 Here is my take on teaching and learning, I think it is absolutely essential to understand that teaching and learning is a very special process confined to human species. So, the example that I give is, when birds build a nest, who teaches them engineering? Nobody, they learn it genetically and the evolution of knowledge, the body of knowledge quantitatively and qualitatively has been exponentially and very rapid. That body of knowledge, you cannot depend upon the biology to be assimilated and passed on from generation to generation genetically. So, genetically as life species, a few learnings for what is required to survive, is still passed on genetically. A human child can survive without any education, if it is survival. But if you want that child to survive more meaningfully, more happily and doing something more, you need to pass on the knowledge to that child from the early point. So, you notice that there is no institution associated with teaching and learning explicitly created by any species, even those more organized species like monkeys, dogs, herds of sheep that you find something is a unique human phenomenon. And what humanity did was they created an institution called a teacher. So, what is most important to understand is teacher as an institution and this institution was responsible for number one, codify knowledge. Number two, enable learners to acquire this knowledge and number three, add to the knowledge. So, this is the purpose of teacher as an institution. For many years, when the numbers who were getting educated in any conventional sense were very, very limited and small. Please remember in Indian society, the number of people who could read and write were miniscule percentage of the population, miniscule as in absolute miniscule. The entire population, the country at the Mahabharat time was not literate in the conventional sense. That is why you have to invoke Ganesh to write, Mahesh Maharshi Vyas could only recite, you require Ganpati to write things. So, these two, even as late as 1500, 1600, 1700, there were very few people in this society who could write, even the kings dictated later, they did not necessarily know how to write. So, reading and writing itself and therefore, codification of knowledge and passing on that knowledge is a recent phenomenon. The second is that the institution is a teacher, not the college. Unfortunately, today the support structures which the humanity built to help teacher conduct these activities are now becoming institutions. So, a college, a university, a classroom, etcetera, etcetera are actually support structures to teachers. Today, these are institutions and we teachers are employees in this institution. I would humbly submit that the first thing is to resurrect in ourselves and all our colleagues this notion that we are the institution, not the college, not the university, not that. There is not so subtle importance to this aspect, the importance to this aspect is that the moment I realize it, I realize both the power and authority that I should command and the extraordinary responsibility that is put on my head. Today, many of the responsibilities that I discharge, I discharge because there is a college rule or there is a head watching or there is a principal or director saying this or something like that. All that is nonsense. If I say I am the institution, I am the one who defines rules. The institution does not say you know, most of the days 830 to 5, 930 to 5, these are rules made for employees, not for institutions. Institutions make their own rules. That is why I ask you that question, you know that when I have asked this to those Goa students and anywhere else, that is there a rule where the vice chancellor says you will be shot if you are found working in the evening, there is no such rule. But we as teachers have imbibed that rule as atrocent and by definition therefore extension students are also imbibed. This has to be completely, completely thrown out of the model. This is not easy because assumption, you know if I have to assume that I am an institution that means I am accountable to myself and that accountability is extraordinarily more difficult than being accountable to someone else. It is very difficult to live with inadequacies when you are accountable to yourself. But when you are accountable to head, that is not available. Unfortunately, even the administrators and managers of the educational process do not realize this, that each individual teacher is an institution. It is my humble dream that through this exercise and through such other creation of the collaborative communities, if we can pass this message that yes I understand I have limitations, I cannot be an institution if I Indian institute of technology is an institution in the conventional legal sense. But in every model ethical and practical sense, if I can be an institution, can I not try to become one. That is the message, key message does not matter whether it is CS 101 or CS 345 or ME 123 or first hand that is the message that in fact if you ask me primary school teachers today are better institutions in this sense than senior teachers because the young minds whom they are teaching, young minds take them as role models almost like parents first hand or second hand. The students who come to us do not take us as role models, we are very happy if they do not do this to us, which they might be doing it mentally without telling us. So, there is a difference there. However, it is my submission that we should and believe me if we try to behave like this, there will be a recognition everywhere else. It will be a slow process let it take years to transform. So, that is one. The second point I wanted to