US-based MOOCs consortia in tie-ups with local universities for taking content online

For 29-year-old Anil Kumar, a business consultant at Cognizant Technology Solutions, an online course in ‘gamification’ fast-tracked his career, earning him a consulting project for his firm in the US. Kumar learnt the concept from Coursera, a social entrepreneurship firm partnering with 33 top universities in the world that offer courses online for anyone to take for free. “Since gamification (application of game elements to non-game problems, such as business and social impact challenges) is a new topic, I was able to scale up fast and have become a subject matter expert,” says Kumar, who has done his engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology and MBA from IIM Indore.

Bhuvanesh Baberwal, an engineer and MBA from IIIT-Gwalior who is preparing for his civil services exams, has completed 60 courses from Coursera and has also enrolled into similar platforms, Udacity and edX. He says the courses opened up world class “good quality education” that would have cost him millions of dollars in a traditional classroom environment of one of the top global schools.

Kumar and Baberwal are among many participants in the global education revolution called MOOCs, or massive open online courses. Interactive learning content is delivered online to any individual, anywhere in the world for free. The lectures are delivered in video chunks and students can watch them at their convenience. Students can also participate in interactive quizzes, short video lectures, open forum discussions and assignments. Though it’s early days yet for MOOCs and experiments on certification, assessment, pedagogy and other aspects are on, they have opened up high quality education opportunities like never before.

India is the largest driver of traffic for the courses outside of the US, according to data from the three MOOCs consortia from the US – Coursera, edX and Udacity – which offer courses from the world’s elite universities. Udacity also has a strong tie to industry and bridges workforce-related skills in their courses. At edX, Indian enrolments are the second highest across all courses. And with nearly 100,000 visits last month alone, India is the largest driver of traffic outside the US for Udacity.

Coursera and edX are exploring associations with several top Indian institutes of higher education, including the IITs. Udacity too sees India as a huge opportunity and is keen on making inroads. A few weeks ago, IIT-Bombay joined edX, and some of its regular courses will be available to lakhs of students in the world. And after the success of its experimental course on web intelligence and big data on Coursera last year, IIT-Delhi is planning to repeat it this year. “We are open to partnering with other institutions so that their students can have access to IIT faculty and resources,” says Prof Huzur Saran, head of computer science department at IIT-Delhi.

Coursera is developing a mobile application so that students from economically weaker backgrounds in India can access courses on Akash tablets, which the government is keen to take to people at Rs. 1,500 a piece. “In India, students face the problem of intermittent internet connectivity. With the mobile App we are developing, students can download course content when they have connectivity and access it later,” says Andrew Ng, one of the co-founders of Coursera, which has about 400 courses and 4 million students. In the past six months, Coursera has seen a 139% increase in Indian student enrolment.

Coursera is also discussing with several Indian universities a model called “flip classroom”. Students can listen to lecture material at home and then come to collaborative classroom teaching. It has introduced an option called Signature Track, which will give students in select courses the opportunity to earn a verified certificate for completing their course on payment of about $50.

AFTP, a MOOC platform that provides application-oriented business courses, is pursuing partnerships with IIT-Kharagpur, IMT-Ghaziabad and IISWBM-Calcutta to offer courses for credit in a “flip classroom” framework. It is also pursuing partnership with employers like CMC to offer courses to new hires. “India is one of our most important target developing nations,” says Raj Chakrabarti, one of its founders and professor of systems engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

While MOOCs promise to change the higher education landscape, they are still in the evolving stages as far as pedagogy, assessment – online tests are open to plagiarism and proxy – and authenticated certification are concerned. The drop-out rate too is very high, with only about 10% of the registered students completing courses.

“Some students are hoping that a certificate of completion can enhance their employment prospects, but we don’t have rigorous enough standards and methods for evaluation to put a lot of weight on these certificates,” says Larry Diamond, Director, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, who teaches a course on democratic development on Coursera.

Experimentations on pedagogy are on. One observation is that half the students start working on their homework before watching video lectures, which could lead to professors assigning homework before the lecture. “It appears that students get more excited about learning when they try to puzzle out a problem,” says Agarwal of edX.

“We are learning about teaching methods with research that can translate to on-campus teaching,” he adds. For example, at MIT, researcher David E Pritchard has been studying how people learn. The data from the first prototype course alone, one that Agarwal taught on Circuits & Electronics, is staggering and can fill 110,000 books. “We recorded every click – all 230 million of them,” he says.

