ELITE Course: A Report

IIIT, Bangalore with support from DIT, GOI conducted a four week training program on Effective E-learning and E-Teaching during Jun29 to 24th July. 22 Faculty from across the nation and from different discipline were invited to attend the training. Prof. N J Rao, from IISC, was the coordinator for the ELITE program conducted the course in very effective and planned manner.The purpose of the training was multi-fold. Some of the important aspects covered in depth during the course were

• Course Design
• Assessment
• Instructional Design
• Learning Management systems(LMS) - MOODLE.

Course Design:

With more institutions going autonomous way, now they are responsible for designing their own curriculum. Course design is a process of designing a complete course given the program outcomes and competencies. It was stressed that a methodical course design process is very useful both from teacher and learner perspective. Useful tools such as concept maps were introduced and good examples were provided. Groups were formed among participants and each group was assigned the task of designing a course from scratch. It was a very education experience for each one of us.

Assessment:

Assessment is an important aspect of any course design process. However it is noticed that in a large system such as university, assessments get lower priority and examination methods usually end up asking more of a remembering and recalling types of questions. The training exposed us to a well structured and graded easement method known as Bloom's Taxonomy which consists of stages of learning starting from remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and creating. Course designed by participants included a deliberate inclusion of Bloom's taxonomy as an integral part.

Instructional design

Lecture is a dominant form of teaching, it is not the only open for teaching. Instructional design is selection and applications of various combination of instructional strategy by the concerned faculty. It includes in addition to lecture, demonstration, Learning objects, practice session to name the few. Sufficient coverage of theoretical foundations of instructional design were taught to us during the training. Each of the group presented the course designed by the them to whole audience and critical feedback was provided by Prof. N J Rao and other participants

Learning Management Systems:

Learning management systems help faculty managing the entire process of teaching including content management- delivery and assessment. We were trained on one open source LMS called MOODEL. Ms Vani conducted a series of practical sessions explaining the features of MOODLE system and each candidate was asked to test those features.

A valedictory function was conducted in the presence of Dr. Sadagopan, Director and visiting UGC team. Participants were given a course completion certificate and a ipod

In all it was great learning occasion for all of us

9th Convocation of IIITB: A Bystander's Report

You rarely get such chance like this one. Attending a convocation of an institution where four of most successful persons of contemporary India -each of them whom have architected most recent achievement in India share the same dais and share their thoughts with upcoming generation.. I am talking about the 9th Convocation of IIIB ( International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore) which held today in instituter's campus just opposite Infosys, in Electronic city, Bangalore. I was nobody in the gathering- I was not a graduating student, nor was I a proud parent nor I was faculty who by default have a privilege to participate. In Drucker's word I was a Bystander. As a trainee for a month long e-learning course , I am staying here. But I was more than rewarded with a series of thought provoking speechs first by Dr. Madhavan Nayar, Chairman of ISRO who along with his team is leading the world in space technology. The next was Mr Asok Soota who built up an eminently successful enterprise Mindtree is less than a decades time. The third one was Mr N R Murthy who embodied entrepreneurial spirit in his creation of world known software service firm Inofsys. The last but not the least was Prof. Sadagopan who as a founding director of IIITB creating a world class institute in India where even foreign students are attending. He needs no better applause than one by Peter Drucker when he said " The graduates from IIITB as good as from any institution in world". We owe a lot to Director.

Winning With Web via kwout

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ELITE 2009: Inagural Function: A Brief Report

ELITE-2009 ( Effective e-learning and e-teaching) a month long training for the faculty of engineering colleges started today at IIIT, Bangalore today. About 22 faculty from nook and corner of the country have been selected for this and they come states as far as Nagaland and Jammu & Kashmir. Prof. Rajagopalan introduced the purpose and intention behind the training quoting a NASSCOM study result that engineering teacher need instruction and training in teaching. With exponential growth in number of engineering colleges and in enrollment there is a immediate need to scale up our teaching efforts to meet the needs of greater number of students. Technology provide a means to overcome this challenge. The focus of the training is two fold (1) designing a couse for delivering face to face and as well as on the web and to (2) use Moodle a open source system for teaching

 

Dr. Sadagopan, Director impressed upon the fact that technology can positively impact teaching process and it time to enjoy the "pains of problem solving" in the context of increasing demand for engineering education

 

Prof. N.J Rao, coordinator of the training program made a very elaborate speech describing the need and goals of blending teaching – another name for e-learning and e-teaching. Historically he said teaching has focused on teachers and now is the time to move on to "student centric learning" paradigm. The main problem with engineering education is engineering graduates and even post graduates do not have adequate teaching trainings. Another point he noted is that designing a course in the past would mean choosing a text and selecting a few chapters from that. The stress in the training is to teach participant on how to design a course with due regards to different roles such as e-learning (student focused), e-teaching (teacher focused). In other word the purpose is to make teaching a more formal than depending on chance to find a good method of teaching or a teacher. "A lot of research carried out in cognitive field can be harnessed for improving teaching process" he stressed.

 

Dr. Ramani referred to the range of productivity tools available on PCs, which have made our lives better organized. He mentioned that a variety of tools are similarly revolutionizing professors' lives. He mentioned Moodle as a great a productivity tool for teaching.  He also mentioned the conference management tool, EDAS, which has made his life as a conference chair very simple. The system has automated a variety of chores associated with conference organizing, for instance, it takes care of reminding authors and reviewers. He urged participants to investigate such tools and to use them.