make is students behavior in the class. I am talking about both physical and mental behavior and you would have noticed physical behavior starts from absenteeism. There is a gossiping in the class, people sleeping in the class in general showing disinterest and you want to convert it into interest. Can it be obtained by strict disciplinary process? The answer is no. You can obtain a visible discipline even this quiz it will ensure the quiz will ensure people will attend and people will be hopefully attentive, but their objective is to get marks in that quiz. That is not the creation of a true learner. I treat as a teacher my objective is to create a true learner in every student in my class. As Saharna said and I had also said there is no transfer of knowledge. Knowledge is generated within individual body by their own brains. How do I maximize it for every student? And therefore I want to create the most effective learner after every student that I have. So, therefore discipline in any thing so I can make all sixty students sit there compulsory attend. You will soon find that people are seeing somewhere here somewhere there. If you enforce discipline further they may strictly look at you, but they are looking through you. They are not looking at you or at most they are admiring or laughing at your shirt or whatever else, but they are not thinking about. And therefore the important point to remember again I will repeat what Saharna said that particular point that learning is a social process. Although we are trying to do learning through e-learning mechanisms and so on where people sit alone in front of a PC and there is a lot of learning that can happen, but that cannot substitute today the established learning process which is a classroom interaction, laboratory interaction. So, 10, 20, 30 people interacting where every student learns from a question answer that happens between some other student and the teacher. See I am just sitting quiet but still I will learn from that thing. So, this behavior of the students physical and logical behavior to be diverted towards this positive side where they are more attentive and the ambition is they become the best learners to the best of their ability. A teacher's dilemma or I would say teacher's problems, these differences in students that you mentioned about the preparedness but even their attitude and even their intellectual capacity. This is the graph which I had drawn. Did I show you this graph? On one axis is hardware and different students put in different amount of hardware. On the other axis is grasp. You will understand that while all teacher, all students that come to us have a certain academic performance or something but their grasp could be different and the grasp in fact is very funny. I mean if you look at IQ for example, the IQ is not a linear scale. So, a small difference in IQ could mean a whole lot of extra smartness and that smartness mostly is measured in terms of speed with which people answer. However, the grasp has other dimension and it is not completely independent of the hardware, not necessarily hardware done here but done earlier. A student who has a much larger understanding of the entire background would have a much more grasp than another student who is intellectually much faster let us say but still does not have that background. Consequently, what we want to try and do is to enhance the grasp of the student as well. So, whatever is the grasping capability inherent to that intellectual mind, you want to enhance it by putting it in the right direction. In short, if I plot all my students, I will get them all spread across. Say something like this. When I became a teacher, I have asked this question to my seniors that I have a large class, I did not have as large class of 60 or 70, but I think there were 45 students in the first course that I taught to electrical engineering students. They are finally a student, very smart people. There is no complexity as that. So, W used to get almost all the so-called stoppers. And I was told that I should teach. What should be the pace of my class? I said whom should I teach? They said teach to the average of the class. That is when I drew this graph. And I said the spatial average that is on these excess comes somewhere here. Actually, I took this graph to one professor in Gupta and showed it to him and I asked him one simple question that I have a problem that this is the average and if I address this average and set my pace and everything, it appears to me that I am teaching nobody because there is no student at that point. My students are either here or here or here or here. This dilemma I have not yet been able to fully solve, but I want to share this with you. Whatever pace you do, it is impossible to address each and every student in the same pace. Another observation which Sehra made, she made it in the context of different courses and even if for the same course, different places, different patterns and even in the same pattern, different students. There is no single solution to any one of these problems and therefore each one of us will have to be innovative in figuring out a solution. But the fact that this is a very sobering observation which has been my guiding factor all my teaching life that since in a classroom, I can never ever address a majority of students directly. I must find other ways of relating to them individually. If I do not, I am not a good teacher, period. And this cannot happen in a large classroom. Therefore it must happen in my laboratories, in my projects, in my discussions or whatever, whatever. And then I will tell you a beautiful thing. I have seen this happening over the last 37 years. It is