Critics say online courses cannot replace traditional classroom teaching methods and university degrees. However, there seems to be a significant scope for MOOCs as a complementary teaching method, particularly in the context of continuing professional education and ‘lifelong learning’. “We do not believe MOOCs will replace on-campus teaching. But we do see MOOCs as enriching college courses, through blended or hybrid courses,” says Agarwal. In such courses, the lecture portion of a course is delivered online, outside of classroom time, and instructors use class time for more interactions with students on campus.

What form MOOCS eventually take is hard to predict, but for now, they can be a priceless supplement.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), July 19, 2013

Alumni open purse to help IIT-Delhi build research schools

The highly successful alumni of Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D) have pumped in millions of dollars to the alma mater since it was established in 1961, helping the institute look beyond government funding for several ambitious research projects.

Currently, two complexes are being built in IIT-Delhi with 100 per cent alumni funding and the foundation for another one was laid recently to boost the institute’s research prospects. The first is Amarnath and Shashi Khosla School of Information Technology, named after parents of IIT-Delhi alumnus and US-based venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.

Khosla, a BTech in Electrical Engineering from IIT-Delhi, co-founded Sun Microsystems along with his Stanford classmates in 1982. Dean of Alumni Affairs Ambuj Sagar said Khosla has provided $5 million for construction of the building and for research work to be taken up there. “The complex will be ready in the next six months,” Dean of Infrastructure Ashok Gupta said. It will be for inter-disciplinary, goal-oriented research, and also serve as an innovation centre for post-graduate education in information technology.

Kusuma School of Biological Sciences, funded by alumnus Anurag Dikshit through the UK-based Kusuma Trust, named after his mother, is another project coming up on the campus. The trust has said to have contributed more than £5 million to build the school. Dean of Infrastructure Gupta said Rs. 100 million has already been released for the building, while the rest would be utilised for setting up research laboratories within the facility. The project mission is to promote research by “interfacing modern biology with applied engineering sciences to address problems affecting human health and welfare, and training scholars to be the next generation scientists”.

Patanjali Keswani, Managing Director of Lemon Tree Hotels and an IIT-Delhi alumnus, recently announced Rs. 200 million for GH Keswani Research Centre at the institute. Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal laid the foundation of the project, which will be built in an area of approximately 130,000 square feet. It will reserved for research facilities for students.

IIT-Delhi has so far produced over 30,000 engineers, technologists, scientists, managers and entrepreneurs. Over the years, this rich roll-call has helped the institute financially and logistically take up several alumni-funded projects.

Source: The Indian Express, September 23, 2012

IIT-Delhi to go to Haryana, new campus in Sonipat

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi will soon set up its extension campus in Sonipat, just a few kilometres from the capital’s border. IIT-D, which has the second highest number of students but the smallest campus, has been searching for land in NCR as it doesn’t have enough space in Delhi. Responding to a letter from the IIT-D director, Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has announced that his government will provide 50 acres to the institute in Rajiv Gandhi Education City in Sonipat. The 2,000-acre Education City, which was launched on Sunday, is the first-of-its-kind in the country, housing dozens of campuses of higher education institutes.

IIT-D Director R K Shevgaonkar’s letter was handed over to Hooda by his son and Rohtak MP Deepender Singh Hooda, the lone parliamentarian on the IIT Advisory Council. Shevgaonkar has said the extension campus would not only facilitate the institute’s much needed expansion but also provide an additional impetus to the economic and technical growth of the state. “The land at Sonipat will be used for activities like faculty development, incubation and setting up science and technology park, which would contribute in the growth of Haryana. We have also asked for land in Jhajjar, which would be used to set up a campus for research activities,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Hooda laid foundation stones of 10 educational institutions that would come up in over 168 acres in the coming Education City. Among the institutions whose foundation stones were laid include Ashoka University, Asian Educational Society, Skyline Business School, Bharti Vidyapeeth University and SRM University, among others. The Haryana government estimates that once fully functional, Education City would have over 100,000 students. “You can imagine the impact it would have on Sonipat’s development and the state and Sonipat would compete with Gurgaon,” the chief minister said.

Education City is being developed on the pattern of Oxford University, the government claimed. Besides regular courses like management, information technology and computer sciences, it would also house institutes offering courses in bio-medical engineering, bio-technology, nano-technology, defence research and film and media studies.

The state government has reserved 25% of all seats for students from Haryana. Outstanding students from the state will also get a special rebate in fees.

Sources: The Times of India & The Hindu, June 11, 2012

Single engineering admission test formula hangs in balance over dissent

Differences have surfaced within the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, whose senate on Friday opposed a country-wide common entrance examination for technical colleges. If this dissent cascades — a section of the IIT-Kharagpur faculty is the latest group to express reservations — the plan for the common entrance test for all engineering and technology schools may come undone.

