 కి లికార్టా మోని. పా నిన్నిాసి రోచాదింట్సి కార్టాన్టా. కిని కండిసికిి. ప్ లౚలౙం. నోన్టాది. రండిసింటా. పా ని . ని.్టాటికికా. � చాతాలి కాత్ brush in ఀèmesచా Glas గాగలు .. కంాకాకి kiss the nice భాతి height ఏకినరకగా and speech . ौf the stories are first time, as you can see, I have no slides. I have cock sheets which I have prepared for last one month. It was interesting to know that one month's effort came out to just 3 pages of scripted notes. So, my first thought is to say back to basics. When we talk about motivating students, when we talk about doing anything in fact, as an information scientist, I typically like to ask these questions, what are we trying to do, who are we trying to address things to, why we are trying to do, what we are trying to do, where we like to do, what we want to do, and when we would do that. The first job is to find answers to these five values, and then of course finally, once we are satisfied that we understand these, we need to answer how we do this. In a many other style, this is described as five lives and one husband, but I think these are important questions. So, what are we trying to do, motivate. Anybody could help me with what motivation would mean generally, what would to motivate me, create interest. That is a very, I would say negate your positive statement, but it is a circular definition, so we will not take that. You cannot use the word itself to define itself. So, to create positive thoughts, all of these statements presume that unless we do something about it, these things will not happen. That means, there is a need to motivate. If that need is not fulfilled, people would largely remain unmotivated. Is that assumption correct? I would submit that as human beings, each one of us are naturally motivated for doing certain things. The first and foremost is survival. The survival instinct guides the entire human species to do so many things, which the other species don't do. Can we not therefore assume that some fundamental motivation can be taken for granted in every human being that we deal with. Therefore, when we say we want to motivate, we must mean something more than that. So, what is that something more? So, when we say to encourage students to do harder work, we are saying we want to encourage students to do harder work than what they would otherwise do. When we say we want to increase positive thinking, we are not assuming for a moment that all human beings think negatively. We are assuming that they would ordinarily be thinking positively. But we want to increase that positive thinking. And as he rightly points out, in that context, stopping them from getting demotivated would mean reducing the negative thinking that you might occasionally observe amongst your students. In general, there are logical faculties and emotional faculties and both work in harmony in human beings to permit them to achieve whatever creative pursuits they do. The logical faculty is often defined by two factors. One is a genetic factor. And as God's children, the human species have been endowed with very special logical thinking capabilities which other species do not have to the same extent. The emotional factor, however, is a variable. It varies depending upon so many things. We are all familiar with that. Our moods, for example, depending upon whether I had a fight yesterday evening with my family or whether I had a very nice cozy dinner, my behavior today, warming, would be affected sometimes greatly. Barring these ups and downs which will happen on a day-to-day, instant-to-instant basis, our objective, therefore, would be to keep the positive energy levels at the highest position. That should be perhaps one of the expectations out of motivation. I would therefore like to define to motivate should mean to mean is to increase emotional involvement in whatever students are doing. So basically increase energy levels, increase passion. We of course understand that this increase is expected to be in the positive direction that is constructive and not destructive. Because as you know human energies are capable of doing both very well. We have seen those. We see them again and again. So amongst all the definitions that are available, for example, Oxford dictionary is a slightly different definition of motivation. A person who is motivated is said to be one who works harder and with greater interest. That is something that came out of our earlier discussion, works harder and works with greater interest. So the relative term is important. The relative term is also important in absolute sense to every student. If we have 60 students in a class or 100 or 20 or whatever be the number, in fact number is one of the problems as I shall mention later on. But we must understand that each individual student is an individual package of logical thinking capabilities and emotional energies. No two human beings are alike. And we as teachers somehow must address every individual student that is very hard activity. The hardest part is to be able to address every individual student. But somehow that must be the motive behind whatever we do. So what we want to do then is to motivate which for the purpose of our discussion we will take it to mean to increase the emotional involvement. You would all agree that the emotional involvement is more if the energy levels are more, if the passion is greater. Then the same logical thinking capabilities get applied more vigorously to whatever activity students or for that matter any human being is doing. Whom do we want to motivate? So we will now answer the second question. Who? Students is of course our understand. But let us examine this in slightly greater detail. Who are the students? In an institution where we all teach we can categorize students into various classes. What we automatically mean by students is students in our class that we are teaching. Is that definition comprehensive enough? There are students who are not sitting in my class but there are students in my institution. There are teachers in my institution who are going to teach and motivate other students and they would also like to learn. Should we therefore not expand the notion of a student to the notion of all learners? While we specifically target those students who sit in our classes and take our courses, we cannot say that other learners are not part and parcel of the educational process that we engage ourselves in. Which means this will include not only other students whom I do not teach, not only other teachers who are not students at all but more