The First Indo US Engineering Faculty Leadership Institute was conducted in Summer of 2008 through the vision and generosity of Desh and Jaishree Deshpande as well as Sudha and Narayana Murthy (Desh and Murthy are IIT alumni). US faculty experts and several corporate leaders conducted 23 workshops from May 26 to July 18. Infosys Technologies provided managerial support, conference facilities and support services as well as the accommodation and boarding for all 585 participants. A special leadership track designed and delivered in collaboration with Infosys Leadership Institute for heads of engineering colleges facilitated the development of leadership skills. A signature conference on "Autonomy and Accountability in Engineering Education. What is working" was co-convened by the World Bank as part of the Leadership Institute. All workshops have been completely videotaped and are being edited and converted to digital format for use by selected participants to conduct workshops in their own colleges/ regions. EduSAT transmission enabled hundreds of other faculty to participate in several courses.

The success of the 2008 Indo US Engineering Faculty Leadership Institute has led to plans for the 2008-09 year, with the emphasis on sustainability and scalability. The focus during 2008-09 will be on creating and mentoring a network of IUCEE Institutional Members and Individual Members and assisting them in setting up Regional Centers for Teaching and Research Excellence which will foster a wide range of collaborations between Indian and US faculty and colleges, including research collaborations, faculty exchanges, student exchanges, joint graduate and undergraduate degree programs. Scaling and Sustainability will require a sustained effort for at least 5 years along the lines outlined above. Several of the funding sources, particularly the public sources, are expected to become institutionalized over a period of five years.

The networks resulting from this collaboration between colleges in the world's most advanced democracy (US) and the world's largest democracy (India) are expected to not only increase the employability of engineering graduates, but also lead to a range of benefits to the US as well. These would include student and faculty exchanges leading to more collaborative research relevant to global as well as local economies, development of entrepreneurship in emerging technologies and expanding markets for innovations in technical education in general and engineering education in particular. The potential for IUCEE to lead the way for similar efforts in other countries is enormous.

OCW and iLabs are part of a growing Open Education movement characterized by arange of Open Content and Open Technology initiatives that offer unprecedented opportunity to transform engineering and science education in India and elsewhere by delivering diverse educational value in flexible, location-independent and contextually relevant ways. India's National Knowledge Commission has advocated Open Education Resources as a key element of a national strategy to advance quality and access in Indian education.

AT MIT these initiatives are also cast in the context of curriculum innovations -- new and reconfigured courses that incorporate project-based approaches and active learning principles, facilitate cross-disciplinary experiences, promote students' skills as collaborators who can work as part of an effective team as well as problem solvers who have the ability to recognize and solve complex problems. Alongside programs, such as D-Lab and UROP/IROP provide opportunities for students to develop as scholars with multiple perspectives who can function in a global society. They provide service-learning experiences for students who are passionate about making the world a better place.

MIT is also developing an enabling substrate of software, skills and spaces for equipping students with the capabilities and confidence to engage with big problems in an increasingly complex and connected world. For instance we are working on transforming research tools, that faculty and researchers use daily, into scaffolded applications that support learning while providing early exposure to research, as well as configuring spaces to support active research-learning experiences.

These initiatives point to a rich palette of transformational possibilities for engineering education. They can serve as models for the IITs to learn from and adapt. They also offer important opportunities in which IIT alumni can actively participate. They suggest that the IITs should embrace the culture and practice of systemic educational innovation to meet the opportunities and challenges of 21st century engineering education.

Distance education based on live transmission has many benefits for the recipients. These classes have fixed schedule. They start and end on specific dates. All other support devices, such as, live interaction, offline interaction, assignments, tutorials, and the question papers of class tests and exams can also be made available. What is more, as all of these have to be offered to the IIT students any way, the extra effort required to make these available to the remote students is minimal. As a result, this approach has a good chance of success, while ensuring high quality. This approach can also substantially reduce the work of the distance education unit, compared to creating courses especially for the outside world.

