 I would like all the delegates to note that this is the current experiment that is going on on a very large scale. I am so happy that Professor Ashok Jilmala's initiative has resulted in well-known faculty members going directly to the students. As you know, we have been doing teachers training for a long time, and we trained 10,000 teachers exactly using the same mode, but he has ventured to go out to a large number of teachers, a large number of students directly using a large number of well-known teachers. Now that's an extraordinary initiative and that will give us much more valuable feedback on, as Professor Russell said, what may not work and what needs to be tweaked. As I mentioned yesterday, IIT Bombay MOOCs courses would be offered, but we would be necessarily limiting our first pilot to at most 100,000 students going directly to students. So I will request the State Technical University Vice Chancellor's and Dean's to determine which of their colleges would be perhaps ready to take these courses and we'll get back to them later on more details. With this, may I now request Professor Khincha to kindly lead the panel discussion on affiliating universities that are ideally suited to harness technology to improve quality. Actually they are ideally suited to harness everything because they are the ones who are directly in charge of the education of so many colleges. So it's an oxymoron to some extent, but there are issues that need to be discussed and I will request Professor Khincha, Dr. Anandan, Pawanagarwal, Praveen Prakash, may I request the Vice Chancellor's of STU's present here, any two of them to volunteer to join the panel discussion please. Anyone, if Vice Chancellor's are not there, any senior representative from the university, please. Thank you. So without further ado, I'll request Professor Khincha to take charge. All yours sir. Good morning to all of you. Tough job. We have a very distinguished seventh panelist over here and total time given is about 40 minutes. That's the time that is given to us. So it is a very tough job and I think tough job for all the panelists also. And I'll start taking maybe two minutes and I'll request each one of my panelists to probably speak for about two and a half to three minutes each. Because I say three minutes will make it five minutes and then probably we'll throw it open to the audience for interactions for about ten minutes. That is my schedule. I'll probably just take my two minutes as the chairman's prerogative or the coordinator's prerogative. We've been talking about this technology in education for yesterday and this morning for about an hour. But if you see education and universities in the same tone as the media houses or the newspapers that have all changed, thoughts come that the universities also will change in the same way. But it is not true because if you see the trend of the admissions that is going on into top universities, the competition is getting tougher. More institutions are starting up every day. The enrollments throughout the world is increasing in the universities. And there is premium paid for graduates who come out first with universities. So the universities probably will not find that type of change as happened to the media houses and to the newspaper or to the music industry. But still transformation of universities is inevitable. That is for sure. For all of us we agree that transformation is inevitable. And we talk about this transformation of change by talking about different things. We talk say that we need more technology in education. We say that we need online education. We need these hybrid types of educations. We need to replace traditional departments with maybe problem solving type of departments. We talk of different solutions for this. But to my mind I think probably the change is required in structures and operating models of universities. I think that that is very critical. The structures and operating models of the universities and what are these new structures and what are these new operating models of the universities is the thing that probably we should be debating upon. Today if you talk about the education system, the online education system, it is nothing but broadcast and browse, publish and browse. This is all the online education is all about today. Probably we have to go much beyond this publish and browse model of the online education system or the online system. We have to also probably think about moving from the mass production to mass customization of education, the mass customization of education. Students at present they want to learn, but they want to learn only from what they want to learn from. And also they want to learn in the way they want to learn. So the syndrome of the doctor knows best or the professor knows best of what to teach probably will need to be changed. And that syndrome that I know the best, therefore I teach you what I want to teach you. I think that probably student has to come to the central attention focus and in this technology enhanced learning program, the students centric education probably will take the center stage. University 2.0, if I am talking about university 2.0 of the future, probably we will need as I said new operating models, new financial models. For example, maybe new transfer pricing models as we talk in the industry is what will be required. And what are these new transfer pricing models? We do not know still. I do not know what are these transfer pricing models. Yesterday talked about assessment rights and so many things, copyrights and all those things. I think we need to work on a new transfer pricing models and which will be very critical in running the new types of university 2000s, university 2.0. Any new change will bring in dislocation, will bring in disruptions, will bring in confusions and will bring in uncertainty. This is the typical American military term, the VUCA world as was as is coined and is very often today. Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world and I think the education world also is this VUCA world with this change coming into this and probably we need to get a mindset where we are able to take in our mindset and use our first rate intelligence which has never failed us in the past to hold maybe opposing viewpoints in our mind and still continue to get the abilities to function with these opposing thought points and viewpoints in our mind and that will probably talk about what we may call as the balance that we need to get into the education system. Balance of quantity versus quality, the balance of repair versus prepare, the balance of price versus cost, the balance of funding versus delivery and the balance of excellence versus inclusion. All these are difficult problems for our systems and probably we need to work on the dichotomies of these situations into the same mind and then work towards the solution using the technology base. I will stop here and then probably request some analytics on the table over here. I think starting from the left side over here we have Professor Shankar from JNTU. Good morning everybody. It's my privilege to be associated with this panel for discussion. I am from JNTU Anantapur, one of