fundamentally it includes myself as a teacher. I will dwell upon this later but I am convinced that unless I can motivate myself, my ability to motivate others would be very limited and therefore I must spend enough time in motivating myself and remain motivated. Why? Why do we want to motivate people? Why do we want to motivate students? Various definitions of course. After all when we want them to work harder, when we want them to be more interested, ultimately what is the object? We want them to do better in life, we want them to be better problem solvers, we want them to develop new technologies, we want them to be more effective, we want them to be more productive. So can we say to make more productive and effective in whatever they do. When are people more productive and more effective? One is of course when they are motivated. The second and equally important part is when they are enjoying things that they are doing. So I would like to add with your permission to make them more productive and effective in a happy manner. I am using a very generic word but I hope you will understand. Anybody who is unhappy will be less productive and less effective than what he or she can be. And that brings us to the second important corollary of this. The objective must be because as I said each human being is distinct and different. The logical faculties there would be some differences while God has endowed us with great faculties. There will be some differences. The ability to work hard, the ability to concentrate, the ability to engage would be different in different people. Are we therefore trying to bring every human being to the same level of achievement? Well, I personally believe that it is not possible. After all, all of you have been teachers. So when you evaluate students, there is somebody who is a topper and there is somebody in the bottom of the class. And just because somebody is at the top does not mean that that person knows everything in that subject. Similarly, just because somebody is at the bottom of the class does not mean either that the student does not know anything about this subject. So the objective why we want to do this could also be stated as getting the best out of an individual. I must warn you that this is a condition which can never be evaluated to be satisfied. Why? Because no human being has figured out what is the best that that human being can do. Every time you do something, if you examine you can always feel that you could have done something better. And you do that better and after that again you go back and introspect, you will find out could have done something better. If this is true with each one of us, there is no reason to believe why it is not true with each one of our students. And therefore this is what we call an illusive target, a perpetual target. If we remember that the students will be with us for a very limited period of their younger years. Four years for an undergraduate school, two years for a postgraduate school, maybe four to five years for a PhD school. But rest of their lives they are going to spend independent. Just as they come to us with a certain make-up of their intellectual and emotional capabilities, when they leave us they will acquire a whole lot of new inputs from the real world where they will work, which will subsequently shape both their logical faculties and their emotional energies. Knowing this for us the objective must be preparing a student to continuously get the best out of himself or herself in rest of their life. Which puts a very special responsibility on us. A motivated student must never ever be demotivated irrespective of what life he or she faces. Like it or not, that is our responsibility. If we think motivating students is our responsibility, then the motivation cannot be short lived. The motivation cannot end after they pass their degrees from our colleges and leave. To empower sustainable motivation then becomes an objective. You would agree that this is very important because we are preparing students for a long technical career. And in that entire career their energy levels must be maintained at the highest level. When we recruit faculty members, this is a question that we often ask. When we promote faculty members or do not promote them, this is a question that we often ask. A young assistant professor coming to the institute or a lecturer coming to another college might appear to be very enthusiastic, might indeed be very motivated at that point in time. Will that person be able to retain that motivation level 20 years hence, particularly during those 20 years, the person does not get any advancement in the career, any recognition, any improvement in the salary structure, you can all see that. In spite of all that, several of us remain motivated. If we go back and examine, perhaps there are some triggers in this self-motivation that we receive in our own school days, in our own college days from some teachers. Teachers are not just those who are branded as teachers. Even our parents are our first teachers. Our colleagues are our teachers. People in life are teachers. Perhaps those learnings that we picked up at various places permit us to retain the higher levels of energy, higher levels of motivation later. If we agree with this, then is it therefore not our duty to impart that kind of motivation to our students which will be sustained, which cannot be challenged and changed by the rest of the world, no matter what the world does to them. Of course we would expect world to do good things to them because we believe the students who come to us are good students in the first place. So this is my answer to why we want to motivate. We want to create people who are maximally proactive and effective in life, who are happily being productive and effective, not unhappily. And we want to create people who remain motivated throughout their lives after their lives, no matter what they are, where they are, what they do. As to where and how, sorry, where and when to where, my answer is everywhere. So what does it mean? Does it mean we automatically engage people in classrooms? That is fine. Do we engage them or not even at least by chance at places other than classrooms? Well, I must include laboratories of course. They are part and parcel of the academic activities. But those of you who have hostels on the campus would have had the privilege of interacting with students occasionally during their hostel stay as wardens or something. Those of you who do not have hostels, we have occasion to have interacted