If we use good technology, the students at remote locations can find the live transmission to be very close to reality. The fact that they can ask questions live, can provide a high comfort level to the students. Indian students, by nature, do not ask many questions. During the almost a decade of our live transmission, IIT Bombay's faculty never had any problems due to excessive live interaction from remote locations. Even if this were to happen, it is possible to establish mechanisms to ensure that the live interaction does not get out of control. Offline interaction through a learning management system, such as Moodle, can make the interaction process effective and scalable, as students themselves can solve the problems of each other most of the time.

Live transmission is one way to transmit IIT's teaching methodologies to the outside world. These are difficult to obtain, unlike the subject matter, which can be obtained from any text book. The remote students get to see the seriousness of both the faculty and the IIT students in the instruction process. They also get to see the other essential ingredients of classroom instruction, namely, cracking of jokes, making mistakes and correcting them, and the attempt put in by the instructors to explain difficult topics. Not every remote student needs to participate in all of these: the fact that they CAN participate if they want to is often sufficient.

IIT Bombay has been carrying out live transmission of its courses for close to a decade. In the autumn semester of 2008, it transmitted 37 courses, each having about 40 lectures. These courses were transmitted from five studios. While all of these courses were webcast, ten were transmitted through ISRO's EDUSAT. All these courses were transmitted for free.

Spreading knowledge is noble. Guru and Gurukul represent the very essence of teaching and learning since the time immemorial. In the earlier days it was almost one-on-one. Shall we say customized! The modern day needs, however, demanded a greater spread and access to education. This resulted in the creation of universities and institutions, such as IITs (the modern day Gurukuls), across the globe. And of course in standardization of education! Considering the virtues of education for all, the present system of imparting education through conventional university system, involving classroom instructions and interactions, is too restrictive and may be costly (?).

Reaching out to spread the education has been in vogue for some time across the globe. India, too, has done various types of experiments which include open schools and open universities. The conventional distance-teaching-learning methods of sharing the content with students in the form of designed study materials such as handouts, notes, work sheets and books, has produced limited results.

Use of appropriate technology not only increases the reach but also keeps the content contemporary and sufficiently modular to cater to the needs of formal registrants as also to the needs of those who want to upgrade and enrich themselves, say working professionals. Technology today permits dissemination of text based interactive web content as also the video based lectures and tutorials. It is possible today to disseminate the video content via transmission through satellite or IP based network. IITs and IISc have taken a lead in designing primarily engineering and technology content both in video and web based interactive (mostly text) formats. The video based content is available through a 24x7 satellite technology channel- EKLAVYA, foot-printing most of India. It is also available in video-on-demand mode through a video-streaming server. Obviously the quality of video has to be reduced in the latter case to make it compatible with web streaming protocols to optimize the bandwidth requirements.

A recent study has shown that the video based study material is far more popular than the web based interactive learning material. It is probably because the attention span and the useful engagement with the user are substantially higher. One of the challenges is to make the video content more interactive with an appropriate searchable content. The IP based streaming has also to address issues related to the infrastructure, IT support and bandwidth availability across the network, especially at the user end. High bandwidth requirement not only means greater traffic but also an attendant cost.

As they say, it costs much more to make some one unlearn a wrong (!) concept embedded through a faulty instruction. It may therefore, be worth its penny to spend in creating quality educational content as also to invest in technology and infrastructure to facilitate the access to each recipient. And if it is possible, to even ensure mass customization, i.e., to facilitate user specific content generation - a change from mass dissemination. IITs and IISc have taken upon themselves to generate quality curriculum based engineering content, with the active support of MHRD. Is it the time for some philanthropists to step in? Yes, of course!

The present presentation throws light on the IIT-IISc experiment and discusses the challenges and opportunities in dissemination of video based instructional content. It also dwells into the scope and the need for public-private partnership for enhancing and supporting such processes.