“One nation, one test, is a desirable objective. While IIT-Kanpur senate has passed a resolution, we have to look at its implications,” M. Anandakrishnan, Chairman of the Board of Governors (BoG) at IIT-Kanpur, said on Sunday. “One IIT cannot run the IIT exam. We have to think whether all the IITs will go along. IITs are a close group and decisions need to reflect the view of all.”

But for the exception of two states, India is poised to move to a single entrance test for admission to engineering colleges across the country, possibly as early as next year, Mint reported on 6 June. This was decided at the state education ministers’ conference convened by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in the capital on Tuesday. The country has around 4,000 engineering colleges and at least 1.5 million students enter them every year.

After the senate resolution on Friday, IIT-Kanpur’s Director has already formed an admissions committee, and the first task of this panel will be to coordinate with other willing IITs to conduct a separate admission test in 2013, a senate member said on condition of anonymity. A section of the IIT-Khargapur faculty on Sunday also expressed dissent over the proposed common entrance exam, said A.K. Mittal, secretary of the All India IIT Faculty Federation.

In the worst-case scenario, there could be two different tests for the 15 IITs; those who support the common admission examination devised by the IIT Council can go for the single test and those with IIT-Kanpur can have their own admission process, the Kanpur senate member said. Anandakrishnan said the government, the BoG and the senate cannot behave like “different political parties”, and it is possible to have a “harmonious relationship”. The BoG of an IIT is its highest decision-making body.

Meanwhile, IIT Delhi is set to hold a senate meeting on 21 June after its director returns from a vacation. Some of its faculty said it is “possible to have a similar resolution like Kanpur”, but others said a clear picture will emerge only within a week. The teachers declined to be named. Both IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kanpur have expressed their dissatisfaction over the IIT Council’s 28 May decision to hold a common entrance exam. The Council is headed by HRD minister Kapil Sibal and comprises of all the directors, the chairpersons of the board of governors of IITs, industry experts, a few ministry bureaucrats and officials from the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

The Council decided that applicants will be selected on the basis of three tests—the class XII board exam, the joint entrance examination (JEE) main test and the JEE advanced exam. All the centrally funded technical institutes except the IITs will give weightage to these three sets of examinations in the proportion of 40:30:30. The ministry says a uniform national test will reduce the demand for capitation fees that many engineering colleges demand, just as it will reduce stress on aspirants, who now write multiple entrance tests. It will also diminish the influence of coaching centres on entrance preparation and re-emphasize the importance of class XII board exams across India.

At least two officials of the MHRD said they were yet to receive any formal communication from IIT-Kanpur. “Despite all the noise, we expect to find a common ground. At the maximum, we will sit down for another round of dialogue with the IITs and things will move on from next academic year,” said one of the officials. “When he (Sibal) is back in action (on 18 June), we expect things to settle down and a clearer picture to emerge,” the second official said. Both officials requested anonymity.

Somnath Bharti, President of IIT Delhi Alumni Association and a Supreme Court advocate, said IIT-Kanpur can hold its own entrance examination. “The IIT council’s decision is not binding on individual IITs,” he said. “It (the common admission test) looks like a populist decision by the minister.” The IIT Delhi Alumni Association is set to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this week and is weighing legal options to “protect the autonomy of the IITs”, Bharti said.

Source: Mint, June 11, 2012

No followers for IIT-Kanpur’s plan to conduct own entrance exam

Despite Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Kanpur’s decision to reject the MHRD’s ‘one-nation one-test’ proposal and conduct its own entrance exam from next year, the directors of IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay and IIT-Kharagpur have said there are no plans to deviate from the earlier decision of taking in students through the common entrance test (CET) to be introduced from 2013.

RK Shevgaonkar, Director, IIT-Delhi, says, “We stand by our decision to go through the CET route from next year onwards and there is no deviation from the same.” Agrees Devang Khakhar, Director, IIT-Bombay. “There is no change in our plans regarding the conduct of the exams.” Damodar Acharya, Director, IIT-Kharagpur, says, “There is absolutely no change in our plans to go through the CET route next year. Even in our last senate meeting held on May 30, there was no objection raised against CET.”

IIT-Guwahati, for its part, says that the institute is not going the IIT-Kanpur way, but will stay with the IIT Council’s decision. Gautam Barua, Director, IIT Guwahati, says, “There are no problems as far as IIT-Guwahati is concerned and we stand by the IIT Council’s decision.” “But we don’t know what the current movement by the faculty associations will lead to. We hope things are sorted out early,” he adds.

