 Honorable Vice Chancellor of Gujarat Technical University, Director of Technical Education, Professor Lightner, other senior academic leaders, and my dear teachers. I apologize for not being physically present amongst you or miss today, but I'm glad that I'm able to connect with you through this brief video-recorded lecture. I begin by quickly recapitulating the state of engineering education in the country as it was in the past, as it has evolved at the present juncture, and as I foresee it developing in coming decades. Let me take you back to the decade of 60s. A student studying in engineering college would typically attempt to study all 100% of the syllabus in the first year of engineering. Those days, it used to be a five-year engineering course. By the time he gives all the exams, he discovers that examinations are very standard and stereotype pattern. They typically had solved any six out of the 10 questions kind of choices. This leads the student to believe that he can study only 60% of the syllabus and still get good marks. So from the second year, he starts reducing the emphasis on studies. He then discovers that many questions are repeated from the previous examinations. Consequently, he further reduces the amount of studies that he does. Please note that I'm describing the decade of 60s, and I'm relating actually my personal experience. I studied in a reasonably good college in the city of Indore. It was known for its quality faculty and good students. And yet, the standard stereotype pattern of syllabus-based studies and a fixed type of examination system did not permit me or other students to exercise their minds heavily into large number of problem solving exercises and hands-on activities which are central to any engineering education. Many of us still became good engineers. That was thanks to the faculty and the laboratories which gave us some experience and some hands-on exposure. Then I came to IIT Bombay. Things changed very drastically for me because I found that teachers here gave open book examinations with unlimited time. And there was no choice. There were no standard questions like explain something, describe something, write short notes on. There was simply problem one, problem two, problem three, problem four, problem five. I remember to my consternation that even in the open book exam when I carried several books, I could not solve those problems successfully. I was very frustrated at the beginning. But I realized that that is the kind of education which makes a better engineer. Why is it that a teacher in IIT Bombay can take such liberties of setting question papers exactly as the teacher desires? The teacher teaches exactly what he or she thinks is the best for the student to learn. There is a written syllabus, but whatever teacher teaches becomes a syllabus. Whatever teacher sets is the exam paper. And whatever grade the teacher gives is the grade accepted by the senator of the institute. This is possible because the extraordinary autonomy that is enjoyed by teachers in such autonomous institutions as IITs. Please note that similar autonomy is available to the departmental professors of the best known universities and in many independent autonomous colleges. However, if we consider majority of the 5,000 colleges which are affiliated to some university, the standard system prevails. Today, these two systems of education have continued on their own path and own journey. The standard system continues to be stymied by syllabus which don't change, by further standardization and regimentation of the examination system, whereas the autonomous institutions like IITs have further expanded using the autonomy which is granted to the faculty in conducting more and more experiments in adopting new technologies which are coming in. For example, today the web-based education easy access to quality contents is now available to everyone, using which many of my colleagues have been experimenting with flip classroom model where video recorded lectures are first seen by the students at their homes. And in the classroom, the entire hour which was earlier spent in lecturing is now spent in problem solving, discussion sessions, and tutorial kind of quizzes being conducted. My colleagues who have done these experiments have found that the students learn far more as seen by their final performance in all the evaluations which is conducted exactly as they were conducted earlier. So the present system of the affiliated colleges needs to adopt these technological innovations which permit easy access to all students and teachers to the best quality of contents. However, contents alone do not make good education. For that, we require large effort by the teachers in setting good problems for the students to solve and discussing these problems and their solutions with the students. In future, I expect that the massive online open courses which have just made their appearance last year will continue to become more and more popular. Larger and larger number of students all over the world will actually benefit directly from such high quality courses. The employers in future might start evaluating the students who pass out of our engineering courses on the basis of the actual knowledge that they have and the skills they possess by conducting online tests. It is quite possible that the value given to degree and marks today may actually reduce and may altogether vanish if all the employers, the industry, and the society find that they can conduct reasonably accurate testing of large number of students using technology. It is in this context that I speak to you, my dear friends, to try and see whether we can resurrect the entire educational process and make it far more meaningful to our students by blending our conventional method of teaching and learning through affiliated colleges and the autonomous system practiced in IITs and some of the independent autonomous institutions and big universities. Please note that I believe that the role of a teacher is central to any education. I have written my views on teachers and their importance in the accompanying note, which I believe the organizers will distribute to you shortly. Please do read it carefully and reflect on it, because I have proposed certain adoption of the massive online open courses for our Indian engineering students. We propose that the colleges and universities, if they adopt a MOOC offering, say from IIT Bombay, then the students need not actually do that subject in their university at all. But the grade obtained by those students in the MOOC course offered by IIT Bombay will be considered as the grade for their own university examination. What will be the role of teachers then? Well, the local teachers have actually a greater role now. I have recommended that the local teachers actually run a flipped classroom. That means the regular lectures are pre-recorded. They are available to all students. But the teachers will conduct tutorials and laboratory experiments. They will also conduct supervised examination for the students so that the students can be certified to have appeared in the exam properly. This model requires all of us to reinvent ourselves. We spend currently 85% of our time in preparing for and delivering the lectures. However, in future, the lectures will be already available. So we will have to prepare ourselves to solve problems jointly with students, engage them in discussions, challenge them with harder problems, construct projects for the teams of students, supervise these, and thereby become central to the entire education process. I have recommended that the local teachers should give assignments and evaluate the students for 15% to 20% of the total weightage of the examination. And these marks shall be absorbed in the total marking done by online examination through the MOOC offering. I have discussed this with many vice chancellors and senior academic leaders. There is a reasonable readiness amongst our academic leaders to try and adopt this, at least on an experimental basis, starting next year. Please remember that we will have to prepare ourselves differently. And for that, the experiments that we have been doing in teachers training for last three years will come in handy. I have promised all vice chancellors that I have made, and I am promising you that should you or your colleges or universities adopt to such MOOCs, IIT Bombay will provide complete training to all the teachers in this new blended mode of MOOC adoption. Fortunately, the national mission on education through ICT of MHRD has approved a reasonable grant to us to conduct such training program for teachers. And therefore, at least in the first year, the teacher's training will be offered completely free of cost by IIT Bombay. In conclusion, I will only repeat my request. Please go through my note, which is being distributed to all of you. Please ponder over it. Please reflect on it. And please, once again, establish yourself to the central role in the entire education process, as is expected by the entire human society. Thank you so much and all the best.