Email: kushal@textile.iitd.ernet.in

What more do we need to do to help improve the current situation in India? IITs must be able to provide effective online engineering education to all those who are in need of good quality education. The following are some of the steps needed to provide online education, which is second to none in quality.

• Continue to build from IITs' own strength-build good quality and reasonably self-contained coursework in every possible science and technical course for diploma programs, graduate and post-graduate degree programs and also research-level courses. Enable free access to everyone. This activity needs collaborative and inclusive approach of all concerned. NITs, well-known teaching faculty from Universities and Directors of research in major industries have to made a part of the content development efforts for both generic and special topics in all areas of sciences and technology that India needs. CONTENT IS KING AND QUEEN.
• Aggressively seek best faculty world wide to be partners in NPTEL for providing focused and state-of-the-art learning through online and through interactive mode for short periods of time. Redo NPTEL as International Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning. The world is FLAT. Design an online environment through the world's best practices.
• Undertake extensive training of willing teachers and offer certification to them for proficiency so that they will be valuable for the teachers in securing better and more permanent teaching positions or other career options. After a brief contact session, much of the training can be conducted online. Work with distance education partners worldwide if necessary.
• Mentor a few Institutions in each region and train their faculty most intensely to do content development and research in their respective areas through sponsors. Continuous learning is a precursor to good quality teaching. There is no better way than active research in one's own area.
• Reach out to a large student population through voluntary participation in online examinations periodically conducted through the Internet and offer specialized certification programs for every student willing to go through the grind. Several industries are willing to experiment with different paradigms in online learning.
• Partner with Industry for effective learning and training on a specialized suite of courses relevant to that Industry. It is possible if NPTEL/IPTEL does develop contents for a large number of courses. IITs need not offer industry specific academic programmes at the undergraduate level but must not shun the responsibility of helping in the content design for better training modules with the help of their industrial counterparts.
• Constantly share and learn best practices of teaching and learning with others.

Internet can provide online learning and with careful tweaking of the quality of interactions between the learner and the learned, can also provide a near-perfect equivalent of on-campus learning. It is our prerogative to create that environment for science and engineering education in India with the help of all those who learnt from us in the past and who are willing to help us conditionally, or unconditionally.

• Working towards reasonably common core curricula for different levels & technical disciplines.
• Working towards a simpler and more efficient admission system in institutions across India.
• Facilitating recognition and transfer of academic credits between institutions.
• Helping to establish a Portal to provide information about every technical institution in India.

Depending on the availability of resources this Centre could take up or fund research programmes, training courses, collaboration opportunities, making available course ware from open sources etc.

IITs will need to use on-campus, off-campus as well as technology enhanced open and distance modes of education to reach out. Many more intensive summer and winter schools in subject areas and in educational technology / teaching methodology need to be organized every year using all the modes mentioned above. Full/Part time PG level programmes, specifically for technical teachers, using technology enhanced open and distance learning mode may be considered. Use of a combination of e-learning and VOD course material by small groups of learners, in a collaborative mode and supported by mentors from IITS and elsewhere can be a very powerful method for increasing the quality and reach.

IIT Kharagpur has a rich experience of using technology to reach out far beyond its boundaries. Some examples are: El Net-3L programme ('96-'01) which reached out to 12000 students through TVI in Small Group Collaborative Mode.

• PGDIT programme (2001-07) in mixed/hybrid mode which has so far trained 700+ students in IT at Kolkata, Bhubenshwar & Kharagpur.
• First institution in India to experiment with educational VOD (2001). 125 VOD courses currently on campus intranet.
• 1st year Electrical Technology Laboratory experiments as Virtual Laboratory Experiments developed in 2003.
• Developed Virtual Class Room software in 2004 and experimented with its use for two years.
• 96000 hrs of IIT Kgp video courses are currently in use in 167 academic & other organizations in India & abroad.
• IIT Kgp contributed 22 Video & 18 Web courses to the NPTEL & 47 video courses for the Pre-NPTEL projects.
• A sophisticated video-conference facility connecting remote class rooms (via IP & ISDN) for conducting M. Tech programmes in distance mode for technical teachers has been proposed recently.

