India is the second largest English speaking populace in the world, a credit earned by a mere 12.16 percent of the population. This includes both native speakers and second- language speakers of English. These are only speakers who cannot read or write necessarily, thus lowering the percent- age of skilled users of English. Despite being largest English-speaking population, it is considered as a pain point and phobia for Indians, especially from tier- 2 cities to rural India. At the same time it is has become an important and on- demand employability skill. English language proficiency enriches the employment prospects largely, and also brings in personality, responsibility with personal, social and corporate etiquettes.

The challenge is to bring English to every child of India empowering the entire generation with complete proficiency in the English language, but there are not enough good teachers that can impart the skills to the learners.

The emergence of English language labs is helping address this language barrier that we have across the country. These labs have come out as a hope to many who are just lagging behind be- cause of the language. Labs have come up with multiple benefits to teachers and students at the institutional level, and are also helping at the corporate level. Recently, the CSR wing of Ambuja Cement, Ambuja Foundation, has adopted the solution English Edge to impart language training to the foundation’s employees using the techno- logically-empowered portable language lab. Similarly, many corporate, private institutions, and the government are eyeing on these labs with the hope to bring in a better future for India.

There are many private players like Liqvid, Sanako, Words Worth, Clarity, etc, offering their innovative solutions to impart English learning using tech tools to make it far more reachable, interactive, and learned. It is notable that the CBSE and ICSE are promoting enhancement of listening and speaking skills in the schools making it necessary to implement English language labs throughout our country. The other boards, too, will follow suit.

Sometimes, choosing inappropriate solutions, which is not apt for the institution’s learning environment, can leave no effect. Therefore, it is imperative to choose the right solution according to the individual learning environment. Here are some tips…

Choosing the right English labs for your institution

English language lab is a very crucial tool to an institution and should be chosen with diligence. Its purpose is enhancement of skills of the students to the requisite levels of proficiency. The ideal solution should have the following features:

• To provide a right blend of teacher and technology partnership in the classroom to facilitate a very conducive learning environment for the learner
• It should be content based with a dashboard for the teacher to con- trol and monitor each student’s activity
• The teachers should have flexibility to use the readymade content as well as create his/her own exercises and tests
• To reduce the total cost of owner-ship of a lab, it should use the best of technology, yet work with comfort on thin and thick clients
• Products should be backed by proper continual academic as well as technical support commencing with an in depth training of the trainers post installation
• Learner material should be available to facilitate participatory learning by students such as work books
• Pedagogy precedes technology: It is Feature imperative that the buyers ensure that the technology is meeting the learning objectives and is not an end in itself.
• The involvement of the faculty, who are the key stakeholders, in effective deployment of any technology solution. The managements must ensure that the faculty is fully trained and on-board with any technology
solution
• Pilots and trials are a must.

Labs at Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Mumbai

Principal In-charge: Prof Seema Shah

Types of labs deployed: Language Lab, Electronics and Embedded Systems Labs, Telecommunications Lab, Virtual Lab

The implementation of labs is leading to an enhanced teaching- learning process. This is because students can visualise abstract concepts and better understand how things work. This essentially creates an encouraging learning environment where the students’ curiosity and creativity are triggered. This builds a stronger foundation and thus, students are able to apply the concepts learnt in final year projects. Thus, the projects are meaningful, relevant in the current context and can be used with little efforts spent on converting them to prototype. Some of the projects are used within the institute like online knowledge portal, online transcript system, online faculty feedback system etc.

Language Lab

The purpose of a language lab is to involve students to actively participate in language learning exercises and get more practice than otherwise possible in a traditional classroom environment. With a language lab, all students in the class can speak simultaneously without distracting each other regardless of the class size. Without a language lab, in a class of more than 10 students, each student gets less than one minute of speaking practice. In a language lab, the teacher has a computer with appropriate software for conducting language exercises, both teachers and students use headsets, while the students have a recorder/player for recording/listening to speech. We have used language lab as a part of the Communication Skills and Presentation and Communication Techniques subject curriculum. While teaching these two subjects, the Humanities faculty identify students weak in communication and they are given extra exercises during the higher semesters. This helps in preparation of technical and HR interviews during the placement process.

