CBSE appoints Vineet Joshi as new CBSE chairman

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February 15, 2022

New Delhi

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has appointed senior IAS Vineet Joshi as the new chairman. Joshi replaces IAS Manoj Ahuja.

Formerly the additional secretary of the department of Higher Education, Joshi has been appointed with effect from February 14, 2022. This charge comes in addition to his existing assignments.

According to an official order issued by Education ministry, “Consequent upon relieving of Shri Manoj Ahuja, IAS(OR:1990) from the post of Chairman, CBSE w.e.f 14.02.2022 (A/N) vide office order dated 14.02.2022, the charge of Chairman, CBSE is assigned to Shri Vineet Joshi, Additional Secretary, Department of Higher Education in addition to his existing assignments. This issues with the approval of the competent authority.”

Joshi is a 1992 batch IAS officer of Manipur batch. He is also a member of the governing body of the National Testing Agency.

Technology trends can encourage a holistic learning environment : Prof Janat Shah

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February 15, 2022

Prof Janat Shah is the director of Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur. He spoke to the Digital Learning magazine about the use of technology in education.

What has been the biggest innovation in higher education during the pandemic time?

The pandemic has immensely affected the lives of people and the way we do things. COVID-19 has unlocked new opportunities in education technology to help engage teachers and students. Lockdowns have made people move towards virtual models. Online learning has witnessed a lot of infrastructural development and the adoption of platforms such as zoom and google meet to fill the gap. The shift to hybrid classrooms has grown the prospects for collaborations between universities and businesses. The increasing number of webinars has given students a chance to interact with faculties and professionals from various industries worldwide, giving them a leap in their education and career. These advancements make education more flexible, open more ways to connect with the community and expose students to real-world scenarios to seek solutions and apply their learning.

How do you think use of technology is upskilling the students and making them more industry ready?

Covid has influenced people worldwide to learn and adapt to the different technologies to be industry-ready. From studying in physical classes to being present in the online medium and interacting with peers virtually, learning has been immense, motivating students to upskill their technical knowledge. Students can now access to personalized education 24*7 and the availability of recorded sessions that help them gain high-quality education no matter where they are.

NEP has been advocating for the addition of technology in the curriculum. What do you think can be the best way of doing this ?

With the onset of the Covid pandemic, the importance of technology has increased immensely. Businesses have started adopting new and old technologies to function effectively in the unique setting. Some of the ways of doing it are –

• A special course dedicated to technologies: To cope with new technologies, it is essential to get to know them. Disciplines like digital business execution, digital technologies, digital transformation, etc., can be made part of the curriculum to give students a genuine understanding of these areas.

• Fintech courses: Since fintech is becoming immensely popular, inclusion of it in the curriculum will help students to get knowledge about the use of technology in the banking and finance sector and also help them explore new opportunities in the field.

• Exposure to digital tools & skills: Usage of tools like AI, blockchain etc., are gaining popularity in the industry. To prepare for the modern workplace, hands-on experience in these concepts and tools can be provided..

Can you share some best practices of use of technology in higher education?

Technology trends can encourage a holistic learning environment with the inclusion and feasibility of both staff and the students. Recent trends like AI, data analytics, online learning, and hybrid models have revolutionized the overall education system. We, as a premier management institute, are also embracing technology to enhance the learning experience of our students. We have invested decisively in advancing our infrastructure with our existing connectivity. We wish things to go back to normal as for high-quality management education, face-to-face or campus based learning will always be the dominant and preferred mode of education. For tier-II & tier-III institutions, which are currently in significant numbers in our country, I think COVID-19 has opened up an exciting set of opportunities.

Digitally enabled teaching learning is the main focus – Prof. Lalit Kumar Awasthi

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February 15, 2022

Prof. Lalit Kumar Awasthi, is the Director at National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur and also a Professor, Computer Science and Engineering Department. Prof Awasthi spoke to Digital learning magazine.

What has been the biggest innovation in higher education during the pandemic time?