While IIT-Kanpur senate’s announcement to hold a separate exam has created a storm, the final decision is yet to come through as the senate has to make an amendment allowing it to hold a separate exam. The current ordinance of IIT-K says IIT-K will take in students through a common entrance test held for all IITs like JEE. After the senate decides, the decision has to be put forward to the board of governors which can reject or ask for amendments in the decision.

If faculty associations are able to mobilize the opinion further and all boards come together in protest of the decision by the IIT Council, there may be a legal battle against the decision of the MHRD.

Source: The Economic Times, June 11, 2012

IITian head of Cornell wants stronger ties with India

Soumitra Dutta, who will assume charge as the new dean of Cornell University’s management school on July 1, takes pride in being an IITian. Although opening a campus in India does not figure in his immediate plans, Dutta wants to build stronger links with researchers and thinkers in India as part of a grand strategy to take Cornell to the world, and bring the world to Cornell.

With this, Dutta will join a growing club of Indian-origin academicians who head prestigious universities in the United States. He will probably be the first person from the country to head Cornell University. Stating that Delhi’s IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) helped him develop his true potential, Dutta said: “The excellence of its faculty and curriculum helped me develop critical thinking and analysis skills.”

Speaking on the confrontation between government and IITs over the change in JEE (Joint Entrance Exam), he said: “The faculty and alumni of an educational institution are best placed to make decisions on the format of academic programmes and their entry criteria. The government is an important supporter of the IITs and has an important interest in seeing the institutions grow stronger. However, this is best achieved by working in partnership with IIT faculty and alumni, and developing a common understanding and framework for action.”

For now, Dutta wants to expand the reach of Cornell, and bring it closer to India – among other countries. “Cornell is fortunate in being able to attract some of the best Indian students and faculty to its campus in New York. There is a lot more that Cornell can do in India, and I will focus on bringing Cornell’s excellence in faculty and educational programmes to India.”

Even though India has pockets of excellence in education, a lot more needs to be done, Dutta said. “I am especially concerned about improving the level of research excellence within Indian educational institutions. I will aim to develop stronger links with India with the goal of improving research norms and culture in Indian institutions.”

Source: Hindustan Times, June 10, 2012

Common test: IIT-Kanpur to go it alone, IIT-Delhi likely to follow suit

After Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Kanpur rejected the Centre’s ‘one-nation one-test’ proposal and decided to conduct its own entrance exam from next year, IIT-Delhi Alumni Association is pushing IIT-Delhi to follow the suit. A decision is expected to be taken next week when the Senate of IIT-Delhi meet here next week.

“In all likelihood, IIT-Delhi Senate seems to be geared up to follow the suit of IIT-Kanpur Senate,” IIT Delhi alumni president Somnath Bharti told PTI. In its yesterday’s meeting, the Senate of IIT-Kanpur had said the IIT Council’s recent proposal on admissions is “academically and methodically unsound”.

The Senate, while deciding to go it alone, had also said the Centre’s ‘one-nation one-test’ proposal was in “violation of the Institutes of Technology Act (1961) and IIT Kanpur Ordinances (Ordinance 3.2 (Admissions)”.

HRD Minister Kapil Sibal on May 28 had announced that from 2013, aspiring candidates for IITs and other central institutes like NITs and IIITs will have to sit under a new format of common entrance test, which will also take plus two board results into consideration.

Sibal had claimed it was approved without dissent at the IIT Council meeting and had the backing of the senates of four of the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). “The council consists of the IITs, the IIITs and the NITs. There was not a single dissent. It was unanimously adopted. Therefore, I went forward,” the minister had said.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), June 9, 2012

IITs ready to open Mauritius campus

Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are set to open their first overseas campus in Mauritius and a feasibility report has already been prepared. This campus will be set up in collaboration with Mauritius University with support from the Indian as well as the Mauritius government. To be named International Institute of Technology (IIT), the institution will engage in research and development for the first five years.

“We have already given the feasibility report to the human resource development ministry as well as the Mauritius government,” said M. Balakrishnan, who is spearheading the team in charge of the plan. “We are ready to start it this year but it depends on both the governments, as the proposal to set up the institute was taken by the Indian education minister and his mauritius counterpart,” he said.

Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal and Rajesh Jeetah, Mauritius’ minister of tertiary education, science, research and technology, had in June 2010 expressed a willingness to open an institute similar to an IIT in the island nation.