Electronics and Embedded Systems Labs

• DSCH2 is used in the Digital Design labs for gate level/transistor level simulation. It simulates digital circuits and helps view timing diagrams

• ISE 9.2i is a simulator for programming digital circuits in VHDL and simulating them. These programmes can be downloaded on FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) kit and can implement circuits on FPGA

• Microwind: It used for VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) subject to make layouts of various CMOS circuits and can also do circuit analysis

• Open Source Software like Ngsice, Magic: These are used for circuit simulations

• MATLAB: Practical in Electronics and Telecommunication branches are conducted using MATLAB. It is a high-level language and interactive environment for numerical computation, visualisation, and programming. MATLAB is used to analyse data, develop algorithms, and create models and applications. The language, tools, and built-in math functions enable us to explore multiple approaches and reach a solution faster than with spreadsheets or traditional programming languages, such as C/C++ or Java. We use MATLAB for a range of applications, including signal processing and communications, image and video processing, control systems and test and measurement.

Telecommunications Lab

• OptiSim: OptSim is RSoft’s awardwinning software tool for the design and simulation of optical communi-cation systems at the signal propagation level. It has state-of-the-art simulation techniques, an easy-touse graphical user interface and lablike measurement instruments.

• Genesys: Genesys is software useful for design and analysis of RF and Microwave circuits. It has an intuitive Windows design environment with integrated schematic capture and board layout along with system, circuit, electromagnetic simulators. It provides graphical and interactive stage-by-stage diagnosis of impairments such as mismatches and spurious frequency mixing that are ignored by spreadsheets. System frequency planning is made simple through automatic identification of spurious free bands. We use Genesys in academics for analysis of transmission line, Smith Chart analysis, design of the impedance matching networks, design and analysis of microwave and RF circuits, and design and analysis of antenna.

• IE3D: IE3D is the first SCALABLE EM design and verification platform that delivers the modelling accuracy for the combined needs of high-frequency circuit design and signal integrity engineers across multiple design domains. IE3D’s multi-threaded and distributed simulation architecture and high-design capacity is the most cost-effective EM simulation and modelling solution for component level and circuit-level applications. IE3D offers the highest simulation capacities and fastest turnaround times for the broadest number of applications making it the best choice for improving your design team productivity and meeting design schedules on time.

We are in the process of implementing virtual labs with IIT, which provides remote- access to labs in various disciplines of Science and Engineering. These virtual labs would cater to students at the undergraduate level, post-graduate level as well as to research scholars. The objective is to encourage students to conduct experiments by arousing their curiosity. This would help them in learning basic and advanced concepts through remote experimentation.

Objectives

• For explaining difficult theoretical concepts in the classroom, for conducting practicals where students can imagine and understand the concepts learnt, for UG and PG projects in relevant fields

• Providing an opportunity to faculty and students to design and simulate their own work

• Work done by the students has direct relevance to the industry and increases employability

• Design software speeds up time needed if done manually

• Use of simulation software in labs mimics the real-world scenarios/experiments

Aiding teaching-learning process

• Faculty find it easy to teach concepts with these digital labs

• Concepts and abstract entities are visualised and retained for a longer period of time

• Higher level learning is possible

• Helps in applying concepts learnt in projects and technical co-curricular activities

Modes of evaluation

• During student’s final viva voce every semester, our external faculty gives feedback on student’s performance. This gives us an idea of the level of learning, which has been
encouraging

• Department level: At the start of every semester, we invite an industry experts from every department for an in-depth meeting with all faculty members to discuss what is happening in the industry, how we have implemented teaching of theory and practical in the last semester, and how we are going to teach now.

• Subject level: We ask industry experts to give their suggestions which will make teaching worthwhile and relevant in the current context

• Project level: Every project guide gets comments and suggestions for the project he/she is guiding from an industry expert

Teacher’s training and experience with labs

• Vendor demos are organised for all new purchases: equipment and software for faculty and technical staff

• Regular faculty trainings are conducted before faculty start practical

• Teachers’ feedback has been positive, they found it easy to teach concepts, observed that students have developed confidence in their subjects and are able to retain these in higher semesters

• Teachers are able to instill curiosity among students in their subjects

Students’ feedback

• Students are engaged in the labs, since they find it interesting. They want to use the lab beyond timetable hours for fiddling with their ideas

• Students find labs interesting and are understanding concepts better

• They have found relevance to current technology trends and work happening in industries .

Future trends

• More software are going to come up for design, simulations and testing in various branches of engineering

• Collaborations among institutes for sharing labs virtually

• Students and faculty are going to become savvier with e-usage and over the Internet.

Department of School Education and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Government of Punjab, and Elets Technomedia hosted the State Education Summit in Chandigarh on 7th and 8th February, 2013

In the words of the programme Chair of the event, Kahan Singh Pannu, IAS, Secretary-cum-Director General, School Education, Government of Punjab, “The summit was convened with the objective of discussing and witnessing the huge dimensions in education which are taking place in the country.” Pannu added,“Technology plays a sole leader in our daily lives and a key role in how we teach, learn, and interact on the administrative platform in schools. Technology is the only answer to make students learn better. One of the most important components of education is to create curiosity and creativity among children. So, how can technology can be put to use in the best manner in this respect, especially in the government schools, was the objective of this conference.”

