 Welcome to this meeting of the co-ordinators for the two-day workshop. I have, I am Deepak Fatak from IIT Bombay. I have with me my colleagues, Professor Sahana Murthy, who is going to be the co-ordinator for this main workshop and my colleague, Dr. Mukta Atre, who has been the organizing spirit behind these workshops. So, welcome once again. Today, I have a very small role to play. I will just initiate the discussions, indicate the objectives of this workshop once again and comment on the observations made by the ministry on these workshops and its effectiveness that they have found and the ministry's plans for the future. So, you will recall that when we had circulated this note, the backdrop was the fact that while a large number of our teachers might have just done PhDs or might be pursuing their PhD programs, additionally a much larger number is even attempting to complete their master's degree and therefore, all of them have to write their PhD thesis or ME-M Tech dissertations. But additionally, we expect all of our teachers to write good technical papers in conferences. You would agree that over the last many years, the quality of papers that are getting submitted to technical conferences leave a lot to be desired. It is not just the contents which occasionally are copied and pasted from the internet sources, which is very sad because it amounts to plagiarism. It also shows the lack of intrinsic training in writing good technical papers. So, while the intention of all our colleague teachers across the country might be good, in that they would like to present their research work or their survey work in technical papers, perhaps the preparation that they should have undertaken to write good papers has not been adequate. It is in this context that we have planned two workshops. The first one is a two-day workshop that we are currently planning to conduct on 18th and 19th of February. This will be followed by a five-day workshop which will have a larger context of what we call research methodologies. An esteemed colleague of ours from IIT Madras, Professor Karmalkar has agreed to conduct that program. We propose to conduct that program for about 10,000 participants, a scale that is truly unparalleled anywhere in the world, certainly first time in the country. For that, we will seek not only the cooperation from all the existing remote centers, but we need to create about 100 additional remote centers within the next three months. It is from this perspective that I would request all the coordinators who are assembled here to find out from amongst the participants who come to their own remote centers, a few individuals and their corresponding institutions where we could actually conduct the larger workshop in May. I will comment on this again in the concluding session tomorrow if possible. Today our objective is that this is only a preliminary program. By the way, you will all agree that in a two-day workshop, we cannot create expert writers from amongst our teachers who could write the best technical papers. But this idea is to sensitize them on the issues involved, on the preparation required and give them some guidance. We propose that these guidance be given both in the form of dispositions made by Professor Sana Moti and her colleagues here, as also through a suggestion that participants should upload whatever technical papers they have written and they should be subjected to some kind of a peer review process. It is in this context that we request all the workshop coordinators at remote centers to contribute their might. We have, Sana Moti will explain the process later, but I expect that people who upload their technical writings or who submit them even at the remote center, the remote center workshop coordinators could kindly peruse through these submissions, make suggestions, make corrections and some selected papers would be looked at by Professor Sana Moti and her colleagues here as well. The idea is that we should make better paper writing possible for our colleagues. As regards some logistics, we had a lot of discussions in the first round of interaction with the workshop coordinators about the arrangements to be made, about the cost to be borne, etcetera, etcetera. What we have decided finally is that we will not charge any participation fees. However, we will not make any arrangements for their stay or food, etcetera except that for the qualified teachers as per the existing IST and ministry norms, we will support a limited amount for the cost of tea and food during the workshop hours. There have been some requests from others saying that since there are a large number of teachers or even ME and PhD students from local centers also participating, what would happen to them? As I mentioned, for bona fide qualified teachers, we are permitted to spend money from the project. We are not permitted to spend money for anybody else. Consequently, it has been decided that such people, particularly students and other people who come to attend this workshop, the arrangements will have to be made on themselves, by themselves. It is quite possible that the logistics support might be provided by some coordinating centers at cost and that cost could be recovered from the participants if they so wish to do such arrangements. But I am afraid unfortunately we are not able to extend any funding support for such additional registrations. I would like to mention by the way that in spite of the fact that we are not supporting travel or stay or food for participants. They are more than last time I checked about 600 registration, more than 600. 