Shobha Mishra Ghosh, Sr Director, FICCI shares the proceedings of the FICCI School Education Conference 2014

School education has a significant role in laying the foundations for knowledge and skill development that subsequently shape the country’s economy. The government has universalized school education through various schemes such as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan, Right to Education Act, launch of vocational education programme in schools through the NVEQF, etc. These efforts have helped the country achieve almost 100 percent Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) at the primary level. But despite these efforts, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) placed India at second position from the bottom out of 73 countries in Mathematics, Reading and Science. High drop-out rates from upper primary level onwards coupled with the shift in enrolment from public to private schools at secondary level and parents supplementing classroom instruction with tuitions has further aggravated the situation.
To address some of the quality issues and actively engage the stakeholders including educationists, policy makers and the industry, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) organized its first School Education Conference on 10th March 2014 at its premises in New Delhi, titled ‘Towards Effective Delivery of Quality Education’. It provided a platform for knowledge sharing on ushering changes that will have a long term impact on school education in India and had group discussions on topics listed below.

Leveraging Assessments to Improve Education Quality – Moving From Inputs to Outcomes
A joint report by FICCI and CSF titled “Guidelines for Large Scale Learner Assessments (LSA)” was released during the conference, which highlighted reasons for LSA and emphasized the importance of measuring learning outcomes in a valid, reliable and recurring manner. The guidelines highlight best practices for design, implementation and analysis of state-led LSAs and are supplemented with assessments conducted in India and abroad. Further, a discussion paper on holistic development of children by focusing on critical Non-Cognitive/Co- Scholastic (NC) Skills and means of assessing them was also released.

Teachers’ Education – Leading, Learning and Teaching in The Digital Age
This session showcased the role of technology in creating scalable, high quality teacher training and education. Participants made presentations and brainstormed ways of effective use of these tools by teacher training institutions to propagate as well as monitor their use.

Private Sector Contribution to K-12 Education
A joint report by FICCI and EY titled “Private sector’s contribution to K-12 education in India” was released. It highlights the contribution of private providers to quality in school education. The report also has some international case studies and brings out some key challenges that the private sector faces and thus restricts its participation.

Public Private Partnership (PPP) in Education: The Road Ahead
The FICCI – CSF Report on “Public-Private Partnerships in School Education: Learning and Insights for India” released during the conference, traces the evolution of PPPs in education in India and defines the need and opportunity for school model of PPP implementation. It synthesizes insights and learning from international experience and examines the opportunity for the private sector to partner with the government to improve the quality of school education in India.
The main agenda for FICCI is to take forward the recommendations proposed in the Reports and support the Government in developing policies that would lead to quality improvement in school education in India.

A default purification of knowledge-transaction

Technology:
A recent TV commercial by GE shares a simple truth about technology: “…it doesn’t discriminate between people, no matter who they are, where they’re from…technology opens the door every day and tells that there is hope…”. It is an undeniable fact that technology doesn’t discriminate, offering its benefits (and limitations) to everybody who come to explore it. A classic example is the recent revolution in technology-enabled marketplace that has ushered a newer paradigm for the consumers.

A Marketplace Experience:

I intended to buy a Sony tab from an online marketplace <ebay.in> where it was being offered at a much lower price than the MRP. It was as good as bought, but then eBay prompted a notification asking me to check the same commodity on a ‘partner site’ – <snapdeal.com> – which was offering the same thing at a price lower than eBay! Finally, I got my Sony Tab from Snapdeal!
As a buyer, I was delighted by the choices offered by both the marketplace sites Eventually, both the sites found a loyal and a returning customer in me. Such is the impact of marketplace! Sellers aim to satisfy the customers, while doing the right business.

An Eye-Opener:
Prof. PremVrat, Vice Chancellor, ITM University, in his talk during last year’s World Education Summit, shared a research done on Private Engineering Colleges in India. Identifying some parameters as a direct influence to the performance of an educational institute. The study ranked, in terms of priority, the following: Quality of faculty, Teaching Learning process, Leadership, Quality of admissions, Alumni Relations, Physical Infrastructure, Collaboration, Sport Activities and Cultural Activities.
It then compared the ‘what-shouldbe’ ranks to the ‘what-actually-is’ ranks. The results were shocking!
The importance of Sports and Cultural activities is placed prior to that of Teaching-learning process and institutional leadership. While the parameters of Alumni Relations, Collaboration and Quality of Admissions were almost similarly treated, there was still a deferration from the ideal score. The biggest shocker, however, was the facts, that even though we have entered the age of online education and eLearning, institutes continue to prefer physical infrastructure over the quality of faculty. They perhaps forget that teachers make an educational institute, not the tall buildings or majestic domes. The research was published in the May 2013 issue of Industrial Engineering Journal. The objective of education has been marred by the intrusion of ‘business vendors’, who neither understand education nor respect it.

Am I against the Education-Business?
No, I am not against Education-business, but what worries me is the loss of the focus from the primary purpose of education. I started this article with a correlation of Technology with nondiscrimination and hope, now I shall try to elucidate with the following example of Online Learning Marketplace which is absolutely pro-student and non-discriminative to the Education Providers. The final hope that is summarized below is a hope of giving required importance to the Quality of Faculty and Teaching-Learning Process which is being diminished in the abovementioned research outcome!