the budding universities which is now sixth year but we had experience of conducting through university because 1972 JNTU has been there in Hyderabad. Now, regarding the quality education programs, the university has taken the lead as a knowledge centre and as a direct academic planning we have been conducting the teachers' training programs for accreditation process. And being a rural area, we have got several other activities. We have got TechWhip funding also and Anantapur teacher-student ratio has been very predominant. The national average is teacher-student level of satisfaction is more than the national average as per the TechWhip norms, as per the statistics that is being available. And yesterday I have made a specific point that for every profession there is a training program before they take up the actual work. But unfortunately in the present scenario the teacher training programs are not being there before they take up teaching as a profession. Many people are not taking teaching as a profession. So far it has been a stop-gap arrangement. As rightly pointed out by other speakers, the cream of the people are not joining in teaching profession as per the statistics so far. And our Honourable Vice-Chancellor, Prof. K. Lal Kishore who is also a member of the ESDM, Design and Manufacturing of the National Body has introduced the online courses through Synopsis, Electronics Education and Research in VLSS system design and embedded systems and also through Carnegie Mellon University through consortium of Instruction of Higher Learning through AP State Government we have started MSIT programs also simultaneously with and also Tripolite Hyderabad. And we have also introduced for quality improvement enhancement the anti-plagiarism software and also we have taken an embassy with South Ganga and already 72 thesis have been uploaded. And further I as a senior member of IIT Sabili and Director of Economic Planning among the affiliated colleges that professional society membership must be taken either at the student level or individual level or in the institutional level particularly the professional worldwide organisation like IIT Sabili as a service for humanity and ASME, ASCA, all India management as well as etc. This will enhance and enrich the knowledge and the students for their benefit for mutual exchange of ideas and developing their communication skills I request Prof. Goswami Vice-Chancellor of ASAM University now I am Dr. P.K. Goswami actually my background I am an electrical engineer I have graduated from ASAM and then I came to IIT Madras for my master course then I went to London for PhD then I did my post-doctor from Japan I am telling this background I have started my career as a lecturer of Engineering College then I become Vice-Chancellor so I know a little bit what is going on in the engineering side so if you ask me what is the engineering necessary for the undergraduate program actually undergraduate program throughout India it should be common at least in the fifth up to sixth semester onward courses should be common because what I teach in ASAM what I teach in Kerala, what I teach in Tamil Nadu should not be different because students will be aiming for a grade examination if our courses are designed in such a way that students everywhere is very good ASAM students, Bengal students or Urisis students or Kerala students are same but exposure of the courses are different so that's why they find they have to go for a special coaching for grade examination grade is mandatory nowadays for public sector job and getting admission in the master courses so my request to all these panelists all these people is there somehow we should have a common course at least from the seventh semester onward throughout all over India then I think our students will be exposed to the common platform, the students are good then third point is there that when I was the director of technical I was trying that we have selected 20 teacher from all the colleges of ASAM I am asking them to take the classes in different courses so he is a good in mathematics then as the we do not have any credit system to mark the teacher so I was voluntarily asking the student who is your best teacher so I give the teacher a little bit extra money but that teacher is selected only for one session only otherwise there will be some groupies so I was selecting for one session then I ask them to take the other classes whether short as a faculty mainly in our time computer science and electronics or what is short as a faculty so we have a sick good teacher so I pick up them all and I allow them to take the classes and I take their feedback from the students so that way also in from IIT Guwahati we have some collaboration from the state engineering colleges IIT Guwahati also we send them students for the training even but the teacher also goes there and if you find that all our good teachers are joining IIT Guwahati now we have a short as a faculty and IIT Silsor and IIT Guwahati and even at S4 University most of my colleague or my student has joined in their project because they are short as a faculty they get the job so another point I am just thinking as a not as a teacher whether teacher all the teacher efficiency should be calibrated and depending on that you can even go for a age of 70 for some good teacher not even for 65 so that way some you can just filter them all because you want a teacher in a state engineering college you cannot remove them if they do not take any class also for 35 years so that is I do not know whether it is good or bad so thank you Mr. Verma this is my observation can I request Professor Mohan now this very good morning to all of you I am Professor Mohan currently the director national institute of technical teachers training and research I have been in IIT Madras for 25 years and teaching in civil engineering environmental one thing that I would like to tell the teacher training it is a very important thing somehow we have been neglecting for engineering even for LKG teacher if I become LKG teacher I have to undergo the mandatory training otherwise I cannot become a teacher but unfortunately here we are going directly as yesterday if I am graduated today I become a teacher which I think it is not the teacher is getting affected it is more the students are getting affected almost I have to train around 10 batches of students before I become a good teacher 10 students become the testing animals for us so which is not a good thing for teaching so this is one thing that we have to make compulsory if not joining but at least within a two year period before you make him as a permanent teacher I think he has to undergo a training on pedagogical aspect that is one. The second one the university especially the students would have some flexible hours but unfortunately we are loading them too much in my opinion because six courses and three practical and he doesn't have time to think over so unless we make slightly because always we always say that the student will be free he will do something else so if we want ICT and more thinking power I think we have to reduce to maximum four courses and two labs so then only he will be able to