with them on several events, whether it is social gathering, whether it is a technical event of the institution, whether it is simply an inter-college or drama competition where you just go to attend that competition and see how your students are performing. Whether you meet them in market, everywhere, everywhere. Why I stress this is that if we presume that we have some ability to motivate students, then this ability cannot be and should not be switched on and switched off depending upon where we are. The ability must make itself felt and seen by the students independent of where they interact with us. This is very important because students who are otherwise motivated by a teacher in a classroom by observing a shoddy behaviour of the same teacher somewhere else might completely get demotivated. Believe me, I have seen this happening and therefore our responsibility is far greater. So therefore it has to be everywhere. When? Again I would say it. Everyone. And what do we mean by everywhere? Because everywhere generally covers all the events, but it covers only one part of the event. That is when we meet them and interact with them. So whether it is in the classroom there is that. So that one is answered. But there is another hidden one even in absentia. This factor is important particularly if you agree with my earlier observation that we must provide sustainable motivation. A sustainable motivation means that even ten years later, five years later the student remains motivated. Now whatever little we do, plus of course whatever so many other inputs that the student gathers in life. This sustainability means that in absentia motivation must be provided. Some acts of others, some thought processes, some interaction must imprint itself into the minds of students that the students are forced to remember those even ten years, twenty years, thirty years later. I cannot give a better example of this. Then some of the motivation that is provided by some very great leaders in a very short stint where the motivation is sustainable. All of us know Mahatma Gandhi perhaps many of us know the Champa and Satyagra which he had launched. You will also remember late Dr. Rajayani Prasad was the first president of India. Not many may know that he was actually a practicing barista lawyer and extremely well to do wealthy individual. People used to pay him lot of money because he was a very very competent lawyer. All that the Mahatma did was that the initiation of the Champa and Satyagra he went and stayed with Rajayani Prasad because he was also an active congressman. He stayed with him for three days. That's all. And then he went about for his Satyagra and then he went about. Those three days are reported to have changed Dr. Rajendra Prasad's life. He gave up everything that he had. I don't know whether it is well known that when he died he had nothing of his own. He had given up everything that he had. Manapas, of course, are Mahatma Gandhi and not many of our students would be same as the capability of Dr. Rajendra Prasad but we are still all human beings. We come from the same generation. But if you want to imagine what should be the sustainable motivation I think this could be a good example of sustainable motivation. And therefore I submit that our motivational effort must be every one, even when we are not present. For other eyes, they would be very limited. Would you agree with this analysis in general? Of course, there are many more dimensions to motivation. I am merely reciting some from my own personal experiences. You may add several rich experiences of your own to this. But please remember that I personally consider motivating students to be the most important contribution that teachers can make. Not even the actual technology teaching that we do would be comparable to this. So with this now, we will come back to the question of how. Since motivating people is more of an emotional exercise than the logical exercise, it is extremely difficult to pin it down and therefore I would try to analyze again this from basics. So when we say how to motivate first, we understand what motivates a student and here to be very clear, I will generalize this to say what motivates a learner. Any ideas on this? I think all of us will agree that the fundamental motivation for the student comes in achieving better marks, grades, degrees. That is the fundamental motivation. We see that very often. In any case or any assignment that you give, people try to score maximum marks. They come and argue with us if they get less marks. They particularly come and argue with us if they get less marks than somebody else. That is a very standard phenomenon in IIT at least. This is called cribbing. And the great cribbies will fight for half an hour for half a mile. Had they used that half an hour to study more, they would have got two marks in the next exam. That the spirit of fighting for half a mile is so predominant that they will argue endlessly. We see that. You would have seen that right in your own college. So marks, grades, degrees is a very fundamental motivation fact. Unfortunately, this often becomes the most dominant motivating factor if not the only motivating factor. And our ads do not sadly do much to dispel this myth. Our system of education has become such that the only evaluation that the student undergoes is major in terms of marks and grades. Please remember that the students come to the engineering college having gone through precisely this setup all the eleven years of education. Twelve years of education. All the time, the only evaluation has been marks, marks, marks. This results in a very sad situation which while we are cursory aware of, we rarely have time to delve more deeply into it. It is important to understand that when you compare people based on their marks and they obviously marks would have a pyramidal structure. There will be a large number of people at less marks, a few people at more marks, some people at some higher marks. One or two at the top. This is exactly how all students have been gauged or measured for eleven years of their life. In fact, you will appreciate that when students seek admission to engineering colleges. The only criteria that is applied for admission to a specific college or to a specific branch is the marks that they have scored in one exam. Whether it is a standard exam or our giant entrance exam or your pre-engineering test or whatever it is. And that examination and its results classify students very, very mercilessly into achievers and non-achievers. So