not necessary to spend hours with students. Even if you guarantee that you have spent 5 minutes in that entire semester between every student. Simple thing, when you are talking to that student you make sure that if you do not remember the name, ask that student for the name and then during the conversation address that student by the name. These are simple things but psychologically they mean a lot to the student. They mean a lot and believe me the student attitude changes. There is something which I have not mentioned here. I said physical and intellectual behavior but psychological behavior. And as a teacher, I would submit you do not know your own capacity to change students because you have never exercised it to the fullest and you have never done anything to extend it. The best capacity to change happens from extraordinary leaders and people who have, I mean the example that I cite always which does not apply to lesser mortals but we learn from it. I do not know how many of you remember the Mahatma Gandhi's Champaran Satyagra in Bihar. You have heard of it, right? What is not known is that when he went to initiate the Champaran Satyagra he stayed with Babu Rajendra Prasad for three days in his house with him. Till that point Rajendra Prasad was an extremely successful lawyer. He was minting money as a very rich man and he was busy doing his legal practice. Of course he was sensitive to the national movements and therefore he was supportive of the national movement but that is about all. At the end of three days of Mahatma Gandhi staying with Rajendra Prasad Rajendra Prasad was a changed person. He dedicated himself so completely. I do not know how many of you know this that when Babu Rajendra Prasad died he had zero personal wealth, zero. He had given away everything that he had, everything. Now that is a remarkable change. We are probably not able to get that kind of change because that change also requires you to be a Mahatma Gandhi. It is not easy. But does it mean that we cannot do anything? No, I disagree. I think we can do a lot. The only thing is we have not first understood our own power to influence. We have not exercised and we have not tried to maximise it. My humble suggestion is therefore relating to students is the first and fundamental objective of a teacher. In order to make the students better learners, that is the ultimate objective. In terms of the solutions, these are my suggestions. There are many and in fact the research that Sahana has said gives you a very comprehensive do's, don'ts, etc. But some simple things that I have felt. The first one is preparation. There is no shortcut to hard work here. So it is not just reading books, preparing notes, preparing lecture materials, setting questions, setting answers, arranging tutorial, lab sessions, etc. But doing this ahead of the lectures. You cannot be doing preparation for a lecture just the previous day except when you are teaching the course for the first time. If when you teach the course for the second time, you are doing anything else but revision and minor tweaking just before the lecture, then you are not spending. You know we talk of what is the difference between IIT system and other system. Most teachers I know here, most of my colleagues would generally prepare a course plan ahead in advance during the summer or winter before they go to the school. Do we do that? Do our 1000 teachers do that? One comment here. Generally the rule of thumb is for every contact hour it is 3 to 4 hours outside preparation. Sounds like a lot but that is what really all the good teachers that is what they do. 4 hours per hour, very funny notation but that is okay. Anyway the second thing about preparation is also notifications. Many a times we have something in mind but we do not convey to students ahead of time sufficiently. Take this course for example. The first notification which went from IIT went as late as 30th March. When you came here, you did not have a clue as to what is going to be the schedule. Many of you said in my meetings, personal meetings they enjoyed this course very nice. I think you are being very nice. You should have said what is this nonsense. But we learn from this and we therefore say that the 1000 teachers whom we assemble in July by June we would have identified these teachers and we tell them exactly day to day, hour to hour, whatever they are going. It is useful. We might vary, we might change but it is useful to give notification of everything. Apart from all other things that a teacher is required to be preparation and she mentioned how to conduct the classroom and so on. I will put these in just two or three things which I believe are also equally important if not more important. A teacher has to have what I call showmanship. You have seen stage performances right, dramas and things like that or pictures, movies in which actors are performing. Please understand that when you are teaching you are a performer, you are an actor and you have to do the best of acting and the best of acting cannot be done if it is artificial. The best of acting can be done only if it comes natural. Natural action is not adequate. You require additional preparation for sure. So just like there is an acting institution, TV training institution, etc. Believe me a teacher's training must include this. Today we have some very mundane points being mentioned like face the students, not the board. These are very mundane, these are important but these are only the beginning points of showmanship. How to crack jokes, when to crack jokes. Just to get people said, this is not simple, you have to arrange it and you can take it to some crazy limits. We had a situation when I was