Indian education system has grown rapidly in the last three decades with about 10 million students and about 360 universities. It represents one of the largest education systems in the world. The challenges posed by this rapidly evolving system need to be understood. Necessary policies and action plans need to be developed so as to fulfill the objectives of the Higher Education.

The role of Technology in general and Information Communication Technology in particular has been found to be useful in delivering education to a large number of students even with inadequate number of teachers.

The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) was initiated by the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore in 1999. The core curriculum development was later approved under the NPTEL programme and funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in 2003 for a total budget of 205 million Indian Rupees for the creation of 120 web based courses, 120 video courses and encapsulation/ conversion of existing 110 video courses. The first phase of the project is completed and has ensured complete coverage of the first three years of undergraduate curriculum in five major engineering branches, namely, Civil, Computer science, Electrical, Electronics and Communication and Mechanical engineering. These were supplemented by the courses in the core science and management.

The success of NPTEL has initiated the thinking about the Virtual Technological University (Virtual Tech). The Virtual Tech is envisaged to have the five broad Schools covering different areas, such as Education, Engineering Sciences, Natural Sciences, Management Sciences and Humanities.

India is in the midst of this tremendous migration of global know-how. American and European companies are increasingly carrying out their design and manufacturing work in India. Technology and "Flat World" protocols are facilitating interdisciplinary, multinational, governmental, and institutional collaborations across boundaries. The universities across the countries share a fundamental focus on the future, - the development of intellectual human capital. Global cooperation between the partner Institutes across the countries, on the basis of complementing each other will enhance the strength and cover the weakness of the participating Institutes.

It has been understood that Inter-disciplinary and Multi-disciplinary courses have far more impact and value in Higher Education. Academic programme should develop boundary-less academic environment. The role of laboratory experimental work and research is also a crucial element of Higher Education. Providing such training when the system is very large, becomes difficult. It is conjectured that technologies of virtual laboratory and simulation may help in fulfilling the requirements of training for the students in laboratory work.

We are loosing control on quality. We have succeeded in misusing the democratic structure, which is supposed to be our strength. The role of IITs in Capacity and Capability building through E-Education cannot be just by participation in providing the technical knowhow to implement it. But it will have to deal with issues like:

Social Responsibility:

• Define Quality
• Areas where India needs to strengthen the capacity and capability building
• How best it can be implemented without bringing in the caste, religion, region, language etc
• Can we use this mode to bring people together?
• Can we use this to strengthen Nehruji slogan: Unity in Diversity
• It should automatically evolve groups and in the long run help other groups to rise like today on the Internet. So the knowledge will be the power and not an individual. It is a dangerous proposition which will hurt / boost ego.

Administrative Responsibility:

• Plan for a hierarchy of courses such that if one does equivalent of a three year diploma, even he should have the choice of going for a higher degree
• Plan for cyber tutors
• Plan for train the trainer
• Developing tools for tracking dynamic groups which are interlinked in cyberspace not only to consume but to add to the knowledge space
• access to a pool of knowledge repository without violating copyright issues
• Plan for Admissions and credits
• Plan for industry academia interaction in cyberspace (Collaboration)

Technical Responsibility:

• Development of tools for efficient use of knowledge repository as per the international standards (Development)
• A research group with representation in standards body (Research)
• Tools for virtual labs (Development)
• Develop or integrate tools for virtual classrooms (Infrastructure)
• Plan for multilingual knowledge base (Development)

IIT Kanpur has been participating in offering virtual course to institution in a project mode, where IITK faculty have been lecturing in a live session with interaction over the Internet. Hence we have the technical knowhow to execute the above activity. This has given us the experience in terms of technical / administrative difficulties in execution of such projects. Some of the projects which were / are operating in this mode are:

• Chattisgarh Knowledge Sharing Program: Phase I
• Chattisgarh Knowledge Sharing Program: Phase II
• Indo-French Cyber University
• Webcasting of events

IIT Kanpur has also participated in NPTEL program by contributing web based and video lectures

Why is it that we, as a society, are able to make better and better mobile phones every three months.... but are unable to improve the quality of our school education over decades?