depending upon the craze at the time of admission and given point in time. Today I believe it is computer science and art. At one time it used to be mechanical engineering. And chemical engineering was a very specialized thing. There would be people who go in for chemical engineering as a top choice. The top choice is determined by various factors at different points in time. But at any given point in time the factor which is the most determining factor for this is the one which every student in the community will crave for. So if some student gets admission in VJTI for computer science, the student and the family will be scattered. If on the other hand let's say I have scored 77% marks, which is a very decent score in absolute terms. Equal amount of anomalies. But given that level of marks today 77% is not even laughable. I probably not get admission anywhere. So I have to go to some small college in Jharsugula and take admission. And I will join that college. Or I will join the department which is not of my choice with a great level of diffidence in me. I will join that institution assuming that I am not good enough. And any evaluation based on marks will always create many more of such whom we call losers. They have not made it to what they wanted to make it to. So there are a few winners and many losers. We call this rat race, right? All of you will be familiar with this term. Rat race at higher secondary level. Rat race has a beautiful property. Rat race always creates some winner rats, a few winner rats and a large number of loser rats. Nevertheless, a rat race only creates rats. Our objective is to create human beings. One of the fundamental aspects that we must address is how do we take these incoming rats and convert them into humans. I give an example which I found very pertinent. I myself learnt from it when my colleague, Professor Isaac was teaching a course in a computer program. In those days we did not have 300 students class that started when the four year program started. Earlier it used to be different branches. Electrical, metallurgy, chemical I think were in one semester and several aeronautical, mechanical or other similar things. So I was actually teaching the course and he was my tutor. In those days we did not have enough masters teaching assistants. So teachers themselves used to be TAs. By the way this is something very peculiar about IIT but which I would like you to consider practicing at your places. I was a very young teacher then but I was the instructor in charge for the course. Professor Isaac was my guru, my boss. He was my tutor. And in this arrangement neither he nor I found anything different. He was given charge of a batch of students who were metallurgical engineering students. So during the tutorial time as a teacher I would go from class to class and I just entered his class when I heard the following dialogue. He was of course as usual shouting at people saying why are you not doing this? Why are you not able to do this problem? Once from what I have said said we are only metallurgical engineering students. You know computers and all are meant for electrical engineering. Those days there is no computer science. It is meant for electrical engineering. So obviously they can solve these problems better. We cannot solve them. He says what is this nonsense? You know you also learnt a language. Electrical engineering students also learnt a language. At the age of three years which you call your mother tongue now. So why can't you learn this programming language which is much stupider than a human language? Why can't you learn it as well as they can? I thought this was a very simple example but very effective example which I have subsequently elaborated. And I always state this example. You might want to try this or a variation to tell your students this. That every human child learns a foreign language at the age of three years to four years five years whatever. And the child does not undergo any examination, any coaching, any classes, any certificates, any degree books. None, none, absolutely none. And every human child learns that foreign language effectively in less than three years. Later on we call that foreign language the mother tongue of the child. My own conclusion is that if a human child can do this complex problem solving, I consider it a very complex problem solving. Learning a foreign language as some of you might have told doing that now please see how the goal of learning a foreign language. I want to learn German. I will go attend an elementary course for one year. Then I will take an intermediate course. Then I will go to maximum level. I will take an advanced course. For three years a rigorous course, books, lectures, certificates, exams, I will be able to barely translate some German literature from German into English. Can I speak German fluently? Doubtful. Can I understand everything that a German speaker speaks? Doubtful. And this we have grown into other capabilities enormously. Then this happens. But when we are children, we can speak the mother tongue as fluently as any other human being of that particular species and sector can. No books, no exams, no certificates. What does it mean? I take it to mean that the God has endured every individual human being with sufficient logical capability to solve most complex problems in life. Does it mean that all human beings are equal in their logical capabilities? Of course not. There are some who are quicker, who are faster. Please note that the modern learning teaching environment gives an enormous premium to those few who can think out the solution in the shortest possible time. 300 exam, 10 minute quiz. Somebody who solves that problem in 12 minutes is useless. So somebody has guessed the marks. And we do doubt people as useless. I have seen at the pre-engineering test level many this happened several years ago when IT was not there, but computer science was there, was the top stream. And I go to a friend's place. His son had scored insufficient marks in the pre-engineering test or some such thing. But then I went home. The whole world as if somebody has died in the family. And I was talking to the friend. He said, The father is describing his own son's achievement in such derogatory terms. That means all the expectations of the family have gone kapu. It is greatly surprising that the young boy had not committed suicide already. Such early pressures and expectations that the family is now tend to put. And the students who survive those pressures still come to us to study mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, humanities, mathematics, physics, chemistry. But they come to us with a deep heart. Most of them. A few of them come with an extraordinary super confidence. I work computer science. I am the best in the world. God has sent me specially to this world to do something good for humanity. Other people are much better. They don't matter. This is the mentality of the people that we get amongst our mates. What do we do about them? My suggestion friends is try and use this or similar examples that you can. But to tell them what is it that has made their life as is and what is it that can change it if they think the life is not already good enough. I have analysed a child in this light. How a child learns this. I believe that the child has three extraordinary capabilities which somehow are diluted in the subsequent growth of the child. The first and foremost curiosity. Have you ever seen a child who is not curious? I have not seen one. Extraordinary curious about everything. Along with that curiosity the child has extraordinary boldness to ask questions including stupid questions. When a child asks some stupid questions how do we react? How do we react? Why do we react differently when a student in our class asks a question which is apparently stupid? He says sit down. Don't disturb the class. Don't ask to go questions. Why? Please remember and this is something I have learnt first time from an extraordinary teacher Professor Bedford who used to teach us electrical fields in our intake classes. One student who continuously asks questions which most of us felt were silly but he will always react saying you have a point. However, if you see it like this and then statingly he will explain again second time, third time and he used to be amazed as to how he can control his anger and frustration. Later on when I became a teacher and I had an occasion to talk to him I had mentioned this point to him. Professor Bedford how can you be so nice to such people? You know what he said? He says photography is nothing about being nice. It is to do with retaining his willingness to ask questions. He says please understand one thing if you knew that the question you are asking is stupid he is intelligent enough not to have a husband so for him or her the difficulty is real. Very good point extremely important point Thank you for making this suggestion. So my dear friends our educational system choose a people's boldness from the time they enter the first standard in a class till the time they pass child standard by the time they come to us they have forgotten their boldness and because they have stopped asking questions they have stopped asking questions which means they have forgotten their curiosity also and as you all know whether it is engineering or any other field learning is all about asking questions learning is all about applying mind learning is all about being curious we have therefore a far greater challenge that the society has given us the responsibility to deal with how do we take these 12 standard students most of whom have lost their curiosity and boldness and I come to the other category of few winners in a short while I submit that even they have lost this for a different reason altogether and how do we resurrect them there is a third capability and that is perseverance I have rarely seen a child who gives up on something that it wants to do it will try 2 times 3 times 5 times 10 times 10 times it will not give up if a child wants to come and stand on this desk and child will pull from that and pull from that and fall down twice pull a chair, stand on the chair again for half or two minutes finally earth attend, turn again somewhere when others are not looking the child you are managed to pull a stool or something stand up on it, get on the work and then when you notice you are trying happily when did we last smile so happily in our lives I am not even talking about students I am talking about us we human beings as we go up seem to lose out on the seniors we learn to give up in our school we attempt some difficult problems sometimes then we give up after sometimes by the time we finish the school we are graduated to a level where we are learn to give up sometimes my humble submission to you friends is that if you can re-select the curiosity the bonus and the perseverance of a child in your students you have one ninety percent of the battle rest of it the students will do themselves and I am very thankful to the suggestion that was made here that this perhaps happens because of the environment of trust and love I would not say that the environment of trust and love creates these qualities I would still maintain that these are the qualities that the God has been kind enough to give to us some of these are intrinsic in every life form but human species specially have this right from birth we do the sinful activity of curtailing these things through our system but can we not therefore do a positive activity of re-selecting these to the extent that is possible all that it needs to be done is that the students must be told no matter what march you got no matter how you got admission in the college of your choice or not no matter you got admission to your field of your choice or not after all your choices were based on certain assumptions at that point in time four years later when you pass out of my institute you are going to face a world which may be much different than what it was but what you have heard about doing this and don't forget that every activity in human sphere requires as much innovation as much hardware as much problems of it as much enjoyment as any other field there is nothing so peculiar about java programming that is not there in let's say designing a better heat engine in fact many came and perhaps correctly that java programming is rather stupid activity because it is a very mechanical activity after some time the amount of innovation that you can do is so limited there given this fact do we use this or similar example to tell students don't at all be worried but whatever the system has done to you you are now entering a phase where you will face a system which is not defined by syllabus and exams you can emphasize that when they go out in real life a single real problem is they will face which is aspects of syllabus real life problems are not defined by syllabus syllabus are defined from our knowledge of real life problems as the knowledge grows I would therefore think that motivating students by taking