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.
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