The apparent reasons are many - 'we don't pay our teachers well enough, so good people do not enter this field', 'economic rewards are much higher in other sectors', 'education is delivered by government which is inefficient', 'education is not really valued in our society' and so on - but a little analysis suggests that these explanations are inadequate. We do not claim to have the complete answer - but believe that one of the key reasons is that systematic, scientific research - of the kind that necessarily backs the technological advances that we see - is almost completely absent in education, specifically primary education. In our company, Educational Initiatives, we are trying to do such research and also follow it up with concrete action in the form of products and services we offer.

What ails Indian education? We think that one of the core problems in Indian education is rote learning. Rote learning does have its place and value, but when it becomes a substitute for understanding - as our researches suggest it has across school systems in India - it is worrisome. In this variety of learning, students score marks in tests based on rote, but are not able to effectively apply their learning in real life. Education should improve the quality of students' thinking, which does not happen much when learning is primarily by rote. Recall of facts, emphasized in our system, is of limited value in tomorrow's knowledge society.

Learning with Understanding: We use the term 'learning with understanding' since it is generally easy for people to understand. It encompasses aspects like critical thinking, applying learning to real-life situations and higher order thinking skills. (In fact some elements of rote learning are needed for true learning with understanding.) In functional terms, if a student has learnt a particular topic 'with understanding' it means that she would know the topic well, be able to talk about it, draw upon related aspects in real life and possibly know where and how to obtain more knowledge about it. Much of our work is focused on trying to measure - accurately and meaningfully - how well children have learnt important topics with understanding.

Assessment for Learning: Measurement of learning is quickly identified with assessment, a much-maligned term, especially in India (and justifiably so if assessment is ubiquitously rote-based). However, our assessments are not done to check how 'good' a child is, they are done to check how well the system (or school) is helping her learn. These are low-stakes tests conducted to obtain feedback which can be used by the teacher, school and system as a whole to improve. For example, if a large number of children have difficulties understanding decimal fractions, this tells us that textbooks should probably modify their treatment of the same. We call this assessment for learning, opposed to the more common assessment of learning.

Our Theory of Change: We thus see change happening in stages. The 1st stage is one of 'holding up a mirror' - a stage of discomfort where we start looking - somewhat objectively, through assessments like these - at where we currently are. The 2nd stage is that of discussion - often disagreement and scepticism - when the system questions the data and tries to verify if it is correct. In the 3rd stage, some early movers start attempting changes based on what the data suggests and to check if that shows positive results. As isolated experiments like this gather momentum and coalesce, the transformation we seek happens in the 4th stage through a process of infestation. Time and enabling circumstances are critical in this process of change.

What we do at Educational Initiatives: The base of our work is large scale student assessments which we conduct extensively in both private and government schools. Our test for the private schools is called ASSET and is done twice every year (schools choose one of the dates) - over 2000 schools and 400,000 students participate every year. With partners like Google.org, The World Bank, Unicef, Dell Foundation, Wipro, ICICI Bank and various state governments, similar assessments are conducted on some of the poorest children in our rural schools. Following these assessments, feedback is shared with students, and even more importantly, with teachers. To understand the reasons students have answered in particular ways, student interviews are conducted which are video-recorded and again used for teacher training.

