Centres of Excellence to be established for advances in Telecom

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January 12, 2009

Technology is changing each day. To keep abreast with the changing trends a country should support institutes that are fore-runners in the frontiers of science. Keeping this in view Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology A.Raja announced the establishment of 'Telcom Centres of Excellence' in prestigious academic institutions across the country.

The work has already begun with Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, to set up such centres in public-private partnership mode. This would strengthen research and development efforts. The government on the last day of Pravasi Bharti Divas government also shared their plans to set up three new universities for children of NRIs and PIOs located in Bangalore by 2010.

NASSCOM for Cyber Safe schools in Pune

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January 12, 2009

School students in most of the metros are registered to the social networking sites and indulge in chatting and other related activities that do not fit the school functionalities. Educational institutes in Pune in collaboration with NASSCOM are now in the process of setting up a cyber security support group in each school in the city.

The group aims at reducing misuse of computers, especially the internet, at educational institutes. Each school will have at least one such group, which will monitor the usage of computers by the students. It will also keep an eye on the usage of social networking sites, so that misuse of these sites can be avoided.

The group aims to institutue the cyber securiy systems in upto 25 schools till the end of February.

Mahendra ties with HP for digital archiving

Corporate Updates

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January 12, 2009

The drive to make Mahendra Engineering College (MEC) accessible to its students anytime anywhere has inked the deal with Hewlett-Packard (HP) to help implementing its Dspace Solution and ProCurve University initiative.

DSpace software platform serves a variety of digital archiving needs for research and educational institutions worldwide including e-thesis, electronic record management, publishing ect.

The college has recently opted for a digital repository solution from HP. The repository could also house digitized courseware (such as NPTEL), project reports, e-books, workshop content, lab manuals, whitepapers and video lectures. All of these elements could potentially be enabled through web access, which basically means that a student can access this content from a remote location through the Internet.

Broadband to support education in Gujarat

Policy Matters

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January 12, 2009

The chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi announced the facility of broadband connection for every village in Gujarat at the gathered audience of NRIs at the Pravasi Bharti Divas.

This would help the state government harness EDUSAT and use it to provide long distance education. Keeping the mission of bringing technology closer to the farmers he said even farmers can avail of this facility to update themselves about the latest agriculture-related technology.

Diaspora Knowledge Network for India

Higher Education

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January 9, 2009

There is a growing increase amongst the Indian diaspora to invest and support education initiatives in India. The Pravasi Bharati Divas held a session on 'Education and Diaspora Knowledge Network' to urge the Indian diaspora to supplement the efforts of the Indian Government to make India a knowledge-based economy.

The Chief Guest, Minister of State for Human Resource Development Smt. D Purandeswari Devi, outlined the educational initiatives of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and Mid Day Meals Scheme, which have attracted more students to schools. However, she urged, there is a long way to go as 7 million children are still out of school and about 25 percent faculty shortfall is being experienced. Diaspora Knowledge Network was emphasised as the next level of connected efforts of the community to tap the potential. Mr. S Ramadorai, Chief Executive Officer, Tata Consultancy Services, Mumbai urged that urged that the knowledge network portal should result in concrete collaborations and generate ideas and transform them into community actions.

This was followed by deliberations from distinguished speakers from across the world engaged in education and training.

Infra firms to set up in-house training institutes

Higher Education

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January 9, 2009

Lack of trained staff is now becoming a major hurdle in roll-out of expansion plans for many infrastructure firms. They are now investing in setting up of engineering education and training colleges to internalize manpower requirements by providing education and training in the skills set as required by the industry.

Such efforts have already taken off in Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) which plans for in-house engineering institutes to cater specifically to the needs of the power sector, and other major industry are soon following with huge infrastructure players as Larsen & Toubro (L&T) to start an institute of project management, with the aim of developing managers with specialized skills spanning the engineering, procurement, construction and manufacturing sectors.

The Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (ISRO) model is being considered as the institute was successful in meeting its manpower requirements with the with the objective of offering bachelor's degree in space technology with specialisation in avionics and aerospace engineering. Similar industry-specific skill sets are required by the power sector which in its big expansion plans in the coming years is in face with manpower crunch. Almost all the players including Tata Power, Lanco Infratech, Jindal Steel & Power, Reliance Energy, NHPC Ltd and Damodar Valley Corporation have chalked out plans to establish new industrial training institutes.

According to a recent joint study by Crisil and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, around 20 lakh trained personnel would be required for meeting the power capacity addition targets set for next five year plans.

UP for a policy on higher education

Policy Matters

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January 8, 2009

Uttar Pradesh after recently being criticized for its apathy towards the higher education sector has started working towards improving the state of affairs.

