Bala Subramanium
President, School Dvision, NIIT“We started as an IT raining company,
and have now developed into ‘global talent company”
? Can you give us a brief overview of the current organisational structure and your activities?
NIIT is present predominantly in India, China, Europe,USA, Europe, Middle ast, Commonwealth countries, we’re now into Latin American countries. People know it as an IT training company, more through its GNIIT course, which actually help people to prepare and place the best students in the industry under a brand that falls under the Individual Learning business (ILS). NIIT has our distinct businesses; I would not like to use the word ‘divisions’ because business implies a single identity. In effect, they are separate companies
within a common brand. Individual Learning Business: In most countries around the world, they ensure that after 12th or equivalent, students can go through IT undergraduate courses. They come to our training centres and after he intermediate course, we guide the undergraduate students for further career building through IT. There are two kinds of programmes for careers in IT. hich
they can do while in college or outside of college, the other is Curriculum of Advanced Technology Studies (CATS) which is for working professionals. The second business is the Corporate Learning Solutions (CLS) that is built for corporate professionals. Here the training objective is very clear, job erformance. Most rofessionals enroll on behalf of their company. We train
professionals in an outside India, though most of the work we do is outside ndia, for example, Nokia, Intel, Phillips, Google, etc. One example I can give ou is that of Intel, who wanted to train their staff on the subject of multiple rocessors. They had a team of developers who formed the basis of the support structure for the training we came up with. A rather extreme case would be ord, who were dealing with a worldwide need for training for their new car istributors. These are some examples of the kind of corporate e-learning olutions this business generates. For further development in e-Learning, we ave also taken over companies like Cognitive Arts and Element K who have a arge library of content, not just in IT, but also in soft skills, and other anagement areas. Our third business is School Learning Solutions, which overs what we call the ‘school segment’ for the time being. It caters o the K-12 ojects. We also have two emerging businesses, IFBI (Institute f Financial anking Industry), which is a joint venture between NIIT and ICICI Bank, pecifically to create financial professionals for the banking sector. We provide raining on aspects of banking such as insurance. The private sector of banking s growing by leaps and bounds but there are two problems. One problem is etail reach, which is handled with technology. Today, banking is done through he Internet and ATM machines. The need there is to come up with a support ystem and staff for this technology. We provide the training to fill this gap. That s how we train professionals from the industry. In an accompanying mall and very niche programme, we take fresh graduates and train them. We ven place them in the industry once their training is complete.
? What pedagogies and delivery modes are you using, is there anything new on the anvil?
Recently, we undertook a concept based learning programme called Synchronous learning to deliver IIM courses by satellite. Named NIIT Imperia, it delivers courses from IIM Calcutta, IIM Ahmedbad, IIM Lucknow, IIM Indore and delivers them over a distance learning platform. Now wehave added courses from IMT as well. These courses can be accessed through any our centres where you can register. The courses are divided into a two-day introduction followed by a one-week final project delivered through e-learning. Some of the special features of these courses is that you can still connect or talk to the teacher, to other students, which has been a very successful initiative.
? What is the kind of future that you foresee for your organization in terms of globalisation?
We started as a IT training company, and have now developedinto ‘global talent company’. We believe that India is growing and has a large need for training talent as we are fast becoming a service sector economy. There is dearth of skilled middle level and top management executives. With the advent of service sector, there is also a demographic shift; we believe that we can give ‘talent’ to industry and not just IT products and solutions. We have two essential areas in which we excel. One, we create learning material, which includes content, pedagogy, relevance, etc. We also handle the process of education delivery to the end point. This is known as Education Process Management. In essence we input the requirement, budget and constraints and create a solution and deliver it. We want to have certain value for education. We aim to satisfy our learners by giving more than they expected. The integrity of the system s very imp rtant. There are times when we say we are sorry, when it is not in our philosophy, we don’t take it up. We have proper talent development, stipulated by very clear cut drivers. We have always been known for our people, we believe in respect and not popularity. Our mission is very clear, we want t make IIT successful by imparting pertinent education through technology.
? How good is the state of the e-learning marketcurrently?
Market is getting slightly organised but is still fragmented. My view is that that unorganised segment is leading the way here. The biggest problem, as a result, is that our customers do not know what they want. So in order to deliver the product, it is a responsibility for us to educate them alongside. The student
number is huge at around 8 million schools. So initially we decided to start with the school student and beyond, especially when the retail segment looks so interesting . What is interesting in India is that it is structured around
boards. Where as in China they follow a multi-tier system. I can go and implement it there. In US, they have a very interesting thing, National Education Policy, where the grants are defined for every stage of education and there is a standard committee. The federal government defines it, and
the state government follows it. Then we have the school districts, where essentially most of the schools are public schools. They are better than our public schools because they have better funds. There are very few private schools. The grants are given. Grants can either come from government or individuals. Even I can go and give a grant. So essentially, our marketing efforts are worth it when a new grant has just been given, or when a new policy has been created. The moment it is given, you go and give it to the school units. This is what every country does, India is different, very different. So any model that we import from other countries will have to be adjusted. Here each private school can implement things differently. Also 50-80% of all schools in India are
local language schools Only about 10% are English medium schools. Very rarely can you take one product and implement it across the board in all schools.