Some Examples: For example, students both in private and government schools in class 6 believe that 23.4 is closer to 234 than 23 (though private school students will add and subtract decimal fractions correctly); private school children of class 6 define warm-blooded correctly and identify Man as warm-blooded, but say that the human body temperature is much higher in summer than winter; only about 25% of class 4 students in government schools subtract 26 correctly from 51, many of them write the 26 on top and then explain quite unfazed on camera why they do that. Many students of class 5 of a school in rural Madhya struggled to read simple questions like? (kitne phool hain, how many flowers are there?) in a Maths exercise they were given.

Digital Adaptive Learning (Mindspark): All these experiences and data have also moved us from measuring learning to a very interesting attempt to use this detailed data on the levels of student learning to create a self-learning system for students. It is a question-based digital adaptive learning system - it intelligently uses questions that are finely arranged in increasing order of difficulty so that the system adapts to the child's level based on her right and wrong answers! The product is called 'Mindspark' and early results have been very encouraging both with private and government school students (who worked on a special Hindi-based version which read out questions to them on request.) We hope that systems like Mindspark will combine the best in education and technology to create learning solutions that really help children learn.

How IITians can help: Reforming education is not going to be only about dedication, commitment and sacrifice. We believe it is going to be about research, devising solutions, solving complex problems and making them work. While some problems will be economic and sociological, many will be technological. Two areas which are close to the area of student learning are cognitive research on brain functioning and Artificial Intelligence - we see these three areas as overlapping each other quite a bit over the coming years. So, these are areas where a lot of work is needed as not much is happening. Apart from the intellectual challenge and the satisfaction of making a difference to people, good work in education can be financially rewarding also. So starting with part-time volunteering to helping kids learn and sharing observations to starting something of your own - all avenues exist to help!

India's success in the 21st century depends critically on its ability to unlock the creative potential of its rural population. Sadly, a didactic, rote-based education system has discouraged millions of Indians from learning and condemned them to lives of mediocrity. Transforming this requires strong and inspirational leadership, including large grassroots efforts to spark curiosity, or the spirit of enquiry, through a more engaging, interactive and liberating education system targeted at children, teachers and adults: a system, that promotes the qualities of observation, awareness, assimilation/ integration and application. Through hands-on science education, delivered by motivated and energetic village teachers it is possible to spark curiosity across millions of children. Agastya International Foundation is achieving this through its 31 mobile science labs, 14 rural science centers and a 170-acre creativity lab near Bangalore. The presentation will consist of a 15 minute film plus a 15 minute talk. Challenges: There are 200 million disadvantaged rural children in India, belonging to families "below poverty line". Agastya vision and mission is to replicate the current activity across the whole country within the shortest possible time. How IITs and IITians can play a role in meeting the challenges: First to understand and appreciate the plight of these disadvantaged children. Then contribute financially, physically and/ or intellectually to spread the knowledge that they have acquired through the IIT system, to unlock the creative potential of its rural population - by designing, creating very simple models illustrating fundamental scientific principles, demonstrating to the children in as simple a language as they can, in different Indian languages, the accompanying write-up, motivate and train as many teachers as possibes, etc.

Private educational institutions seem to attract good teachers, and have facilities that are vastly better than those Government schools have. They are often in the news for innovations. Private endeavours, such as private industry or business, are expected automatically to be superior to the mass education attempted by the state system in a democratic nation. However, nothing seems to have changed that much in private schools. When one listens to experiences of schools in conferences and seminars, one hears of changes being rung in by some schools. Few are replicated even within a school.

The truth is that there is a great paucity of replicable models. This is the reason why private schools also have not changed that much in their pedagogy and structure. Change is wrought when a viable alternative cannot be avoided.

The School teachers shared with SSA trainers, in a 11 day workshop in May 2007, what they had learnt, practiced and what they considered important. The process of the workshops were largely self reinforcing. Using the insight, that 'one learns to play the cello only by playing the cello', the teacher trainers of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan were exposed to the educational principles of Active Learning Methodolgies (ALM) through the processes being suggested. The content was different but the modality was as if they were students of middle school who had to transact material from text books.