The major innovation that I can see is the whole process of teaching learning shifted from majorly offline to online. Digitally enabled teaching-learning has been the main focus with curriculum also being evolved to encompass online teaching-learning and evaluation. We are listening more commonly to the term “Education 4.0” which is enabling the students to learn skills of new technologies that are deriving “Industry 4.0”. The curriculum is being carefully drafted not only to include technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, cyber-physical systems, IoTs, sensors, gamification etc. but also to include the main essence of “New Education Policy NEP 2020”. There have been innovations in providing a full-proof online evaluation system for the examinations being conducted online.

How do you think use of technology is upskilling the students and making them more industry ready?

Our students are quite innovative and if you challenge their abilities, they are delivering the best. I can tell you the success story at NIT Hamirpur, during the pandemic five students have been placed at an annual unprecedented package ranging from 1 Cr to 1.51 Cr in 2021-2022. The focus of NIT Hamirpur and similar institutions is on innovation and research and promoting hands-on learning, teamwork and entrepreneurial skills. During the pandemic, emphasis has been to invite industrial experts online to deliver the lectures on latest technologies, mentor virtual projects with a focus on developing IT skills and training on programming skills. Also, the learning has improved due to the organization of Hackathons (technical competitions) online where the students from around the world solve open problems.

NEP has been advocating for the addition of technology in the curriculum. What do you think can be the best way of incorporating technology in the curriculum?

Technology can be used for teaching-learning and secondly new age technologies can be taught to the students. Institutions like NIT Hamirpur are already using technology for teaching-learning like: power point presentations, multimedia, supplementary videos, recorded lectures, and we also ask the students to present their project work, term papers or latest developments in his/her area. New technologies to be included in the curriculum. NIT Hamirpur and all such autonomous institutions have freedom to teach latest technologies to their students and we are in fact updating the curriculum at regular intervals and also if need be it can be done even yearly.

Can you share some best practices of use of technology in higher education?

Technology has enabled the faculty to deliver lectures online and record them. These lectures are available not only to the students of NIT Hamirpur but to all the students in the country or abroad as well. Similarly the recorded lectures of the faculty from other institutions including MIT, Harvard and Stanford will also be available to the learners either free of by paying a small fee, and now it depends on the learner to access such lectures and study from the best faculty in the world.

The transformation from offline to online has been a productive : Mr. Aman Mittal

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February 15, 2022

Mr. Aman Mittal is the Vice President of Lovely Professional University, Punjab. He spoke to Digital Learning Magazine on how the use of digital technology in education has grown in the last two years.

How do you see the use of digital technology in the last two years ?

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, there has been a swift reliance on digital technology by India’s education sector. While a majority of educational institutes struggled to extract productive education from the online mode, some of them brilliantly leveraged the opportunity and utilised it every day to make online education a seamless and hassle-free experience. LPU made good use of digital technology in the last two years by introducing our own online mediums & channels of communication between teachers, management and students. We view this swift transformation from traditional offline classes to interactive online classes as a very positive and productive change for our fraternity.

Do you think that the education sector has been able to sail through even during the pandemic because of the active use of technology?

Yes, absolutely! It has been entirely possible due to technology that education in India & abroad did not come to a halt. Just to imagine, if COVID-19 had hit the world 10 years ago when there were no 4G phones or technologies like Zoom and Google Meet, our teachers and mentors would have faced major difficulties in teaching. Therefore, technology has undoubtedly helped us sail through this challenging situation.

In the last two years, we have seen a boom in the use of technology to conduct online classes. Do we see online replacing physical classes?

There is no doubt that education during COVID-19 has been possible because of technology. But, it wouldn’t be right to say that online education solely would be a mode of teaching in the future. In times to come, there would be two different universes that would co-exist. While one would be the traditional physical model of education, another would be a completely online mode in which students do not visit their institutions at all.

There is a strong demand to make curriculums industry ready and also, enabler to create more job givers than job seekers. Your views

The major purpose of education is to build a career for students, be it in industry, research or government job sector. It is thus indispensable to keep the curriculum updated and industry-oriented. Thus, educational institutions need to work more closely with the industry. Unlike other institutions, LPU has crafted a lot of programs in collaboration with the industry. For example, to enable the students to keep pace with changing technological advances, the university has industrial tie-ups with various industries such as Google, Bosch, Cisco, CompTIA, Intel, etc.

What is your opinion about making education more future ready through more use of technology?