a student, this happened in 1967-68 when I was a third year student, a great professor in maths who used to be, he was a great researcher by the way but he used to do exact opposite of what Seanna said. He would go to the board and come up with great equations and so on. One day we were all astonished when he came, he phased us and said now I will tell you a joke. So everybody was listening to him. He says a cow has four legs, a table has four legs, therefore a table is a cow. Now we shall prove this theorem. Now we had no clue what was happening, we were all amused. And we could not understand why this great professor suddenly has changed. Later on in other some inter-college debate competition one of our advisors professor Kaila of English. So some of us mentioned to him such a funny thing happened. Oh my God, he did that. You know he came to me and asked me why my students don't find my lectures interesting. So I suggested to him that he should crack some jokes but I did not know that he will do something like that. So you see cracking jokes also, you are not cracking jokes for the sake of cracking jokes. The purpose is to make students crack them. So I mean there are no unique answers. I am telling you these instances to tell you how much preparation we need. There is no shortcut to that. This will increase the effectiveness of the attention that you will get provided you have sought that attention to be focused on whatever is to be learnt by the students. And the third thing after preparation and showmanship I would like to mention is passion and compassion. Unless there is a passion and excitement that you actually have and therefore students see it through your showmanship the amount of attention that students will spend on that subject in general and on your teaching in particular will be limited. That passion and excitement should be there. So invigorate yourself. By the way all of us go through different times and moods. Even within a day the mood in the morning may be different mood in the evening may be different. Many a times it depends upon external environment. If I have a big argument with a colleague of mine or I am not able to convince some others of my thing by the time I reach home in the evening I will be all dejected. In the morning if I have a fight with my wife I may start my day in a dejected. Some good news comes I will feel very elated. That is why if you recall the word used in Gita Lord Krishna has this extraordinary ability and only when you understand you examine these things then you understand how difficult it is. I want you to be passionate Siddha Pragyas not Siddha Pragyas who is like my maths professor cow is at table now we shall prove this theorem. That is he is completely unaffected by either the cow or the table. That is not the point. The point is you must be affected by everything that you see what you do etc and therefore there should be passion. Equally importantly there must be compassion. You get 60 students. You have to believe that they are not bad people. You have to genuinely believe that. Many times we take Kundas against someone who is very naughty. If you believe that that person is not a bad person that boy or girl that means your behaviour to that should be different. Students will make mistakes. Of course the mistakes must be punished but the mistakes must be punished not the person. Do we make that distinction? I am not sure. I would suggest that we must always examine that any punishment that we give is it punishing the mistake is it ensuring that the student remembers not to repeat that mistake is it exemplary yet the student does not feel punished? Do we make sure sometime during that conversation when we award the punishment all later do we make sure to call that student and say sorry? I feel sorry that I had to do this to you. We do not generally. I do by the way. It makes a difference. I have seen that it makes a difference. You do not have to necessarily say sorry in so many words but just call that student talk about that incident and just say I hope the purpose of all this was to ensure that you adopt better ways. I hope you understand that that I did not have any other malintention. It is important not to have malintention it is important to convey that and you cannot make believe by that. You cannot actually have kindness in your mind and say all these things. Why? Because do not forget the student is no less intelligent and no less sensitive than you. Students will catch you or lie in a moment. If the excitement and passion is not true if the compassion is not true they will catch you in a moment. They may not say so because they respect you as a elder but they will catch you just as you did when you were students. So this has to be true passion and compassion. So these are some of the things which I thought I will add. I will just end up by telling you when I was a young teacher the kind of preparations that I did this lecturing for example this flow flow of your language and so on my English was not bad when I came here for my M Tech but I studied first in Marathi for up to 600 and then in Hindi. So I am much better off in Marathi and Hindi. English was okay it was not bad but when I became a teacher I was not sure whether I was fluent enough so I purchased a tape recorder in those days I still remember my wife was very angry with me when she learnt the purpose for my buying the tape recorder it costed 750 rupees and my monthly salary was 350 rupees. So what I used to do is I would prepare my lecture and record that lecture. I will give that lecture in front of a mirror just to see how I am doing and record it and then listen to that lecture back and believe me I mean I