think over or munch over the thing this is I think IIT Kanpur is a very successful model where they have in fact IIT Kanpur only four courses will be there in the masters and only maximum two practical but because somehow we are very conservative as teachers we wanted to give more courses and we wanted to complete the syllabus or cover the syllabus rather than uncovering the syllabus as such so I think the university has to make little more flexibility for the student to take the course and why I am saying suppose I am a civil engineer 50% courses would be compulsory in civil engineering remaining 50 he can take anywhere so that you know these ICT courses which has been transmitted by IIT or other kind of a thing suppose I am interested in physics I will go and sit in the physics class and then listen to them so otherwise you know if I have six or seven courses and I may not have time to go and sit in the common classes or my interesting classes I think this is one thing that we may have to change our mindset especially the teachers have to change the mindset I think this is one thing that it is missing in our kind of a thing because we always look at the students to be loaded too much but I think this is I am little concerned opinion so I will stop here sir so thank you very much so I think this is maybe second round Mr. Praveen Prakash please from the government side in brief I will say that the future of technology enable learning in India is in the hands of state technical university I say so because engineering education is one field where lot of work has been done you have content ready NPTEL, virtual lab you have a mechanism also through training to 10,000 teacher you have also mechanism protocols also ready now the country or everybody is asking for outcome, asking for results Dr. Urra is here from Influenet he was making a presentation and he was talking about all the projects he is doing and from other side people were sitting there asking only one question this all is fine tell us how many students are there in the university, how many are using these questions are going to come back again and again and again and if we don't succeed in engineering education I see I am very uncomfortable because I have committed myself for next 5 years for technology enable learning I mean 5 years of my life I have committed and I am that's why I was very keen to meet those who are from state technical university it's not only about your students it's not only about the 36 or 40 lakh students who are in engineering it's about 2.6 crore students who are in this country in higher education that's the responsibility you have you have professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala and whenever we think about technology education and whatever we have made we said we have made content but syllabus is not common examination is not common state technical university that's a asset you have common you have common syllabus you have common examination system all that we said there is no freedom in our system can be converted through technology to our advantage that's why we the first for the usage side the first MOUs which we have entered are with state technical university yesterday I was discussing with Pawan sir let's give them 3-4 months time to prepare the detailed project report for state technical university I said no I gave them 7 days time said that we want to enter into MOU all of them came which means there is a burning desire in state technical universities also on behalf of all state technical universities I promise him that on the 3rd March when we are having standing committee we will bring all those detailed project reports for the standing committee when we will have our project approval board we will approve funding for all the state technical university to take the agenda of technical enable learning in the state technical university request is bring them to the center stage enough of experimentation piloting that that era is over I mean I keep telling this to my mission people if you look at NREGS scheme it's online can somebody imagine people talk about connectivity talking about computer literacy not available in blocks, villages NREGS is one scheme where it has been proved that if we have correct intentions if we believe they believe that centrally we want to show every laborer who is there in India how many days he has worked what is his name we will show it, we will bring it to the center stage they believed in it, in two years they have done it you go to any village in this country today the M book or the must role of that particular laborer is online, if I can do it in NREGS my engineering colleges which are much higher level than all these blocks and villages definitely it's doable particularly second engineering education is much more doable that's the ICT this is part of us in all engineering colleges therefore my request is all of you that once we go back let's work on DPR with NITR and prove that yes technology-enabled learning is going to transform our higher education and making it successful Mr Narendra from Microsoft Thank you sir I just want to make a little bit of a context a few years ago my children are both in college now and they studied in high school both in India and US I asked them, why did you find education, good India, US, what teacher they said, what we really learned everything we know from the internet the schools didn't matter so that's the state of affairs and I think as been said often we have to move away from a situation where the classroom was the center to where the student is the center of the learning process and I think as Mr Praveen Prakash pointed out our system of affiliating universities actually gives us a way of taking an organized approach to bringing technology centric learning bringing new methods of pedagogy and learning in a way that we can completely be ahead of the world no other country has such an organized system we can implement this faster quicker and entirely in the hands of the vice chancellors that are here actually to do that just at a high level if you think about what entails world and learning think about seven different types of things there are books there are lectures, laboratories a collaborative work between students tutorials with a teacher or an instructor a quizzes to see your progress and final assessments every one of these aspects can be enhanced covered by our technology personalized in a way that the teacher's burden is reduced to one of actually guiding the student to where they have to go rather than standing in front of a lecture hall and lecturing to 50 students 25 of them are not paying attention at any given time or more you don't really want to be doing that I really don't think that we were all looking forward to being great speakers if we were doing that we would be in politics as opposed to be in teaching anyway and there are basically three aspects to making this happen one is of course technology platforms that will allow you to do the seven functions in a way that is productive and allow you to flexibly experiment with them so that you are not burdened with a single model it's a time for experiments the flipped