Evidently, technology is evolving very rapidly. In times to come, we are going to see increasing use of technology, especially with the growth of artificial intelligence, machine learning and the meta world. As of now, the usage of technology is limited to virtual classrooms and virtual laboratories. Definitely, it will be largely different from the present scenario, which is still hard to predict. The role of technology in tomorrow’s education will be immense. All the education providers, especially the bigger ones such as LPU and universities of similar sizes should plan and catch up with future technologies to provide the best of education.

UK’s Institute of Physics publishes Digital book by IIT Madras professor

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February 14, 2022

Prof K Ramesh, a faculty member at IIT Madras has made the institute proud, as UK based Institute of Physics has published his digital book. Titled ‘Developments in Photoelasticity A Renaissance’, the book is based on decades of research by Prof K Ramesh and his students from IIT Madras.

The book ‘Developments in Photoelasticity A Renaissance’ was released today on February 14, 2022, at a virtual event by Managing Director of Sundaram Brake Linings Ltd. and Founder-CEO of Sundaram Medical Devices (P) Ltd Krishna Mahesh, along with Director IIT Madras Prof. V. Kamakoti, Dean (Alumni and Corporate Relations, IIT Madras, Prof. Mahesh Panchagnula and other faculty and staff of the Institute.

This digital book talks about the use of Photoelasticity to understand complex problems such as understanding biological systems through their locomotion, which can help develop flexible robots for disaster management, improve agricultural production by understanding the stresses developed in plant roots, and the role of needle shape in epidural injections, among other applications.

Rajasthan schools to kick start classes upto class 5

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February 14, 2022

Jaipur, Rajasthan

The government of Rajasthan has ordered all private and government schools in the urban areas to conduct educational activities up to class 5. The orders would be effective from February 16.

Also, the students can enter the school premises only after written consent from parents or local guardians. Online classes would however continue like before.

In an official statement issued by the government, it has been stated that all the restrictions that were imposed earlier to prevent the spread of coronavirus have been cancelled and new guidelines have been issued.

As per the order, all the heads of the departments or institutions, operators of institutions, or commercial establishments have to notify about the number of doses of Covid-19 vaccine administered to the staff. In case of any violation, action would be taken by the administration according to the rules.

DU to conduct stress management programme from February 21

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February 14, 2022

New Delhi

The Delhi University is all set to conduct a four-week training workshop on managing stress, developing motivation, and acquiring leadership skills. The workshop would be from February 21st onwards. This was stated by a senior official of the university.

Those who can take part and benefit from the workshop include administrative officials, as well as assistant registrars of the university and its affiliated colleges. The official stated “We will call various speakers to apprise the officers of different aspects. This four-week programme is for upgrading their skills and knowledge and all Group A officers are eligible.”

Also read: Delhi University begins classes for UG first-year students today

The official further said that managing stress is the need of the hour. “During these testing times, we also want to apprise the officers about handling stress. Everyone faces stress be it due to office work or due to issues at home and it is important to talk about how to tackle it.”

Webinars became the best tool in pandemic : Prof RV Raja Kumar

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February 14, 2022

Prof RV Raja Kumar is the director of Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar. He spoke to the Digital Learming magazine about innovations in higher education during the pandemic times.

What has been the biggest innovation in higher education during the pandemic?

The most effective innovation in the higher education system is the usage of webinars as a means for holding seminars, workshops, conferences and brainstorming sessions by academic institutions. Webinars have been conducted with almost the same effectiveness as conventional methods, by institutions small and big alike. As a product or system innovation, I can talk about the technology development done by IIT Bhubaneswar for conducting pen & paper comprehensive examinations online along with invigilation for our students who were distributed across the country at their homes, which I feel is the most innovative method. Such systems are not available commercially and it is far superior to the commercially available computer-based test (CBT) products which are used for testing “Multiple Choice questions”. We not only developed a product, where there is a commercial CBT as a subsystem, but also very successfully applied it for holding all our examinations from April 2020 onwards.

How do you think the use of technology is upskilling the students and making them more industry ready?