used to be a good debater and all that so I should be very confident on my flow but still I found umpteen mistakes and errors ah, e, o, gaps then I would re-record that both Gholagiri kya so she says 4 or 5 hours per hour I can tell you yes that is required and you have to add to it this kind of time which is which was considered even by my colleagues as a nonsensical thing because there is a factor in what my colleague said in your improvement curve you know it is an exponential 1 minus e to the power minus 80 kind of curve that means initially you can improve quite rapidly several of your mistakes but after sometime a huge amount of effort will add to only delta improvement is that worth it is the question my answer is worth it as long as there are 24 hours in a day and you are using all 24 hours it is worth it since 25th hour cannot be created then it is not possible therefore it is not worth it now I may not actually be able to do it because as a human being I need to sleep I need to spend time with my family I need to do so many other things etc but that earns to improve so whether you do this or that it does not matter I benefited from another thing I came up with a theory which is a very funny theory you may not like it then randomly picked up teachers write down the characteristics of individual teachers you know somebody is very meticulous somebody is very lazy somebody cannot speak well as she said somebody is great orator somebody is there somebody is there so for every person you write down 4, 5, 6 characteristics as a teacher look at the composite characteristics the union of all characteristics of these 10 teachers the 10 random examples the characteristics are not random written they are actual human beings this is my submission I have done this exercise you can do it independently you can do it for students by the way you can extract some characteristics from this union which represent together the best teacher from the same set you can extract characteristics which taken together represent the worst teacher in conclusion in my conclusion therefore I said this is very funny every human being that I know is simultaneously has something as a best teacher and something as the worst teacher now what should I do obviously I must learn from the best and this is common sensically also true each human being will have some plus points some minus points but what I did and what helped me is I attended first of all I had the privilege of learning from many teachers many great teachers really so I used to note down the points which were very very special about them in some sense I mean here of course you get very good teachers but there is one professor Bedford for example now what I notice about him is behavior to students so many times you know people will ask funny questions and will make the same point again I still remember one case one student ended up making the same point three times his point of twice being explained by professor Bedford of why his point of view was wrong everybody else was convinced but he was not he raised the third point and even third time professor Bedford says you have a point however if you look at it this way and he came up with a third example in character I thought it was being stretched too long later on when I became a teacher and he became my senior colleague during these exercises I went to him and I asked him this how do you not get irritated by such question and particularly the question is very stupid and that is where I learnt one of the best gyaans in my life he says please understand Fata that you and I may think that question is stupid but the student who asked it he does not think it is stupid please understand that he is intelligent enough not to ask stupid questions if he is convinced that he is the question is stupid second point says if I stopped him then he may stop asking questions all together even to himself and the very basis of his learning will collapse extraordinary learning you know so what I did is I picked up these characteristics those teachers whom I had not the privilege of learning but I found these and I started attending their classes there is a colleague of ours professor Balmohan Limash he was known for his penchant for timeliness 830 to 925 class he will take up a theorem at 825 and at 925 there will be QED and there will be no artificial appearance or speeding up or slowing down or something like that is an extraordinary thing I learnt how he manages time I mean there was K. D. Joshi another maths professor even professors of my own electrical engineering department or other so I would spend time in attending classes sample classes one or two lectures I will attend and I will jot down what do I see as something special I have benefited tremendously from this the problem in your life is you may not have that much time to do but I think it is worthwhile to do spend some time to learn from our own colleagues because this random theory of 10 people's characteristic is applicable in any group of 100 teachers any group I believe like but in conclusion of this session on teaching methodology I would like us to remember one thing whatever we think adds to the effectiveness of a teacher we want to ensure that amongst the 1000 colleagues that we get for the larger course we try to imbibe as much of it as is possible and this imbibing cannot happen again by giving away if we regard ourselves as a group of teachers and 1000 teachers as students we have to enable them to learn these things and they accept it on their own it cannot be force fit you know and that is the real challenge from a paragraph point of view that is the real challenge we will leave it at that thank you so much