classroom models have not converged there are many ways of doing it different teachers may want to do it different ways so we really need platforms that enable and allow this kind of experimentation second of course is lecture content I mean we don't have enough and that's something that really we need to work on very hard to do that and the third of course is an execution strategy by all of you for actually getting this out to make it happen and you as vice chancellors are in the best position to do that nobody else I just wanted to just put a little bit of a plug as far as the platform is concerned you heard about our platform massively import classrooms yesterday you can see the demo it is actually been tested out really in the field with universities affiliating colleges and it's you know it's not complete because we are learning as we go along but it's come a long way I request you to take a look at it and we will be more than happy to make it available for your institutions to use it experiment as far as content is concerned there is some content but NPTEL lecture repositories a huge resource of content unfortunately it's not in the right form because they are one hour long lectures which you know which is not really the best way but we actually have technology please talk to Vidya Natampalli and Siddharth Prakash that will allow you to take NPTEL lectures and use them as the basis to create more MOOCs like content inserting quizzes making them into smaller portions automatically and with a little bit of addition from the teacher so again this is a time for experiments India can be a leader exactly because of the way we are and I think as Mr. Prakash said going back to our so called disadvantages will be our strengths thank you thank you last I think again being the last speaker I don't think I have much to say except thank all my colleagues how many of us from the academic institutions are from the affiliating universities or colleges can you raise your hands you know definitely this is less than around 30% one third how many from the panel are from the affiliating affiliating university only two of us so they are in minority okay but the Indian higher education system you know 87% of our enrollment is in affiliating university system you know the colleges affiliated to universities so that is so this room is not really representative of India's higher education sector in many ways and I think if we really want to address the quality challenges of India's higher education sector I think we have to hit the affiliating university system which for centuries because this system is how old it is 163 year old system okay so we set up the first affiliating universities in 1857 and that became the defining model of India's higher education system in many ways it helped us to increase enrollments very rapidly without having to create infrastructure you know affiliating college system enabled us to reach out to the nooks and corners of the country without too much of dilution of quality so it is not all bad but as an academic model it was a little more challenging because this the teachers in affiliated colleges they had absolutely no say in curriculum formation they were basically imparting instruction based on curriculum which was set up by the university and they had little role in examination and assessment so in many colleges they are internal assessments etc etc but then you had these academic institutions so called colleges and some of them are very prestigious colleges where the faculty is not really engaged in any processes that are there in any academic institution so this in many ways and for decades and centuries has been considered as one of the limiting constraints for quality higher education in the country but I think technology is changing the rules of the game when we want to improve quality at a scale that we wish to achieve I think this organizational model of the affiliating universities and colleges affiliated to them provides us an opportunity and Anand then pointed it out that this is your unique opportunity for the country I think what Professor Jhunjhunwala referred to in addressing quality challenges in 100 colleges is a similar concept that you are using a hub where Jhunjhunwala though he is not an institution but he is actually an institution he has single-handedly and when we were doing it I sent him a mail telling that do you require any funds for all this he says I don't require any funds I don't know how it is happening a member of that committee but he is just making it happen so I think that way he is an institution in this room this is actually not the first meeting of technical affiliating universities this is the second meeting the first meeting we had almost a year ago in planning commission where in many of you were present and it was for the first time that you admitted that technical affiliating universities are being convened they are being called to play an important role in enhancement for higher education it took me another one year another one year and Praveen is here it took me another one year to convince that we have to focus on technical affiliating universities and I can now see the enthusiasm in the ministry and Praveen saying that they are signing MOUs and they are just moving ahead with it because I think it provides us an opportunity using what is already available in the engineering education ecosystem effectively you know it is all about using that content effectively using the ICT infrastructure which is available with us and any vice chancellor from a technical affiliating university with us they are all left Rajneesh was here but Rajneesh Arora was there yesterday PTU he is left PTU also was there so anyway can I tell a secret about the technical affiliating universities the secret is that all the technical affiliating universities are extremely rich so they are sitting over hundreds of crores of rupees which they have earned through affiliation fees and they have absolutely no clue how to use it so so I think it is a huge opportunity for all of us to basically give them a few ideas and enable them to use this money effectively to improve the quality of engineering education in the system and make people more money and make people more money okay I think if they do a good job they will make more money and while I am very enthused a lot of technical affiliating universities came forward to sign MOUs but if I can be a little frank like you asked Dr. Arora that how many students are actually using it I am not very impressed with MOUs you know we will be more impressed with how many technical universities have a robust strategy and action plan to impress technology to improve quality you know if they can come out with a robust action plan and implement that action plan that is what is needed I think MOU is just the first step where they express their intention to do it and as Praveen has mentioned the government is keen to support even financially I would do not very much like them to be supported financially because they have the money you can support them but if required if there are gaps in resources those resource gaps can be definitely addressed through public funding