them out of the ambit of just marks, grades and degrees is an important task unfortunately our engineering education system does not even attempt to do this it unfortunately attempts to consolidate a similar behavior for four more years on students here we have examination we have semester examination we have half semester examination we have weekly test we have weekly quizzes it is called continuous evaluation I have no problems with evaluation but continuous evaluation in terms of marks these students misconceived notion that marks are everything in life and we happily help enhance this notion can we do something about it I don't know you are the ones who run the systems within yourselves and there are some mechanisms that I would suggest something can be done in spite of the system not because of the system you might also want to tell them what motivates the students so marks, grades and degrees are spent I think entirely too much time on this aspect but I believe that this is the crux of any demotivation that we see amongst students and to counter that is not to say marks don't mean anything that will be nonsense not to say degrees or subjects don't mean anything that will be nonsense but what is correct to say is that why the marks are important they are not everything in life and they are certainly not the most important and in the very first place you got more or less marks perhaps because of these factors of curiosity, wellness and perseverance take care of these marks will come automatically what motivates students also like what motivates all other human beings is ability dominant and to control you would see that in the student days how fiercely the student body elections are fought who would be the class representative who would be the general secretary in the school who will be the monitor what are these positions sadly these are not considered to be positions where in the leadership role those individuals facilitate others doing great things but these are considered to be positions where you control things or dominate things but this is a motivating factor in every human being's life after all in our own lives consider this what does it mean to become head of the department I have seen heads of the departments who used to cherish signing casual applications it was such a sad thing to see that instead of considering oneself to be a great facilitator for greater academic activities one considers oneself to be a controller of other human beings if it happens to us we believe there is any reason why it will not happen to students and therefore one of the activities that we can undertake is to inculcate in them the motion that what is greatly satisfied is not domination or control but facilitation and that we can enjoy these roles greatly while controlling things but facilitating things all the team activities that you do team projects team assignments they should always seem in this perspective team event organization you know in IIT Bombay the mood Indigo and Techface these are great events not a single participation from any faculty member except for guidance and advice is taken everything is organized by students themselves they learn how to organize they learn the leadership emerges out of that and even if your institutions are not residential institutions encouraging people to organize events better is something that you can help them tremendously with in order to give a message that the leadership is for facilitating not for control not a place this is a unit factor that cannot be forgot so what what you will access student marks, grades, degrees, domination and control there is a third element which should be in my opinion the most important element but sadly marks, grades and degrees overshadow everything else and therefore this element is often not seen or perceived this element in my opinion is recognition respect honor I think these are great emotional motivators to any human being at the extreme you can think of the soldiers you know you are willing to shoot at others and take bullets in their chest for the honor and glory of a piece of cloth which we call national flag this this behavior defies all logic there is no logic you know Indians stupidly going and lying there or willing to die I mean we talk about jihadis or terrorist in bad sense of course we talk about that in bad sense because they are doing destructive activities but do not forget their motivational levels are more less than that of the mobile audience I would like to submit that role models are extremely important for motivating a student or additionally like to submit that after the parents in the younger days teacher this is the most important role model in the life of a student we can see that you know young children from kindergarten school or first second third standard when they come home and if you try to advise them something contrary to what the teacher has advised they will never take this teacher has said this you might be a big professor teacher has said this if the teacher says 2 plus 2 is 5 it is 5 no matter how logical you defend it that is the value of us as role models I would like to suggest to you from my own experiences as to how we can improve ourselves to become role models that will motivate the students maximally we are role models whether we like it or not even if I am a very bad teacher I am still a role model my bio habits will be taken by that student to be the right thing to do in life I don't know how many of you have read Thaitiriya Upanishad you know like our communication ceremony there is a ceremony where the children in the ashram go back and a message is read out to them dhaimam chara satyam vada you must have heard of these phrases but there is a lot more to it it tells the students to copy the behavior of the teachers but it also tells them copy only that behavior which is going and it actually tells them do not copy that behavior of your teachers which is bad the reason Thaitiriya Upanishad authors felt like stating this is because they knew the human being being fallible there will be some of us who will not behave well at least at some times but the young students might even take that as a part of the role model exercise and imbibe that and therefore they need to be explicitly warned do not do this follow me but only in those things which are good do not follow me in those things which I do badly till the Indian wisdom of thousands of years ago we do not emphasize this but independent of whether we do or not I would submit that for all of our