The phenomenal rise in the number of engineering colleges in India has not been matched by a parallel development of educational resources or infrastructure.
MUMBAI: The phenomenal rise in the number of engineering colleges in India has not been matched by a parallel development of educational resources or infrastructure. As the number of IIT aspirants continues to rise each year, a significant number of talented teachers and students continue to struggle with the challenges posed by an ever-changing technology. Now, to bridge that gap, the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay has proposed to train teachers across the country’s engineering colleges as per their local needs through their satellite-based programme in distance education mode.
“Today, the country has over 2,000 engineering colleges with more than 2 million students. This has created a desperate need for trained faculty. We will now beam our courses for the benefit of teachers,” said DB Phatak, convenor of the Golden Jubilee celebrations (IIT-B).
IIT-B will circulate a notification this year asking 1,000 teachers across the country to register for a one/two-week programme. “We realised the Quality Improvement Programme doesn’t serve the full purpose in the current scenario and a major scale-up is needed. We also realised that QIP course material is being designed on IIT style which may not be relevant to the particular engineering college from which the teacher comes,” said Phatak. Hence, the teachers who will register their names under the new project will be required to compile the last three year’s course content and question papers of their college. The training will be designed as per individual needs. “After they go back, teachers will be asked to contribute to a question-answer bank to be released under open source,” added Phatak. The project is an extension of IIT-B’s“Ekalavya” and “e-outreach” programmes, which facilitate free dissemination of academic material in the open source. “The training can be given through our EDUSAT programme linked through the Indian Space Research Organisation network, so mobility is not required,” said Kalpana Kannan, project manager, Ekalavya.
Phatak said the institute has estimated that with the scale up of it’s EDUSAT programme, IIT-B will be able to train 30,000 teachers in three years under the new project.
The institute estimates roughly Rs14 crore over three years will be required for the project and has submitted the proposal to Technology Information, Forecasting & Assessment Council for its support. “As we train the teachers, faculty from colleges having the interactive terminal can simultaneously receive it,” added Kannan.
b_mihika@dnaindia.net
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