The pandemic has made the students, faculty members and institutions adopt different technologies in the process of providing education online since it turned out to be a necessity. Adopting lecturing in front of a camera, sharing presentations, doing board writing on tablets, video streaming in sessions using one or two online conferencing methods, making the sessions interacting, participation therein by students, and adopting some online mechanism to hold examinations has been done successfully by almost everyone. Certainly, these mechanisms not only added significantly to the skills and capabilities of the stakeholders but also enabled them to get a step closer to self-learning, which is a prerequisite for lifelong education. This culture has not only made people tech-savvy, but also will help them in making them industry ready in a number of ways.

NEP has been advocating for the addition of technology in the curriculum. What do you think can be the best way of incorporating technology into the curriculum?

The best way to add technology in the curriculum is to make it a part of the education system and create the infrastructure for enabling the same, holding some initial training sessions to all the stakeholders including the students, faculty and rest of the institutional machinery. That is what I did to implement it successfully in 2010 at Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies (RGUKT), Govt. of Andhra Pradesh as its founding Vice-Chancellor. The university had an annual intake of 6000 rural students starting with the 1st batch itself and my task was to create and implement the best possible education system to empower and make them employable, including creating the infrastructure for enabling the same. I could achieve it by introducing an ICT based blended education for Engineering students with which the education could be made very effective on a large scale.

Can you share some best practices for the use of technology in higher education?

As far as I can say, making video courses and interactive web courses from eminent faculty selective from across the world accessible either through local powerful servers or by live streaming, onto the personal computer or cell phone or other palmtops is the best way education can be effectively imparted with inclusivity, without rural-urban divide and very importantly by overcoming the scale problem.

Hybrid learning is the future : Dr Madhu Chitkara

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February 14, 2022

Hybrid learning is the future of learning, where something would be online and some offline. The students and the teachers enjoy the mode completely as this has choice based learning.” This was stated by Dr Madhu Chitkara, Pro Chancellor of Chitkara University. Dr Chitkara was delivering the address of the 22nd World Education Summit, organized by Elets Technomedia at New Delhi recently.

Speaking about the National Education Policy, Dr Chitkara said, “The discussion on the policy got all stakeholders together which included people from regulatory bodies, industry, academia, and also the students. We should try to learn from each other’s best practises. In the National Education Policy, they have talked about school education to higher education. The challenge for all of us is how to implement and execute it. It becomes a responsibility for the regulators to give directions.“

Extending her thoughts on the national education policy, Dr Chitkara said, “The best part of NEP is the introduction of Academic Bank of Credit (ABC). Chitkara University is one of the early entrants in the field of incubations, and we started supporting startups and giving seed money for them from 2007 onwards. We had 188 startups at our Incubation Centre in the campus and during the pandemic lockdowns, they have gone completely commercialised.”

Concluding her address, Dr. Chitkara said, “The National Education Policy evaluates the universities keeping in mind the different components of teaching learning process and gives accreditation to the universities. There is a need for a Centre of Excellence in every university which connects the academia to the industry. This will support placements and create a force of students that are ready to take on the industry. These components of National Education Policy make it a great option for both school and higher education.”

Blockchain technology all set to revolutionize the education ecosystem

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February 14, 2022

Until December last year, block chain technology was a word that was used in reference to crypto currencies like bitcoins. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi awarded the graduating IITians from IIT Kanpur their degrees in a blockchain based digital form on December 28, he unveiled a new facet of the blockchain technology, writes Tarannum Manjul of Elets News Network.

When we talk about blockchain technology, the first thing that comes to our mind is that it is technology that enables the Bitcoins and Ethereum of the world. But this has a much larger and a bigger picture, and the true potential of blockchain technology lies in transforming other key sectors. One such sector this technology can truly revolutionize is education.

The pandemic has very strongly affected educational institutions across the globe. While everyone hopes that campuses will again buzz with the physical presence of students and teachers, the widespread use of digital technology in education is here to stay. Through blended learning and flipped classrooms, students are no longer limited by teaching resources and learning possibilities available within the institutions’ physical boundaries. The new world is here to stay – there is knowledge from across the globe for everyone to use and share.

By introducing the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020), India has set an ambitious agenda. The goal is to achieve a 100 percent Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in school education by 2030 and double it in higher education, to reach 50 per cent by 2035. The students, it is envisaged, will have increased flexibility and subject choices, with no rigid separations across disciplines. There is a strong need to invest in digital education and related technologies to achieve these ambitious targets and to provide education that is holistic and multidisciplinary.