from the government but it is up to the technical affiliating universities to chalk out a strategy or embracing technology at a scale which is only possible through them between the 25 technical universities in the country they enroll 97% of the engineering student population IITs are marginal as far as IITs and IITs they are marginal players in overall volume game for engineering education so I think the importance of technical affiliating universities in particular and affiliating universities in general to address quality challenges of India's higher education sector are immense we are making the first steps in that direction that is going to the central strategy for quality enhancement of India's higher education sector I think this organizational model can be turned on its head to our advantage so that we can really make a huge difference and leverage technology and I can I can see Anup is not too happy because people from institutions you know you passed out from IIT and you will have no clue of what an affiliating college system is and therefore to even understand it takes a little while you know has been educating and I think the Microsoft research own experiments led by Vidya on massively empowered classrooms where they basically using these technical affiliating universities to reach out to hundreds of colleges affiliated to them and empower the classrooms I don't know what that classroom empowerment is we only heard of empowering the teachers or the students they are empowering the classroom they are empowering both the students and teachers hopefully or maybe more than that maybe the peon and everyone so I think there is a huge opportunity in this model to make a change sorry I did manage to get about 10-12 minutes for interactions and I should thank all my panel member colleagues for making not you everybody I think we left each one of us left half a minute for you so that's fine we will have about 10-12 minutes of interaction possible welcome suggestions, comments, questions from the floor I think I will start from here somebody can give the mic please introduce yourself I think we need a mic here also good morning everybody I am Dr. Himlata Chary but I am from University of Mumbai deputy director academic for distance learning and I come from the field of education and we have been teaching MA education ICT optional paper for the last two years online in English and Marathi for about 800 students now my main issue was to get teacher coordinators to because it's one person cannot do manage about 800 students so what we did was we had now four PCP centers we divided them into four volunteer coordinators who decided to help me with this of getting ahead with that now first year we did this on a trial basis and we got a very good feedback from our MA education students who were placed in schools who were given in charge of ICT because grade 9 ICT was compulsory the second year I could not get these two teachers because they were themselves busy with the credit system and while I was thinking how I could go about it I must thank professor Sanjay Mishra from SEMCA director because we were just discussing and he said why don't you go about peer tutoring so I had my senior students who had already undergone this and they started teaching and the second batch and everything is on university website it is there but when we ask teachers they always say is it coming under API score can we get this for our cash promotion then we will do if they have to even design or develop a course material they say is that ISBN ISS and I mean it doesn't come how we can motivate them and the other issue that we have is regional centers 80% of our students come from Alibagh, Ratnagiri, district districts so to set up centers there and that's where I am at the crossroad to know how to go about setting up for them and coming from education I must thank I had a very refreshing session for the last two days I learnt a lot about engineering and so that's my thank you I think you had some sub hand raised here maybe next you can come director Neeter Bhopal I agree what Shri Praveen Prakash Ji said that it is the technical state technical universities to play dominant role my experience is that we are having two shortage of faculty members recruitment process is being delayed for more than 10 years recruitments are not being done in many states number one we have to concentrate on some of the private engineering college owners also because they are crucial in state technical education scenario when there was a program in Raipur university was not interested but private engineering college management were interested so I think we have to address them also sometimes they are very willing to join this move number three we have to make some policy related to revision of syllabus because most of the universities are dealing with the syllabus which were prepared in 1990 or 2000 so and industries are generally complaining that the syllabus are not as per our needs regarding the ICT enabled learning I think most of the engineering colleges are interested bandwidth connectivity may be a problem for the rural colleges which are located in rural area so we have to concentrate on that area also that is very required otherwise the connectivity if connectivity is very important so we have to concentrate on that area so we have to concentrate on that area because most of the engineering colleges especially in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat also they are not well connected as far as the bandwidth is concerned so these were the points I just want to make one quick comment nobody prevents us from modifying the syllabus universities are supreme and if you don't modify the syllabus it is our own fault is what my judgment is the second point I wanted to just quick point is again about this curricula the curricula change the pressure on universities on the curricula change are from too many directions just to mention a few directions it is the ICT model syllabi then we have pressure from industries to change our syllabi we have pressures from sometime reserve bank of India to include something in our syllabus we have pressure from the disaster recovery center of country to change syllabus and we have pressure from the environmental from the constitution of India to all sorts of sources putting pressure on the university to change the syllabi change the syllabi again that is one issue that needs to be talked because 4 years is 4 years for engineering and to cover everything in that 4 years and include all these additionalities that come up from different sources of the society to be included in the syllabi is a difficult proposition yeah professor good morning all of you this is professor Shailu Registrar of Kakti University Varangal Andhra Desh ours is a traditional university though we have about 19 constant colleges of our own and about 500 affiliate colleges across three districts of the state and as far as this seminar is concerned I am very happy I think this is second of the series of meetings convened by a maturity as far as using of ICT in higher education is concerned but the last two days we have been discussing about only technical