Esteemed dignitaries graced the conference

Sikandar Singh Maluka, Education Minister, Government of Punjab, was the Chief Guest at the conference. Among eminent Guests of Honour at the summit were: Dharam Vir, IAS (Retd), State Election Commissioner, Haryana; Vivek Atray, HCS Director & Special Secretary to Government, Haryana, Electronics & Information Technology Department and Managing Director, Haryana State Electronics Development Corporation Ltd. (HARTRON); Parampal Kaur, Additional State Project Director, Government of Punjab; Dr R S Khandpur, Director General Pushpa Gujral Science City, Punjab.

Reaching to those who matter the most

More than 1500 delegates including representatives from the government, education regulatory bodies and corporate organisations from across the country, district coordinators and school principals from different districts of Punjab attended the two-day summit. The summit facilitated one-to-one interaction among the key dignitaries and the attendees.

The summit agenda

The two-day summit included seven sessions along the school and higher Education track. The sessions included: Towards Transformative Innovation in Education, STEM (Science Technology English & Mathematics) Education, Role of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) in School Management, Innovative Technologies in Education, Career Counseling: Choosing the Right Path, Revamping School Education through Skills & Vocational Education, Emerging Trends in Higher Education and Higher Education: Challenges, Opportunities and Insights.

Confederation of private sector and academicians

Corporates from across the country demonstrated their innovations towards propagation of interactive learning in classrooms. While teachers got acquainted with the advancements in other parts of the country with help of such innovations, the presentations from these corporate helped administrators to understand the role of ICT in bringing in transparency in administration.

The summit also witnessed presence of top level officials and senior academicians from different education regulatory bodies, universities, technical institutes and schools. To name a few: Prof Krishnamachar Sreenivasan, Sr Faculty Member, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Ropar; Dr A K Dwivedi, Director, NIELIT, Chandigarh, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology; Dr RS Bawa, VC, Chandigarh University; Dr M B Dholakia, Joint CEO, Gujarat Knowledge Society; Dr Jessy Abraham, Associate Professor, Department of Teachers & Non-Formal Education (IASE) Jamia Millia Islamia; DNV Kumara Guru, Director, External Relations, Indian School of Business, Mohali; Dr Neelam Gulati Sharma, Additional Director, Punjab State Council for Science and Technology; Earnest Charles J Samuel, Founder and Principal, Mount Carmel School, Chandigarh; Komal Singh, Principal, Millennium School, Mohali; Dr Madhu Chitkara, Vice Chancellor, Chitkara University, Punjab; Dr Amrit Lal, Principal, DAVIET, Jalandhar; Dr Lovi Raj Gupta, Vice Chancellor, Baddi University of Emerging Sciences and Technology, Himachal Pradesh; HS Bawa, Industrial coordinator, Centre of Industrial Liaison and Placement Thapar University; Dr Rohit Dhand, Additional Dean, Lovely Professional University; Gurmeet Singh Dhaliwal, MD, Baba Farid Group of Institutions; Dr Maninder Singh, Head Computer Science Engineering Department, Thapar University; SPS Bedi, Executive Director, Chandigarh Group of Institutions; J S Dhillon, Professor in Electrical and Instrumentation, Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology; Satish C Sharma, CMD, Maharaja Group Of Colleges, Udaipur; Virender Rawat, Director – Academic, B–Kanae School, Gujarat; Prof (Dr) Devendra Pathak, Vice Chancellor, APG Shimla University; Dr Aneet Bedi, Professor, Dean Academics, Gian Jyoti Institute of Management and Technology; Jeet Singh, Doaba Institute of Engineering and Technology; Dr Jasvinder Pal Kour Shergill, Principal, Government Medical College, Sangrur Road, Patiala.

The summit also had a special session on the essence of Career Counseling that was conducted by Pervin Malhotra, Executive Director, CareerGuidanceIndia.

Recognising the best practices in Punjab

The summit was not only an insightful ride through ICT innovations in the education sector for the people of Punjab, but it also recognised and felicited some of the best practices in the sector in Punjab itself.

Useful ICT innovations in Punjab

1. Mobile Car Science Lab: A car that moves from school to school which does not have lab facility. The car is fitted with necessary instruments and material for conducting practical classes on science subject.

