you send the section and the college will get some share out of this to maintain their activities we get only 80 rupees and if you buy a coke can for your friends your final rupees note will go out in few minutes but it is for the benefit of the students and teachers at a low cost for these schools we will give you addresses and websites where you can get scholarships travel grants money for doing your projects that we can give you may not be aware of that one from where you can get what type of projects if you submit will you be able to get the grant from them those things we can assist you free of cost yeah I have a question this you take proposals for workshops and books and all yeah do you take proposals for content preparation like suppose your website tells you need content in these areas and it may be a housewife submitting a proposal but you can take a buy data like you can tap the potential of so many women who generally take a break of three four years because of kids but from home we can go content preparation for you this is which we can be paid like it's like it's an excellent one and we I have not mentioned that in this project there is a women organization I'll give you the email ID to you yeah this can come up I'll tell you this is a wonderful idea wonderful idea which we have already in our in our organization there is an organization in Chennai what they have do what they have done is a lady like what you are asking question she has prepared a portal and she has invited proposals from various housewives where they cannot go to the institution and teach where they cannot go to the industry to work from at home taking care of the child along with taking care of the child she can help in content development not only content development during week days like Saturday Sunday she can come out and give lectures to them there is an organization and they have about 32,000 housewives and what is the role of ISD in that like to spread this message and we have a database about all these 32,000 people what they are doing where they are available not only in Chennai the organization is in Chennai right in Pune in Allahabad wherever you are nearby areas ISD will say okay this particular X is available in that area networks so you can take help from her so we act as a act as a bridge between this I will give you that this is popularized actually there is another advantage see many of the local colleges when they are doing a subject allocation for one particular subject of faculty is not there that time they get the information okay this person can be tabbed as a freelancer excellent so if that I think if this mission is popularized we get the energy of many such women who don't go out to work and but still they will be contributing in a good manner work at home yeah that can be done I will give you the web but when you write to me I'll give my card to you yeah my thing is there on the screen I showed to you you write to me I'll give the address of that lady managing director she is an housewife she does from Chennai and she has got a lot of thing and if you you can become a if you are from Mumbai you can have a center open that this place also so that you can coordinate and do things because in this private things we do see on the web such things where they say but we are afraid to log in and become a part of it because we don't know how authenticated body it is I'll give you the address of this one and you can trust ISTE will be behind you and sure sure that will be nice thank you very nice so I thank you once again for your patience and I am once again thankful to professor Patak for giving me an opportunity to share my views with you and if you have any suggestions on ICT or journal or particularly on technical education if you feel that this is a good idea of mine you can think about it definitely you can write to us write to me particularly or to my web ID I mean email ID you can send an email and I'll be very thankful to you thank you so much