The state is convening efforts of various officials and experts to draft a comprehensive higher education policy, focusing on qualitative improvement by providing minimum infrastructure facilities and financial support to state universities and government colleges. The policy will address the major thrust areas to upgrade the standard of higher education in the state; these include minimum infrastructure and funds admission and examination systems, fee structure and education of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes amongst others.

Indian Science Congress concludes in Shillong

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January 8, 2009

The 96th Indian Science Congress conclave concluded in Shillong.The event organised by the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) saw participation of more than 4,000 delegates consisting of scientists, engineers and technologists of different disciplines for sharing their expertise and experience on a common platform. < ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

The dropping interest in careers in science inked the theme of this year as 'Science Education and Attraction of Talent for Excellence in Research'. The five-day conclave saw power-packed presentations and at the end of the event made 11 recommendations, including setting up of scientific advisory councils in the northeastern states, reviewing the science education systems at various levels, and increasing career opportunities for students in the science and technology sector.

The venue of the next Congress was announced as Thiruvananhpuram under the new presidentship of Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman G Madhavan Nair.

NAAC to develop Indian ranking systems

Higher Education

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January 8, 2009

The nodal body established under UGC is working on a national ranking of Indian universities on the lines of the global system.

Endowed with the responsibility to assess and accredit institutions of higher education in the country the agency has been following
a grading system. It is now taking clues from the China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University's (SJTU) Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the UK and Australia in order to develop its own framework of indicators and index of grading scales.

The ranking will not only be applicable on the NAAC accredited institutions but also on other institutes. “The NAAC-ranking should not be just for Indian universities but for others too. While it is premature to state an exact date, we intend to come up with indicators for the rankings by 2010-11,” said HA Ranganath, director, NAAC.

ODL For Uniformity And Quality of Delivery : Savita Datta,, Maitreyi College,Delhi University, India

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January 6, 2009

Savita Datta,
Principal Maitreyi College & Director, Campus of Open Learning, Delhi University

“Open and Distance Learning is a scalable model, the only model which ensures uniformity and quality of delivery. Moreover, technology ensures that the lessons delivered reach far and wide”

What are the challenges confronting India’s higher education system today? How do you see your institution deploying new technologies for ensuring quality distance education?

Two major challenges confronting India’s higher education system are the lack of good faculty and insufficient places for students in the existing higher educational institutions. The University of Delhi has always believed in expansion and in 1962, on the recommendations of Kothari Commission, the School of Distance and Continuing Education was established. Another measure taken earlier by DU was establishing the Non-Collegiate Women’s Education Board, way back in 1948 whereby women candidates living in Delhi were allowed to attend classes on Sundays and holidays and were examined and awarded degrees by DU.

From our experience in all these initiatives, we know that some face to face contact and physical examination and evaluation of scripts is a must and is not humanly possible without having sufficient faculty in place. Therefore, introduction of new technology is a must. There is a need not only to deliver lessons online but also have examinations online to overcome these challenges.

What role does Open and Distance Learning (ODL) institutions play in dissemination of information to socially disadvantaged groups or people in inaccessible areas?

Open and Distance Learning is a scalable model, the only model which ensures uniformity and quality of delivery. ODL institutions are invariably using technology and the expenditure on students, infrastructure and faculty is relatively less as compared to a regular institution. The socially disadvantaged groups have limited places in regular institutions. The percentage of seats assigned to them is fixed whereas ODL institutions ensure no ceiling on the number or any other condition for entry into the institutions. Moreover, technology ensures that the lessons delivered reach far and wide even to the remotest areas with the help of computers, DVD Players and televisions.

What initiatives have been taken by your university for integrating ICT in its framework?

We established an Institute of Life Long Learning where teachers are creating content and online assignments. Blended Learning will have significant role to play in classrooms and science laboratories when the number of seats increase by 54% in the coming years.

It will not be possible to appoint suitable faculty or raise infrastructures overnight. As a pilot project with the Open University, UK, DU has created video CD’s and e-instructions for the labs, which are really being appreciated by the students. The students can see the videos and read instructions before coming to the lab. They are better aware of the experiment because of the visual effects and one teacher instead of handling a class of 20 can handle many more students at the same time. This also gives some spare time to the faculty to update themselves and also to create more content for other classes.

Do you think a Public Private Partnership model will help in effective integration of technology in higher education?

The university teachers invariably are experienced in their own fields and teaching methodologies but there is a lot of variation as there are 7,000 teachers across over 68 colleges of DU. Use of technology will ensure uniformity and quality in delivery of content, but most of the teachers are not technology savvy. Moreover, this may shift the focus of the teachers from the actual content of their discipline to the formatting and designing of the web, which is not desired. On the other hand, if we hire services of private vendors who are experts in technology and allow them to convert the knowledge of the teachers to e-platforms, the integration of technology will speed up which is the need of the hour. Necessary funding should be provided by the funding agencies for this.

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