To start with, it will be a IIT-Delhi research academy with a global outlook, Balakrishnan said. “IIT-Delhi will mentor the institute and we believe we will engage some 40 faculty members for the Mauritius centre,” he said, adding that these professors need to give at least one month of their time for the campus — three weeks in Mauritius and one week in India dedicated for the offshore plan. According to the plan, the initial investment will be more than $20 million.

Since Mauritius does not have a huge industry-linked economy, the course and research areas have to be global in outlook, Balakrishnan said. Both faculty and students will be global as well. “Their industries are largely sugar and fisheries but we know that it’s an international gateway and can be a hot destination for IT, electronics and e-commerce streams,” he said.

A human resource development ministry official, who did not want to be named, said the ministry is discussing the report and is “quite optimistic”. IIT-Delhi Director R.K. Shevgaonkar said the IITs want to make their presence felt overseas. “We now have the expertise and know how to help a country set up an IIT-like institute. It will have a huge impact on our brand image.” The aim is to start with research and not undergraduate courses. “If you start teaching undergraduate courses from the beginning then it will become a college, not an IIT-type institute, which is research-oriented,” he said.

Source: Mint, May 2, 2012

IIT-Delhi students display innovative concepts

If your mobile phone runs out of battery and there is no electric point around, IIT-Delhi’s green-ion charger can prove to be a life-saver. A student at Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D) is working on an eco-friendly charger that runs on kinetic energy. Simply put, it can produce an electric current when moved. So wearing it on the knee and walking ahead will be enough to charge your phone.

“The internal mechanism of the device is ready and it can produce a current of up to 5 volts, which is enough to charge a mobile phone. I am planning to design this device in the form of a pen. It will generate a current whenever the user moves forward, Also, one can just move it in a particular way with hands to charge a phone while travelling” said Gulmohar Khan, a first-year student pursuing master of design. Khan’s project was one among several innovative ideas and research works put forth by IIT-Delhi on Saturday in its eighth edition of ‘Open House’. Nearly 400 projects were on display at the event, which had about 2,000 visitors.

“The response to the projects has been good this time considering the rush of visitors, ” said IIT-D Director R. Shevgaonkar. The responsive camouflage textiles developed by Muksit Ahamed Chowdhury from the department of textile technology attracted many visitors. The fabric made by Chaudhury changes colours and produces heat. He said the fabric was ideal for defence operations and can be used for making garments, tents or safety spots. The ceiling fan developed by Naveen Kumar and his team from the mechanical engineering department was a huge draw.

“This fan can be used even in winters as it will keep the room warm. We have attached heating coils to the blades of the fan, which are connected to power supply through separate connections. The fan will make the air warm when its blades rotate,” said Kumar. The coils can be detached to use the fan in summer. “It will cost only around Rs. 500 more than a normal fan,” he added. A team of five from civil engineering department is attempting to use wastepaper to build bridges. The students insist that waste paper and an adhesive mix can be joined in a unique way to form a light-weight bridge.

Source: The Times of India, April 22, 2012

IIT-Delhi scouts for a second home

A six-member team of faculty members and officials from Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D) on Thursday visited some plots in and around Jhajjar near Gurgaon to identify a site for the proposed campus expansion plans of the institute. The team, comprising IIT-Delhi Director R K Shevgaonkar, Deputy Director M Balakrishnan and former Director Surendra Prasad, visited three sites around Jhajjar and has zeroed in on a site “relatively close to Gurgaon”. The land is likely to be used as a research facility as the current campus, which has about 250 acres of functional area, is not not enough for the research needs of the institute.

Deputy Director (Faculty) of IIT-Delhi Professor M Balakrishnan said, “They (Haryana government) has been very positive in their response. They have shown us some sites but there are still many details that need to be looked at. It is really premature right now.” He said that at the current campus, many faculty members “did not have the kind of space required for their research. The proposed site is next to the second campus of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS),” the official said. He added AIIMS has already constructed a boundary wall around the site.

Former IIT-Delhi Director Surendra Prasad had announced during the institute’s Golden Jubilee celebrations in August 2011 that the Haryana government had offered 100 acres of land — free of cost — to IIT-Delhi to built a second campus. He had also said that the funding for the expansion will have to be generated by the institute itself as “this was an IIT-Delhi initiative” and not one of MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource Development).

Professor Balakrishnan said, “We are yet to look into the details of revenue generation and the facilities that may be developed at the new campus.” Early last year, the New York City had also offered IIT-Delhi space to open a campus there but the institute had declined saying that they “wanted to expand within the country first before going abroad.”

Source: The Indian Express, April 20, 2012