education and there are many other disciplines non-technical like pharmacy management and other traditional social sciences arts and so on so forth and again as far as the preparation of syllabus and e-content is concerned whatever that is prepared at IATs IAMs level can be used to throw affiliate colleges like us and see as far as somebody was commenting that they are very rich in terms of funds as of now even payment of salary is difficult thing every month maybe it's problem case with the technical universities again without taking care of the schooling education intermediate education if you can think of using ICT only at the higher education level may not be of course that useful unless we start using them right from school education level and coming to the psychology of teachers psychology of students and psychology of management including regulators my personal opinion is that better to introduce a paper like we have a paper called industrial organizational behavior wherein there will be a space for understanding the behavior of management regulators and also teachers and also students without that there should be a that should be made mandatory for all the courses in respect of the discipline whether it is engineering management or sciences business and so on so forth these few observations thank you for giving the opportunity I have a small suggestion to make very specific session I am continuing from where Pawan left Pawan said that 97% of these technical graduates are through these through outside IIT and IIT system now what's happening there is one thing which Pawan brought out I have spoken to VCPT who just now and I am speaking on his behalf there is whatever is being talked what Ashok talked what all we are talking about what ICD can do or potentially can do we are still talking of very very small numbers of this ICD intervention but this revolution has been on for last 10 years last 10 years while this organized sector was getting organized huge numbers which are far bigger than this 97% which which Pawan talked about has already gotten in the game not a single person here is from that group that number is humongous every corner of the country every street of Bombay you travel you will find these boards offering all kind of studies now there is a huge innovation on there is a need of the people which is being addressed now here is the specification which we have which I have the sanction of my chance to PTO and yes PTO is one of the organization which is sitting on a pile of cash today so so the specification is very specification is that can we expose this group to this vast numbers which are outside the system and can we expose that group to what is happening here it will do tremendous amount of group nearly 100,000 people are already organized in that disorganized sector and we would be very happy PTO would be very happy to take the lead in this and organizing this thanks I think we will have time for two more interventions and I think I thought it hand raised here first so good morning everybody I am Dr. Siddling Soma Development Officer from Department of Technical Education Government of Karnataka sir one small suggestion as sir mentioned most of the technical universities are the richest universities in our country so similar to the CSR corporate social responsibility in the industrial sector so is it possible for the I mean the universities which are rich in terms of financial resources to extend their part of the financial resources to help CSR CSR for this thing, Affiliating Colleges Sir I am Rohitha Sringi from Rajasthan Technical University Kota I am head mechanical and yesterday only I took over the day before yesterday I took over charge of director academics now the benefit of this seminar is very immense regarding that secret I must tell that we are into a mode of deficit financing so finance is definitely an issue see you should learn some lessons from PTO so no no sir we have professor NS Vyas from IIT Kanpur who has taken over as vice chancellor of this university so okay now regarding this MOU I think definitely we can roll out the products which are available free immediately and we definitely will make it a essential component when we affiliate these colleges will make it as a mandatory requirement and that is how we can immediately go in for action plan the third February meeting the third meeting which will have the details on the financial models what kind of investment university has to do in developing the Affiliating Colleges definitely we will take a decision according to that I think the last intervention here we have to see that how these can be delivered more effectively so the kind of project that is needed my name is Vaidya Subramaniam I am from Shastra University I'll just make it very short now it's the season for you know a common minimum point program so in academics as well in academics as well we are talking about 25 Affiliating State Universities so as we as I said in the last session in the evening yesterday we need to identify at least a few priorities that can commonly apply to all the 25 State Technical Universities and see what we can deliver to them through the mission and agree on some common elements that unifies all of them and create an encouraging ecosystem from which we can use that as a springboard and then try to come forward with more interventions as we move forward thank you thank you so much I think we had I am sure there will be many more who would like to have any suggestions and then all of you are welcome to do that to Mr. Pravin Prakash or to Mr. Pawan Agarwal or to me and probably we will look forward to such suggestions coming forward in the coming few days I'll just probably give one minute each to Mr. Pravin Prakash and to Mr. Pawan Agarwal if they want to say something at the end of this session I'll just react to what ma'am said definitely at the federal at the national level whatever policy intervention is required to bring technology-enabled learning at the center stage which requires you are saying API changing all definitely will do we were discussing internally yesterday and in fact I was telling this to Mr. Pawan Agarwal also he said okay if doing that helps do it but finally it is the people who have the ground the VC has to genuinely believe that technology-enabled learning can bring change to students if that belief is there definitely all things will find in place I think the point about the focus on technical education here it is deliberate and we wanted some institutions and universities which are non-technical also to be part of this discussion so that we can carry you it is your responsibility to carry forward this discussion to the other forums and we'll be with you so we won't champions who will see the similar thoughts in other fields of study thank you I just have three small quick points to add before I close this session one for the Affiliating University because having run the satellite-based program for all my colleges in the VTU and for the first university to start the satellite-byte courses for an Affiliating University I think there are three two difficulties I think which you should take care of one is the