Online Learning Marketplace (OLM)
OLM is a place where knowledge-transaction is considered as the primary purpose of the business. The conventional mentality sometimes hesitates to accept students as consumers, and teachers as sellers. But the fact remains unchanged that in knowledge transaction, students consume the knowledge imparted by the teacher.

Example:
The following example will illustrate how an OLM (online learning marketplace) benefits both the students and teachers/teaching institutes:

>> Let us suppose there is an Online Course on Robotics available on the OLM, from a premier institute like IIT; priced at `50,000/-.
>> A similar course on Robotics, with similar modules, is also available, but from a non-reputed Institute/ individual (Say XYZ); priced at `10,000/-.
>> The online marketplace is a smart ecosystem. Based on a built-in algorithm, it promotes the course from IIT, to students interested in the field of ‘Robotics’. The course gets 1000 interested students (in Business jargon, we call them ‘Leads’). Eventually, 50 students enrol in the IIT Robotics course (we can now safely call them ‘Closed leads’). There are 950 students still interested in ‘robotics’ but may not be willing to pay such a high price.
>> By that same in-built algorithm, Online Learning Marketplace promotes the Robotics course from XYZ, to the rest of the 950 interested students (by the way, they are still ‘leads’, not ‘closed leads’).
>> Since the XYZ course is priced at a lower price, (with perhaps an added feature of ‘money back guarantee’), 1% of the 950 join the course offered by XYZ.
>> As a thumb-rule, quality of education needs to be given priority in order for a course to be featured in OLM! As a result, XYZ imparts an excellent course to those 9-10 students who got enrolled.
>> 50% of the enrolled students give ‘excellent feedback’ on XYZ’s course.
>> This feedback helps XYZ’s course index better and gain a better searchability in the OLM.
>> As a direct consequence, the next batch of the same robotics course from XYZ will have every possibility of getting more students.
>>Slowly XYZ develops a brand and gains greater visibility. Thanks to the smart, default mechanism of the Online Learning Marketplace. l In this process, everyone wins; the IIT, the students and XYZ. The ultimate winner is theeducation!

Conclusion
If one understands the business of knowledge, and its primary purpose, the Online Learning Market place can be a place of huge success. It can bring great opportunities for online teachers as well as online learners; beyond our imagination. More importantly, it can strengthen the education fraternity by doing away with the nitty-gritties, through its default mechanism, thus making sure the focus lies on Knowledge-transaction alone.

An Online Learning Marketplace
WizIQ.com is an Online Education Platform equipped with a state-of-the-art virtual classroom and other advanced teaching-learning tools for online delivery of courses.
The site has not stopped its efforts only by providing a set of teaching tools to the teachers; it has also endeavoured to create an Online Learning Marketplace (OLM) to strengthen the primary purpose of education. WizIQ connects teachers and learners via its OLM which eventually benefits learners to have access to the best teachers from their fields of interest and it also helps teachers to get learners for their courses. The inbuilt algorithm of Online Learning Marketplace of WizIQ provides a plethora of choices for the consumers (as learners) and helps the quality teachers to get more business through the default leaner-feedback based rankings in the online search.
This mechanism of WizIQ Online Learning Marketplace even assures a not-so popular teacher/teaching institute to improve its ranking just by focusing on the quality of teaching and delivery of the courses. If the teacher/ teaching institute focuses consistently on the knowledge-transaction and improves on student satisfaction/feedback, the search-rank gets better. This eventually makes the teacher/teaching institute to become comparable with the socalled branded teachers/institutes easily. Isn’t it thought provoking?.

About the author:
Kalyan Sarkar presently takes care of Team Academic Liaisons at
WizIQ.com. He is an MSc & M Phil in Clinical Psychology. Before
joining WizIQ, he has served the Indian Air Force for more than 15
years; he also is credited with a degree in Mechanical Engineering
and a Masters in Mathematics. Readers may send their feedback
and queries to know more about Online Learning Marketplace @
WizIQ.com, to kalyan@wiziq.com.