There are several aspects for making a robust Digital Education Ecosystem (DEE) – content development, teaching, evaluations, grading, attendance recording, achievements, certificates, degrees and diplomas. Stakeholders such as educational institutions, prospective employers, mentors and certification agencies can be integrated into the DEE. With greater digitisation, there is an inherent need for more secure and fool-proof systems that can track students’ academic activities as well as provide the required information to all stakeholders. The blockchain can emerge as a viable solution to manage such an integrated DEE.

Now you will think where does Blockchain get its name from ?

Blockchain gets its name from the digital databases or ledgers, where information is stored as “blocks’’. These blocks are then coupled together forming “chains”. An exact copy of the blockchain is available to each of the multiple computers or users, who are joined together in a network and any new information added or altered via a new block is to be vetted and approved by over half the total users. With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) and availability of cheap computing and internet services, blockchain technology can now facilitate innovations across a range of processes and applications requiring management, storage, retrieval and safety of vast and important information.

Blockchain technology can provide an excellent framework to manage student records ranging from day-to-day information such as assignments, attendance and extracurricular activities, to information about degrees and colleges they have attended. It would be a secure system that ensures educational records remain immutable. These can be trusted upon by prospective educational institutions and recruiters, who can be provided access to relevant records. In a similar manner, information about teachers can be safely stored and this would enable an educational institution to monitor faculty performance and attendance as well. The blockchain ledger would provide a time-stamped and tamper proof record of faculty performance – attendance, student evaluations, number of students opting for their electives, research output and publications.

These records could be linked to faculty appraisal systems, thus ensuring greater accountability of the faculty and the staff as well.

The NEP-2020 calls for introducing multidisciplinary education where students would be able to choose their own combination of major and minor subjects along with flexibility in course duration. And for effective management and implementation of this multidisciplinary education, blockchain can help implement a multiple-entry and-exit structure. Further, students can be assured of the quality of teachers and educators. It can help enable educators to display their certified Skill Badges, allowing students to opt for courses in a disciplined and informed manner. Meanwhile, students too, especially those in higher education and research, can adopt Skill Badges to indicate their proficiencies. This would enable faculty to identify the right students for various projects. A blockchain-based ecosystem can also be used to design a scholarship system incentivising students to maintain consistency and achieve academic excellence,

Decentralised technology

The blockchain system works on the principle of decentralisation. This means that the control is not in the hands of a central agency, but to a distributed network of nodes. This will help in keeping the data safe even if any specific node is compromised. Also, the information in a blockchain is recorded and stored sequentially along with an exact time stamp. The previous information can’t be altered, only amended by adding a new block. This makes tampering with a transcript very hard.

Maintaining the records and database of students

The blockchain technology can simplify the tedious task of maintaining the records of students by digitalising them. Also, the students will be able to access their records remotely. According to Maryville University of United States, the blockchain technology can simplify the verification process. Any institute can do this with just a few clicks, instead of going through loads of paperwork and documentation, and in case of transfer of students, or sharing records with employers, or issuing degrees.

Help in preparing curriculum and grading

The blockchain technology, through its algorithms, also allows teachers to execute a particular curriculum when certain conditions are met. The teachers can set lessons and courses into a blockchain, including programming the tasks too. The algorithm can then verify the completion of each task and provide students with the next one until all the tasks are cos – the algorithm takes into consideration questions, answers, and scoring parameters.

Lowering costs for various processes

Blockchain technology can lower costs by opening affordable paths to learning. It will require less manual intervention, thereby reducing the need to hire more staff for processes. The technology is already being used in the financial sector and has been powering currencies like bitcoin.

Challenges in using blockchain technology

Incidentally, security is one of the primary challenges of using blockchain technology for any purpose. Increased security doesn’t mean that blockchain is not vulnerable. It also eliminates the possibility of modifying student records for legitimate purposes. There is also a limitation with scaling the system beyond a certain level. Increasing the network means adding more blocks, which will slow down the speed of transactions, as each transaction requires peer-to-peer verification.

The adoption of blockchain in education could help improve the efficiency of the education ecosystem and thus optimize the use of the available resources. Doing so is worth every penny as it would help usher in an educational system that is better equipped to handle higher enrolment while being secure, transparent, collaborative, creative and future-ready.

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