difficulty of timetabling that is a very real issue and I think that has to be taken care of and the second issue is of regulation change with regard to attendance these attendance requirements and the regulation requirements 85% attendance and this technology-based learning programs don't go together I think you have to take care of these two simple things but they are very difficult to handle two other two just common points that I would like to say I would prefer and please don't mistake mine I say this today IITs also have a 40% shortage of faculty that's what is in newspapers reports and IITs should now become in my judgment an example of doing this courses through this technology means in their own system they will introduce a lot of confidence in the other institutions to take up these courses today many institutions ask this question does the IIT use it and the answer is no so I think IITs should become an example of doing these courses within themselves and then ask other persons to do it they should become examples rather than just what we may call as givers maybe just givers last point is I think the word has to be collaborative co-invention and not directed learning experiences see this directed learning experiences versus the collaborative learning experiences will make all the differences in making this technology forward in our country as I said 97% versus 3% so 97% there has to be a collaborativeness rather than a deductiveness thank you very much actually thank all my panelists they are operating with me I want to I want to thank Professor Kinsha and the panel members for an excellent session so right now we are breaking for tea and be back at 1150 sharp for the next session thank you we come to the last but not the least important session of the conference where we are going to consolidate the detailed discussions that happened in four groups I am happy to welcome Shri Ashok Thakur secretary of higher education you know how busy secretaries are and Mr. Ashok Thakur unfortunately had an additional discount feature he was unwell he became well mostly only late last night but today morning he took the hardest flight I am personally grateful to him for another reason for last several years that I have been working on this national mission project of course there are additional secretaries and joint secretaries who have been handling individual projects and so on but he has been personally keeping an eye on the development giving guidance and correction at every stage and giving absolutely solid support I am sure this is true with all other institutions doing the national mission projects but at IIT Bombay I have no hesitation in saying that if we have achieved something it comes because of this strong support from the ministry guided personally by Shri Ashok Thakur it is a personal pleasure sir to have you here it is a long time after which you have been able to make a trip to IIT Bombay welcome you may I request you to chair the sessions so what I am going to do is I am going to advise the secretary about the names of the four groups and I request him to call a representative of each group and I request each group to present their conclusions of the discussions in 5 to 7 minutes sir these were the four groups which had discussions on these topics so we had this was the first topic future of content creation enabling and empowering teachers the second was third was content delivery and the fourth was investment integration these are four important components just name each and call everybody and let them make a presentation for 5 to 7 minutes sir yeah the first group on future of content creation Dr. Andrew JNU yes and Dr. Neha Chaudhary CIS okay our topic was future content creation and you can look at them with three different words each of them if you emphasize can mean something different so are we looking at the horizon and trying to predict what are the technological changes that will affect content creation are we looking at content creation specific to the NME ICT project which is what we think we will focus on in this particular proposal our group was made up of about 7 educational technologists and the rest were educators I put them as either administrators or as teachers and as a result the 14 questions were probably too many for us to discuss because it was a little chaotic so I've distilled some of the information about let me start by the standard adopted by the NME ICT there is a common noting that the four quadrant standard that has been adopted there is unequal development in one which is video lectures and insufficient development in the other quadrants and here is another point which may make me unpopular in IIT there is too much of a broadcasting where the content is developed in one source let's say the IITs consumed by the other players in the NME ICT which are technical education now one of the suggestions which I think is very important here is that the other aspects of the quadrants such as the problem solving environments and the simulation sections they can be used you can utilize teachers of these subjects from other universities and colleges to fill in that content the use of simulation and gaming technologies as tools for learning has very little support in this but there is a very exciting project in IIT Bombay which should probably receive more focus where three dimensional animation in environment I think it's under your development should probably develop more focus into content that can be reusable so that let me go through the individual questions I'm sorry the questions are there the answer to the first one which is generally on the coverage of NME ICT the general decision was that the curriculum is more or less covered however it doesn't match with the local curriculum in all cases the pictures are sometimes too long the quality standards differ and there is a lack of reusability so additional content sometimes needs to be sourced and this has been brought out by other talks earlier for instance gaps in law management humanities were not covered and one aspect when you're teaching technology is to tend to focus too much on the context of the subject and many of the soft skills required by our students are missing in the educational sector and probably should be added in the second was to ask whether content creation in Indian languages was keeping with the times the solutions were technological as well as to use crowdsourcing for dubbing, translation and to develop a few technical standards that could use machine translation as an intermediate to be manually curated and later to create content in local languages there are more details in the written document the third question was is content generated by government funded projects not used to a desired extent how do we extend this the general and this is much more of a personal point in is that the government content should be licensed such that it is reusable and the focus should be on accessibility and dissemination and also content needs to be modularized there is an example with the NCRT content which is actually very very good but if it is chunked down into modular concepts it could serve as seeds for developing other