“No army, air force or navy can ignore the cyber world and live with it. Wars of this century will be fought not just on land, air and water, but also in the virtual space. So, with an aim to counter cyber attacks, India would soon set up a tri-service cyber command.” said army chief Gen Bikram Singh.
The ministry of defence has a draft on the subject ready which the cabinet committee on security, headed by the prime minister, would be taking up for discussion in the days to come. “A note for the cabinet committee on security has been prepared for setting up the tri-service cyber command,” Gen Singh said.
Sources said the office of the chairman, chief of staff committee, has written a detailed note to defence minister AK Antony regarding setting up cyber command. Officials, privy to drafting the cabinet note, told that the need to have a cyber command has been felt for a long time, as the cyber security infrastructure of the country is “weak”.
This is evident from recent incidents of cyber attacks on India. Last year, Chinese hackers broke into sensitive computer systems at the headquarters of the Eastern Naval Command in Visakhapatnam, where the indigenous nuclear submarine Arihant has been undergoing sea trials.
Recently, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) computer systems were breached and sensitive files were leaked. A top defence ministry officer admitted that India has delayed on the cyber security front. “Cyber command would ensure both offensive and defensive cyber security capabilities. Issues like cyber warfare, cyber terrorism and cyber espionage would be taken care of by a cyber command,” the officer said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, while addressing the combined commanders’ conference in November, highlighted the need for developing capacities to counter what he described as “global surveillance operations”.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden had allegedly collected information and intercepted communications in India which also stressed on setting up a cyber command. As per a recent report, the US is the biggest buyer of malware in the world. Global cyber espionage networks are being actively used to spy on other countries. The command and control servers of malware FinFisher were also found in 36 countries, including India.
According to the National Security Database (NSD), there are less than 5,000 reverse engineering experts in India at present. NSD in collaboration with various academic Institutions across India aims to increase the number of reverse engineering professionals in the country to 1 lakh by 2015, through training and awareness. “
reversHacking has become a growing threat to Indian IT industry. Some recent data theft cases by hackers has made India’s $100 billion IT industry, a primary target. The acute shortage of reverse engineering professionals will further hit the IT industry and the economic loss will grow exponentially due to piracy and insecure coding,” says Rajshekar Murthy, Director, National Security Database.
Reverse engineers can play a key role in combating the increasing incidents of cyber attacks and piracy. As the $100 billion information technology industry seeks to chart a new course by fostering software product companies, reverse engineering will become a promising field for jobs in the IT and software development sector.
This was stated at a recent summit organized by National Security Database, an initiative of Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) in association with Ground Zero Summit 2013. The seminar was organized to identify and highlight the need for credible security professionals in India, especially in reverse engineering, to protect the critical infrastructure and economy of the country. “
Today, reversing techniques are used for ’studying’ viruses and malwares to help catch the criminals, create ‘patches’ to clean the viruses from computers and mobiles and also test closed systems and technologies for quality assurance and security vulnerabilities. Reverse engineering experts are immensely useful in the intelligence and defense sector for offensive research such as exploit development and embedded systems security. Companies can also hire reverse engineering experts to oversee security aspects during product design stage and protect their software from being copied or have security issues”, says Murthy.
National Security Database has developed Intensive and in-depth reverse engineering boot camps conducted by Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) approved partners. The program helps engineers to understand different aspects of application security, learn anti-cracking techniques and to create secure code for internal use that cannot be easily hacked. Through these programs, the engineers also learn different approaches for reverse engineering and application to get a strong foundation in dealing with new malwares and gain expertise to analyze it.
Talking to digitallearning correspondent, President Amit Kumar (Cyberfort Technologies) said, India requires more than a million cyber security expert to safeguard India’s virtual space. Cyberfort Technologies continuously doing cyber security awareness among student, corporate and government agencies without charging any fee as a part of corporate social responsibility.
Indian government is serious about cyber security but major failure is consciousness in developing pool of human resource in the field of cyber security. Amit says, government should make compulsory cyber security training for all government officials, who engage in securing digital and virtual space of GOI. Recently, several government and political parties’ website were hacked by unanimous hackers. As said that prevention is better than cure, vaccination of cyber security should be must for every individual, who are using and engaged in virtual space.

Cyber Safe
Elaborating on the skill-set required to succeed in the field of information security, Bezawada Bruhadeshwar, International Institute Information Technology, Hyderabad, says, “It’s a field that requires your keen interest, professional training and thorough knowledge of operating systems, programming, networks and protocols. Cyber criminals strike through virus attacks, destroy systems, modify and steal data from your system without your knowledge. The first and foremost job as an information security expert are to detect and analyse the vulnerabilities and then plug the loopholes to protect the system, network and data. Cyber security experts need to know about coding of some basic languages and database handling skills.”

Diverse Domain
If you are a trained professional in this field, you can find placement as network security systems manager, network security administrator, network security engineer, web security administrator, web security auditor, application security tester, ethical hacker, information security analyst, database and software developer, data security specialist, and chief information security officer. An information security specialist can also start his own venture to provide security solutions to a variety of companies and government departments. Cyber security experts are a desired lot in banks, energy sector, hotels, airlines, healthcare, telecom companies, infrastructure, transportation, law enforcement, defence, emergency response systems and ITES companies, among others.

Certified Career
Graduates with a degree in computer science or engineering can opt for various full-time and short-term courses in information security, like MTech and MSc in Information Security, degree and diplomas in information security and network administration. Amit Kumar cyberfort says, “You need to be trained and certified from a reputed organisation. International certifications like Certified Ethical Hacker (EC-Council ) and GPEN can do wonders to one’s career as a cyber security expert. Salaries in this field range from `3 to 5 lakh per annum. With experience and desired expertise, the package may go up to ` 10-12 lakh per annum, and even to a crore.”

For establishment of cyberfort study center contact –
Dr Rajesh Kumar
Mobile: +91-9031489275,9973195996
email-rajesh@cyber fort.com)