2. Project ePunjabSchool: The online portal has connected all middle, high and senior secondary school with centralised database and provides updated information of students, teachers & school infrastructure.

3. Udaan: The project is aimed at spreading awareness of general knowledge among students and teachers. Ten questions and answers are mailed to all the schools and put up on the notice boards so that students can note them and revision tests based on these are conducted during free period. This gives students a free access to questions on a particular topic.

Virtual laboratories are the solution to Indian classrooms’ challenge of lack of faculty and new solutions that improve learning outcomes, writes Ruhi Ahuja Dhingra, ENN

Ever thought how easy teaching and learning Science could be if students thought the way scientists do, or if they could control something from even the secluded areas of the country?

The digital revolution dates back to the invention of the transistor in the year 1947. Today, it has traveled far beyond. A large number of institutions in the country, especially those in backward areas, are unable to offer a real laboratory experience to students. However, a lot of institutions that have these facilities follow the conventional method of teaching and lack in terms of the quality of equipment. Virtual laboratories or online laboratories or iLabs are here to build a connect. These labs allow a student sitting in any part of the country to do an experiment from anywhere, at anytime, and at any pace using the Internet. Even though virtual labs do not provide hands-on experience to the students, they eliminate the need to sit in a physical classroom and take a lecture to understand a concept, or visit a real laboratory to perform an experiment. Apart from this, these labs also minimise the costs incurred in performing experiments in real labs and enable students to hone their critical thinking skills and repeat the experiments till they feel they have understood a concept fully.

How are virtual laboratories, the new interactive form of learning math and science disciplines, revamping how information is disseminated, obtained and processed? digitalLEARNING invited learned people from the academia to shed light on how, with the advent of virtual labs, education is transcending all geographical barriers and spanning to every nook and corner of the country, and how the student-centric pedagogy is empowering students. Let us have a look at what they said:

Prof (Dr) Anil Sahasrabudhe, Director, College of Engineering Pune
In an era of Internet and World Wide Web, the virtual laboratory is a novel idea of empowering students from remote corners of the globe. The traditional education or content delivery is changing rapidly. This is true not only of theory, but now, even practical classes. The virtual laboratories will cost so much less because there are no consumables required and an experiment can be conducted at one’s choice at one’s will at anytime from anywhere. This is true empowerment for the 21st century engineering student. The team of faculty has put in lot of efforts to make this model a success. I appeal to students to start making use of this facility provided through funding by MHRD effectively.

Prof BP Sanjay, Vice Chancellor, Central Univeristy of Tamil Nadu
Virtual labs seem to be reverberating in the policy making circles where competing technologies claim to realise the same objective. New higher education institutions located in rural and remote areas are no doubt, ideal for extending the learning benefits of virtual labs. However, the last mile problems of connectivity suitable for high speed/volume data (AV format) and interactive costs are a deterrent. It is imperative that these are ad- dressed at the policy level before advocating virtual lab solutions. While we are doing our best to leverage learning technologies, we are continuously dogged by frequent power out- ages, monopolistic telecom service providers and reliable vendors who can provide good installation and after sales service.

Prof (Dr) Indira Parikh, Founder President, FLAME
Digital labs are going to have far reaching impact and will create a lot of enthusiasm and excitement and wonder at what is possible. But this is still not the end of the world. Unless students meet and interact with each other, the touch- feel factor will not happen. Therefore, technology needs to be tempered by group learning to make it very human.

Prof (Dr) MM Salunkhe, Vice Chancellor, Central University of Rajasthan
Students enjoy learning though virtual labs. The shortage of faculty is debated at the national level. I hope technology will take its own course and will make it possible to inculcate skill development in the students. There is great scope for this.

Prof (Dr) Ranjan Bose, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Delhi
Virtual Labs not only arouse curiosity in students, but also permit them to learn at their own pace. The pedagogy is student-centric. Virtual Labs are truly ‘any-place, any-pace, any- time, any-type’ labs!

Prof (Dr) Lovi Raj Gupta, Vice Chancellor, Baddi University of Emerging Sciences and Technologies
Virtual labs are going to be the next in thing in the academia in the times to come because they are going to provide students an opportunity to explore the set-ups at the premier institutes to learn more and more irrespective of their distance and remoteness. Virtual labs will also provide seamless opportunity for faculty members to upgrade their know how by learning from the design of experiments and they will try to frame better experiments in their organisations.