We are saying that we are in government chools segment as well as the private school segment. The upmarket schools that charge higher and they don’t mind paying a little more. So from the IT point of view, we are already in private
schools and now we ant to facilitate the integration of IT in Government schools
Terry Culver, has over ten years experience in partnership and community development, education, and communications. Previously, he was Project Development Officer at the Harvard Institute for International Development, where he was involved in a number of education, health, and economic projects in West Africa, Southern Africa and Eastern Europe. Recently, Terry was in India to be a part of the ongoing collaborative process in making of the ‘National Policy on ICTs in School Education’ under the aegis of Ministry of HRD, Government of India along with strategic support from GeSCI, when he shared some of his experiences with the Digital Learning Team…
Some of it is research-based, but it is very focussed on hands-on tools. There were 2-3 things that emerged as possible tools that would have helped in the implementation of the policy. There are all kinds of things that came up that are universally challenging. They provide some guidance at the district or state level. Something very hands on would make the difference between the policy being a policy and the policy being reality.
The division between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ or ‘worldly’ education that some people make is completely un-Islamic. Islam sees knowledge as a comprehensive whole and positively encourages the acquisition of all forms of socially useful knowledge. If you look at Muslim history, you will see that in the past Muslims produced many scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, doctors and so on. Many of them were pious Muslims and several of them were Islamic scholars at the same time.
Through collaboration with industries, universities and governmental organisations, the centre will encourage international collaboration, research and innovation in the fields of next generation networks, systems and services.
After four years of intensive research, Trinity has come up with a new technology suite of devices based on the USB delivery medium to protect digital content better than other security systems. It is a new storage, delivery and distribution media, doing all three with security never seen before. Opinions have been expressed about how the Trinity Suite of devices may change the way data distribution will occur in the future. Exhaustive testing has proven that the invention works to the highest level of expectation. Certification from the Standards Testing and Quality Control Laboratory confirms the results. Trinity Future-In has invented a unique USB device that will be used as the distribution media in a suite of applications. The Trinfin Suite offers its own data writer that is used to package software and data in a patent-applied-for format to be stored in the device.
Speaking for Intel, John Davies, Vice President, Intel Corporation described their activities as, “Technology can expand what’s possible to create opportunities for the people of India. Through the World Ahead Program, we remain focused on accelerating access to technology, improving education and increasing Internet connectivity.” On the education front, Intel will help equip about 100 mobile computer labs in vans, five of which currently serve village schools in and around Baramati. Also, Intel Teach program helps local educators integrate technology to enhance classroom learning. It hopes to train 1 million teachers (having trained nearly 40,000 educators in Maharashtra) and help more than 30 million students across India by 2008.
Dr Robert B Kozma, Educationist made a presentation on Aligning policies and programmes: Increasing the impact of educational ICT. He said that for increasing the impact of Educational ICT, we should look at when ICT is introduced into the educational system and whether it will influence the educational outcomes. What kind of educational change is desired and what are all the factors influence? Dr Kozma also made some very valid points in his presentation on improving on a system that is currently good, where the desired outcomes are increased access, resources, performance and efficiencies. He also stated that the role of ICT for achieving these desired outcomes was to extend the reach of the educational system, provide a large amount and wide range of current digital content, support student learning and reduce costs. He also emphasised for the transformation of educational system. He described how for a ‘systematic change,’ ICT can act as ‘lever for change.’ However ICT by itself will not bring change.
The introduction of WiMAX can be utilised to build knowledge centres across the country where people can get e-Education and related services which will effectively improve their livelihood. State-run BTTB (Bangladesh Telephone and Telegraph Board) has its Digital Data Network (DDN) node in 64 districts. Areas under these nodes can easily be connected with the internet, generating tremendous opportunity to unlock potential in unprivileged areas.
Viet Nam wired
The organising committee decided to launch a competition to “encourage students to work hard” and the posters that won prizes were the ‘most creative ones which would encourage pupils to use their five senses.’ Meanwhile the MIE is infusing all its teacher training courses with ICT in order to prepare students to successfully use ICT when teaching their subjects. The MIE gives access to ICT to all its students and that makes it easier for them to find innovative ways of teaching. But the authorities must make sure that teachers are given the tools to be able to put their creativity into practice.
Speaking to media persons here, SQL Star Chairman and Managing Director N R Ganti said the programme has been modelled to deliver a blended model of offline and online education. Being online in a world without borders would facilitate collaboration among peers and between students and industry, he said, adding the series of courses offered are a combination of domain knowledge and soft skills training.
The program till now, has trained over 2,000 teachers in Chhattisgarh, who in turn have reached 3,60,000 students, enabling them to take up socially relevant issues along with helping them improve their communication, problem solving and critical thinking skills. The Chhattisgarh government in collaboration with Intel will work towards equipping uninitiated teachers into using technology and through this public-private cooperation, they plan to train 7,000 teachers in the next two years, and adopt various schools for Technology Aided Learning implementation.
Institutes like Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur and Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI) Jamshedpur have on paper about 30 executive education courses per year. This figure has doubled in the last few years as the amounts charged for each training programme has gone down by 60 %. This rise is also fuelled by rapid technological advancement around the globe, making it imperative for professionals from all walks of life learn new technologies and update and upgrade their knowledge, much after completing formal education in the college. Moreover, there is a shortage of 20-40% in the leadership positions across sectors. Although many companies have found internal training to be a substitute, after a point it becomes expensive.