content which could be built on even at the undergraduate level number four was our mechanisms that we have to ensure quality standards in content creation adequate and if not etc. we are a little unsure about the standards used for quality control and quality development so what we have suggested is that the alternative is not to filter content by setting standards at source but to allow user preferences as a selection mechanism crowdsourcing can be easily used to enforce these standards and if you have a mechanism to allow transparency, certification validation and student feedback the idea is the best lecture would be selected the fifth question was to take care of the changes in technology and how to upgrade existing content general consensus was that we should look for integrating different types of content and standards again have to be defined for the individual content such that it is mashable the sixth question was specific on the four quadrant method which I talked about earlier is it possible to generate some of the quadrants automatically from other quadrants we had some discussion on how that is possible in the context of our group discussion it was obvious that you could generate transcripts from video and audio content dubbing and language translation can also be generated from these transcripts and the second point is how do you use the four quadrant to adequately impart self-learning now this is the fourth quadrant has to have much more content and that is the problem based approach self-evaluation systems they have to be developed in more the seventh point was the existing model for creating content is largely project based assigned to faculty and academic institutions I think I have got the answer wrong but anyway the answer that we have in this is that this is critical for the present generations of teachers and requires attention I will come back to this point because we discussed it later the teacher today is considered only a subject matter expert and with reference to multimedia development we have separate skill sets in instructional design and in multimedia development and possibly this has to be looked at in which these skills are improved the next question was what are the pros and cons of outsourcing some of the development works such as translation and dubbing and I will take this with the other question there is a large and vibrant private sector is there any possibility of leveraging the expertise in this sector so the answers were more or less the pros were that yes you need to get a meritocracy improved implemented here and there are obviously improvements in quality faster turnover support the creation of an industry specific in this area and therefore job creation etc sorry the con was that the educational sector may not be able to afford the industry quality that we have presently so some sort of an intermediate has to be placed with reference to using the private sector that is a linked question there are government policies regarding checks balances and rates and one has to work out how to use it the 10th question a large amount of content is now available from top universities around the world how can such material be effectively used the recommendation is a blended approach there is a concern that was voiced by many teachers including by me and the concern is to prevent a teacher from being reduced to a certifier the role only in evaluation because all the content is simply coming in from outside so it is important to define standards to ensure accountability with teachers both by additional content produced in the other quadrants and by the ability to guide students in all aspects of this content point number 11 can we promote the use of open source software the answer from this group was yes but it should not mandate the use of open source software and the use of free tools from being prescribed and used the 12th was should we record classroom lectures of outstanding teachers and make the result content available to the public the answer should also be that you should reverse the term from outstanding teachers to teachers who can give outstanding lectures so a suggestion was that rather than only select a few teachers on the basis of some prerequisite you may also consider that all teachers available can give one or two outstanding lectures and you form a corpus and then use that as a seed this is a concern that was voiced repeatedly and I mentioned it at the beginning and that we need to give visibility to teachers outside of the privileged institute space such as the IITs and central universities point number 13 should we come up with effective strategies to create textbooks for all universities the answer should be yes for core courses but there is a concern that you will not be able to rapidly change curriculum and therefore the content based on the needs the half-life of knowledge in our world today is much much shorter than what it was 25 years ago and textbooks also have a shorter half-life point number 14 how do we use the social media experience and content creation and how do we ensure that content created through outsourcing meets our norms such as quality there are mechanisms for outsourcing quality control but to be honest by this time which is the last question our group had dispersed a little bit and lost much of its interest so we didn't have much of a question and answer to this but I can always get circulated by email and get it back now as a closing comment there is also requirement for a clear definition of the platform this outside of the questions asked which allows for hosting measurable content content itself should be designed with a granularity that allows it to be measurable to the maximum extent and allows for a definition of adaptive content now these are technical terms and those members of our educational technology community who are part of the group will probably fill in definitions but translated into English just the dissemination of video lectures should not constitute the only success story of enemy ICT we need to get much more content and it should be actually generated by the consumer so they need to have a lot more granularity in modular units which they can piece together into content there is additional technological challenges content has to be meta tagged and standards defined for knowledge representation an example is what the Khan Academy does for linking prerequisites for knowledge so that when you pick up a topic you know what else you need to read so that you can reach that particular information now overriding concerns relate to the lack of adequate authoring tools and this is a strong recommendation that a focused grant effort be made to develop good authoring tools because the teachers really handicapped into being simply a subject matter expert here this keeps multimedia development a specialized skill and has a polarized development of content supported only to pre-defined sites through projects funded for this purpose it is strongly advised that this be democratized to allow all educators to participate in content creation at all levels and the focus be made to define and ensure authoring tools are available to educators thank you