students we remain the role models and therefore what shall be our own behavior becomes extremely important because the major motivation comes from this the teacher's entire behavior becomes a package for the student to adopt please remember the student will adopt very selectively the student will only adopt what is most easy to adopt but if we as teachers are rigorous in most of the things that we do the student will have little choice but to adopt most of that rigor that the student sees in us the first and the most fundamental preparation and however how much time do we spend in preparing for every class from my own experience that our students while they might pay some attention to how well we speak how greatly we conduct our classes or something but they are intelligent and sensitive enough to understand whether we are well prepared or not for a class and there is absolutely no justification for me as a teacher to go before my audience at any point in time without adequate preparation when I was a young teacher here as I said people like Jimmy Rarsing Isaac and H. B. K. Kray and my own colleagues forced me to do this I remember my first course in a lot of computers when I taught as electrical engineering students one student sitting in the front bench he used to hear chapels no paper on site he is not taking notes he is doing this what should I say an activity which was cheesy off why the hell he is not taking notes why the hell he is not reading there used to be blackboard one, two, three sections most of you would be familiar and I had started writing some equations on the first board then second board, third board came back to the first site removed everything that was there removed something else and then the second plan I got none plus because there was some equation which was not matching on either side some sign somewhere and I started looking back and I asked students why is this not equation balancing and the students also were looking everywhere and then this student suddenly he says sir there is a sign mistake so I said yes I know that but where it is I can't find it no sir it is on the first board which you remember sometime ago there is no paper in his front he has of course the person who won the issue of gold model one and half years later but such is the perception of the students their ability I went there and I went to my guru and I said why did I have to first this once I studied well I had spent five hours working for this work so which books did you read so I told him what do you mean they are described what nonsense then he narrated a list of seven books Jackson and this and that and he says go to the library get all these books and when is your next class Monday weekend there but you got two days and two nights read all of them that is hard work that is very very hard work how do you improve your delivery how do you control be effective in in teaching whatever you do I have done this experiment it was a very costly experiment my wife was very unhappy at that time I bought a tape recorder a Sony tape recorder it used to cost 750 rupees those days my salary was 425 and it was a very costly thing particularly when my wife found out that it is not meant to listen to music but to do some stupid things what I used to do is I would prepare my lecture those days we did not have this transparency or something so it was a blackboard I would prepare that lecture and I would stand in front of a mirror and give that lecture for one another timing myself and then I would listen to that lecture what appeared to me to be a flawless lecture when I listened to it I will again start seeing interruptions something wrong so I will correct it please help me help me help me improve tremendously there is no substitute for hard work and what I am suggesting in the context of motivating students is that our students are intelligent enough in in the sense of to sense the hard work that we put it we dont put in hard work any one there will beUNIT out there will be polite enough కళల్నలిని. నినా అనాని నిలి �recip. నిని అనిలాచ Craft స మణనరailand� మిచ merits ఼మంలా ని నిమి 16 injury ఱీన౳నవచరి మాధి మానూహా ԵՂြ Իսֈ ԹՍՆ, Իսդահ Լս եմ րը սյմ, Ասում ԱՆ Ասում ԱՆ ԱՆ Թնում Բմ ԰ժլ Ան ԱՆ ԱՆ Դպ Ասում ԱՆ, ԱՆ ԱՆ ԱՆ ԱՆ ԱՆ ԱՆ ԱՆ, ԱՆ ԱՆ, ԱՆ ԱՆ, ԱՆ, ԱՆ, ԱՆ, ԱՆ, ԱՆ భ applies. గి ని ్సితు మెస్స్ therapist ప్టౕ హఴpunkt కిట橋న్డ్గా బెస్ కంవిో meillä�ో. Becuase repe చీ httpsorable ప్ట౒తమో, శ్л్డన్స్,iderman. మామ్మరొను ఇర్లో భా్పెనిలోన ఎవిస్పి. ఇరివ్స్. ఆవ్లోలంస్లో. నేయంలలోదాడారార్గిలో. మన్లోపెన్ందాట్డి. అనోమన్. మన్స్టందా. మన్� but every teacher works in a certain constraint, constraint of time, constraint of his or her own motivation and constraint of the circumstances. To overcome those constraints is what is required is to avoid plagiarism. If we zerox pages of a textbook and circulate it ourselves, considering that these particular pages are important to the students, then can we shout out spoons if there is zerox the whole book? We often take recourse to the fact that some book is not available. If the book is not available, one copy should be purchased, kept in the library and people should be told to come and read it. We extend this further when we enter into a research field. There are many cases where you have seen reports where even a vice chancellor of a university was involved in plagiarism. This nonsense must stop and it is our responsibility. And let me tell you the most shameful part is in India the plagiarism is considered to be far more prevalent than in other places. It is there everywhere by the way. It is a human tendency to shock them. I want to maximize my gains with minimum effort. That is a natural human optimization process. But if we do not stop it, who else will? Fiduciary ethics, money ethics, very very important part in life. I mean people stupidly expect teachers to be not money minded. That is nonsense. Every human being must be money minded. After all when I work, I run somewhere to support my family and I have expectations from life. So there is nothing wrong in it. But whether I generate that wealth legally or ethically or not is a question. What is legal? There should be no under the table kind of movement of money that I should get. What is ethical? I should get money for what? I am destined to get money and nothing else. There is no notion of tuition, coaching classes. Unfortunately engineering colleges are afflicted maximally with this disease. Again you may fault me for quoting again and again from IIT system. But that is one system where there is no notion of tuition. If