690 were there yesterday night. I do not know what it is. That means teacher colleagues across the country have probably felt that there is a significant value add that happens to them when they attend these workshops and now they and their institutions appear to be ready to share some of the cost, which is a good news. Because as I had mentioned last time the ministry wants us to move to a self-sustaining model eventually, although they have graciously agreed to support the cost at the coordinating centers, at the remote centers for the honorarium and expenses to be spent for the activities done by the remote centers. With this I would like to add one more thing. The normal practice in all of our larger ISD workshops for 10 days or more has been to call the coordinators, workshop coordinators to IIT Bombay to interact with them for over 5 days, finalizing what is the syllabus, what should be the lab, what should be the tutorials etcetera. Given the nature of this course where there are no laboratories for changing, laboratories are involved and therefore no heavy preparation for any kind of lab arrangement is required. Additionally, since it is only a two day program we thought that we could conduct the coordinators meeting in this passion for two days. The main workshop being for two days we could just conduct the coordinators meeting for two hours today. So, today is the only day that we have for interaction. I would submit that you please ask all your queries to Professor Sahana Murthy and resolve the issues as far as possible. Some decisions may have to be taken jointly by with your help by Professor Sahana Murthy and Dr. Mukta Atre here, but please remember that there is no session planned tomorrow. Any subsequent interaction will be limited to email. I think we have created a Moodle thing and all the workshop coordinators. I think currently on that Moodle we have only the RC coordinators. We have workshop coordinators also recorded there. It is possible that some of you might not have used Moodle earlier. I request the remote center coordinators to advise the workshop coordinators on the Moodle usage. Moodle is an extensive platform wherein discussions can be held. There are discussion forums, questions can be raised and answers posted there can be seen instantly by all the coordinators. So, there is a extensive platform which will be used. Any logistic queries have to be sent by email. Although I would request even the logistics organizers here to keep track of Moodle because Moodle is the standard platform on which people posting things. In any case, if a email is sent on Moodle, the email automatically goes to all the registered people on Moodle. Therefore, Moodle usage will also permit you to interact using email. If you have, I see a lot of queries here. Let me see. I will just go to, I will choose MNIT Bhopal for a personal reason. Good morning MNIT. The reason I chose Bhopal was that I was to visit Bhopal tomorrow and day after and I was hoping to visit the, your institution as well as DTTI. Unfortunately, because of several other things, I was, I am actually being forced to cancel my visit. So, I will come to Bhopal some other day. I just wanted to say hello personally. Over to you for a brief comment. Yes. So, I will come some other time, but I hope you will continue to participate vigorously as Bhopal has been doing in the past. Thank you very much. I will now conclude by just making one observation about the ministry as I mentioned at the beginning. I think I had mentioned this to all the remote center coordinators earlier and I am glad to mention this that the Ministry of Human Resources is very happy with the impact that this project has been making. As you would be aware, in the eight workshops that we have conducted nationwide, more than 7000 teachers have been so empowered. And when I mentioned in the last review meeting in Delhi about our plans to attempt to address 10,000 teachers simultaneously this summer, they were in fact quite excited about it. Yesterday, the secretary higher education Mrs. Viva Puri Das was here in IIT to inaugurate a conference on IPR. I must tell you that she very happily mentioned the success of this project as innovation in teaching even in her inaugural address. Additionally, she spent 10 minutes talking to all the staff of various mission projects that are being conducted in IIT and she explicitly mentioned that they are requested for a provision in the next plan and in the next year itself to empower 1 lakh teachers of engineering colleges. Well, it is not just engineering colleges of colleges and teachers in general and I have promised her on behalf of all of us including all our partners from remote centers that we will engage 1 lakh teachers in one year in the next coming year and God willing with all your help we will be able to do that. With this I conclude my preliminary observations and I request you once again to interact with Prasasana Murti and resolve any issues that may be lingering in your mind. Once again this is the only interaction that we will have here face to face through a view and any subsequent queries that you may have might have to be resolved through moodle discussion and through email. So, thank you so much and all the best for the workshop.