Good lab facilities and updated lab experiments are critical for any engineering college. Physical distances and the lack of resources often make it difficult to perform experiments, especially when they involve sophisticated instruments. Also, good teachers are always a scarce resource. The Virtual Labs project addresses this issue of lack of good lab facilities, as well as trained teachers, by making remote experimentation possible. With the present day Internet and computer technologies, these limitations no longer hamper students and researchers in enhancing their skills and knowledge. Also, in a country like ours, costly instruments and equipment need to be shared with fellow researchers to the extent possible. Yet another objective is to arouse the curiosity of the students and permit them to learn at their own pace. This facilitates the absorption of basic and advanced concepts through remote experimentation. Internet-based experimentation further permits use of resources – knowledge, software, and data available on the web, apart from encouraging skillful experiments being simultaneously performed at points separated in space. In the Virtual Labs project, web-enabled experiments have been designed for remote operation and viewing. The pilot phase of the Virtual Labs project was started in April 2009. During this phase, approximately twenty labs were developed as proof of concept. The main phase began in April 2010. Virtual Labs has been operational since February 23, 2012, when it was ‘Dedicated to the Nation’ by Kapil Sibal, the then Minister of Human Resource Development. Over 50,000 students (in approximately 150 colleges) have used the Virtual Labs and have provided user-feedback.

Virtual labs provide:

• Access to quality labs to those engineering colleges that lack these lab facilities
• Access to quality labs as a complementary facility to those colleges that already have labs
• A complete Learning Management System around these labs
• Teacher-training and skill-set augmentation through workshops and on-site training

Objectives

• To provide remote-access to labs in various disciplines of Science and Engineering
• To cater to students at the UG level, PG level as well as to research scholars
• To enable the students to learn at their own pace, and to arouse their curiosity
• To provide a complete Learning Management System that includes web-resources, video-lectures, animated demonstrations and self evaluation

Salient features

The salient features of virtual labs are:

• Virtual Labs provide to the students the result of an experiment by one of the following methods, or possibly, a combination of these (see Fig 1):
(i) Modeling the physical phenomenon by a set of equations and carrying out simulations to yield the result of the particular experiment. This can, at-best, provide an approximate version of the ‘real world’ experiment
(ii) Providing a corresponding measurement data for the virtual lab experiment based previously carried out measurements on an actual system. This will be closer to the ‘real world’ experiment
(iii) Remotely triggering an experiment in an actual lab and providing the student the result of the experiment through the computer interface. This would entail carrying out the actual lab experiment remotely

• Virtual labs can be made more effective and realistic by providing additional inputs to the students like accompanying audio and video streaming of an actual lab experiment and equipment
• For the ‘touch and feel’ part, the students can possibly visit an actual laboratory for a short duratio

In Simulation-Based Virtual Labs, the experiments are modeled using mathematical equations. The simulations are carried out remotely at a high-end server, and the results are communicated to the student over the Internet. These labs are scalable and can cater to a large number of simultaneous users.

Using the Remote Triggered Virtual Labs, the actual experiments are triggered remotely. The output of the experiment (being conducted remotely) is communicated back to the student over the Internet. This class of virtual labs gives the student the output of real-time experiments. Typically, time-slots are booked before conducting such experiments.

All Virtual Labs can be accessed through a common website: www.vlab. co.in. At the user end, a PC and broadband connectivity enables the user to access virtual labs.

Beneficiaries of the project The intended beneficiaries of the projects are:

• All students and faculty members of Science and Engineering colleges who do not have access to good lab facilities
• High school students whose inquisitiveness will be triggered, possibly motivating them to take up higher studies
• Researchers in different institutes who can collaborate/share equipment and resources
• Different engineering colleges that can benefit from the content and related teaching resources

The project has fulfilled the targeted beneficiaries (and even gone beyond). An ecosystem has evolved around virtual labs, where the community has become involved in evolving and benefitting from the project.

Broad areas of virtual labs

Virtual labs have been developed in the following broad areas:

• Electronics and Communication Engineering
• Computer Science and Engineering
• Electrical Engineering
• Mechanical Engineering
• Chemical Engineering
• Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering
• Civil Engineering
• Physical Sciences
• Chemical Sciences

Value-add provided by the project

Virtual labs provide immense benefit to those engineering colleges that do not have good lab facilities. The virtual labs project can also be used in a complementary fashion to the existing physical labs. The value-add provided by virtual labs is depicted in Fig 2.

Virtual labs have provided both the students and the teachers the access to quality labs in a wide range of topics, spanning different branches of science and engineering. Over 100 virtual labs have been developed. The importance and effectiveness of these labs can be estimated from the user feedback (see Fig 3). The labs are also being used outside the labs hours, and also on weekend, as depicted by Figs 4 and 5.