a student on the campus wishes to ask me a difficulty at 10.30 or 11 o'clock in the night, the student has every right to come and knock at my door and ask me that difficult. And he has every right to expect me to perform my duty to explain that problem to him or her. That is why I get paid for. There are operating hours for the staff, 8 to 5, 8.30 to 6 or something. There are no operating hours for teachers. A teacher is supposed to be on duty 24 hours. If I am supposed to leave this campus even on a Saturday or Sunday I am supposed to inform people. I am of course required to engage in so many activities as a professional. I am permitted to do so. But my fundamental attention and focus must be on teaching for which I am paid. Submission of grades in time is so much more and more in many universities in declaring results. We have this rule that grades must be submitted in 4 days. And then there was a big commotion in Senat when somebody said 4 days are being interpreted by some of the colleagues to exclude Saturdays and Sundays if they are falling between. That is nonsense. 4 days means 96 hours. Current Senat rule says that the grades must be submitted in 96 hours. And if they don't submit those grades, then there is a special provision of a peculiar reception. I first get a letter from the dean. Unfortunately this is one thing which I preach but not practice. Most of the other things I have tried to practice my life. So you get invited by the director. For a special meeting. That's the only time when the director does not offer you a cup of tea. I had one such occasion in Lake Prasanna called me. And I was teaching a large course as Mrs. Kripal said. For large courses we had 7 days. But my grades were not submitted even after 7 days because I had to go out somewhere. My teaching assistants were consolidating that. And I just got it delayed by some time but I got called by the director. And I went there. And Prasanna said. But you know there is not a cup of tea today. But of course I was permitted to sit down. But he did not have a smoke. He used to smoke. He gave me a cigarette. So he says why have the grades been delayed? So I said sir I had to go for this conference urgently and this. See I know you are doing so many great things elsewhere. You are helping the government, helping this. Very nice. You are helping the government. Why would you leave this job? And go and do all those nice things that you are doing. I was shocked to hear this. Then his voice became stern. He says. Let us understand one thing. We must never ever forget that we are teachers first. We must never ever compromise with fundamental duties of teacher. If you cannot take that burden leave this institute now. But if you want to stay here this nonsense shall not happen again. Thank you very much. This is what my director told me and I know he used to love me immensely. I know he used to respect me immensely. But there is no nonsense to be tolerated when it comes to basics and fundamentals. Do we do that friends? Do we do that amongst ourselves? Do we do that as peer pressure on our colleagues? If a colleague is not doing things. Do we go and tell that colleague please you don't do this. This is not good. Why you don't do this? We feel that the person may be offended. I am a good friend of his or her and what will he or she think if I go and tell him or her that this is not correct. This is the biggest mistake that we make. Because if we as friends don't tell our colleagues that something is wrong. Who has that? If I am making a mistake, who is the best person to correct me? My own friend, nobody else. My enemies will reject me. Only my friends will be concerned they will come back and tell me something. Do we do this? I will only give one example which is perhaps an extreme but I think very important. Those of you who are from Pune who know about that person. A great Maharshi Karwai who set up the women's education system in the country. It is said that he would not accept because he was in public life. He would not accept any gift from anybody and that anybody included anybody. Once his son bought him a blazer because the winter in Pune is very serious. And he looked at that blazer and said very nice thank you but must be very costly isn't it? So the son said yes but it's okay. Son was of course earning enough money. He says but I am sorry I can't pay for it. I can't afford it. He says why don't you talk about Bala on yourself. I am giving it to you. He says no I cannot take a gift from anyone that includes you. That sir is the ethics. None of us can perhaps reach that level but can we not try? Do we? That's the question. And that's the question each one of us has to continuously ask oneself. In conclusion I will say the following. To material students please help them recognize their own strengths. These they have forgotten over the years. Rekindle their childhood. You know when I told this to my wife she said that now that is why I think you behave so childishly. You know it is a different context. So while these may be good there may be several other dimensions of childhood which may perhaps better be removed after we grow up. So but do re-select this confidence in themselves. Self-confidence is most important. Getting rid of their sense of lack of confidence, sense of diffidence is very very crucial. Like it or not most of the students who come to us are diffident about something. Even if I got computer science in BJT I did not get admission in computer science. Computer science in IIT will be a cause of diffidence. Because the world is related. I was majored by a way to successes and failures and failures will be much more than successes. Because the parameters are the same. So if you can motivate them to re-think about this and re-discover their own great potential for curiosity, boldness and perseverance. You have one half of that. The human in half you will win by working hard for being a real model to this world. Because you are the whole model. You like it or not, you are the whole model. They will take us like this. You will know I mean 10 years, 15 years later when your students pass out and somebody comes back and tells you sir you taught that course well. How do you feel? Is there any money, any reward that can compensate you for that feeling? Absolutely money. That is the best compensation that we can get as teachers. Fantastic feeling. So work of this and of course the most fundamental in order to motivate people please remain motivated all the time yourselves. Thank you very much.