The ALM approach fundamentally involved some simple and obvious steps

• students individually read a passage or a lesson,
• individually underline words not understood, and refer to the dictionary,
• students individually write down their questions based on what they have read
• represent their individual understanding as a visual map of conencted ideas
• small group discussion to listen to different views and for summarizing, and then
• large group communication.
• Specific approaches such as SQ4R, SQ3R and PQRST were introduced along with summarizing techniques.

60 trainers, in one voice, communicated to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Directors Mr Vijaykumar, Mr Elangovan, Mr Kannapan and Mrs Latha, that this was an approach worth taking forward and it was decided that this approach could be piloted in 120 schools in 12 districts of Tamilnadu.

A MOU was entered into with The School to gather support for the work regarding ALM to move ahead. Trainers from SSA started visiting The School and working hard to generate the framework of lesson plans to enable active learning to happen in the classes. To guide SSA trainers in taking the next step, guidance was provided by teachers from The School. The trainers, numbering upto 15 on any given day would work in The School and the teachers of the school provided guidance to them during the gaps in their schedule and in the evenings. This enormous effort from the trainers, more than 2000 man days of effort, honing the lesson plans for transference to teachers, was a major thrust of the academic year 2007-08.

The concerted work yielded good results. Any visitor to any of the middle schools in the state could see the shift and energy. The emphasis subtly and definitely had shifted to learning, rather than teaching. The students rapidly displayed confidence as they mastered the elements of apprehending knowledge through questioning, mind mapping and the essential process of social contact with peers and teachers. The blossoming grew from strength to strength and soon a Government order was issued making ALM a major thrust. Soon, by the end of the academic year practice of ALM spread to 10000 schools. While the extent to which the practice is being effectively used varies, one thing is clear, Students and teachers have welcomed the shift with great enthusiasm. The transformation of the middle school classroom is palpable.

The present move rides on the decisive move for social justice that schools that every child has right to food. Now it seems the Govt schools are ready to say that 'every child has a right to participate in knowledge creation and construction'. And the winds of change have blown away many myths:

• the underprivileged need education that is different from the privileged
• good education can only happen with heavy infrastucture and excellent facilities.
• Government schools and private schools have little in common

  The sharing of the ALM processes proved, with refreshing directness, that what works among children in private schools can work equally well in Govt schools. The horizontal transfer of the processes also gives great energy to the reverse possibilities - of private school learning from the movements in Govt schools. Nothing is more precious in our times, when divisions are gaining prominence, to discover the truth that all of us are human and similar, and so the same processes work well with all of us. And probably nothig holds promise of the level playing field, than the simple processes in education, held consistently, humanely, focussed on unleashing the learner.

  The same classrooms, the same students, the same teachers and the same text books... but the educational transaction has been transformed radically.

The membership and program participation within the non-profit organization, Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW)² also has far greater proportion of under-represented populations than in the overall engineering population. On a much more limited scale, the new Engineering Leadership Program at Iowa State has women participants at nearly fifty per cent on a campus where the percentage of women in the college is in the teens. These are examples where contextual learning and societal impact appear correlated with greater engagement of women in engineering.

In India, the numbers of women graduating with engineering degrees has been on a dramatic rise in the recent decades but there is significant unemployment of women engineers (Parikh et al.)³. This under-utilized talent pool could prove to be a valuable resource base for piloting new curriculum ideas. For example, unemployed/ underemployed women engineers could be supported on entrepreneurial educational enterprise for design and delivery of quality engineering education with a holistic slant. Engineering education can be in the context of the social responsibility of engineers to design products and services to improve the human condition of the 4 billion income poor humans currently underserved by the global economy.

• http://epics.ecn.purdue.edu/
• http://www.eswusa.org/projects/apply.asp
• P. P. Parikh, R. Bindu and S. P. Sukhatme, Job Status and Career Profile of Women Engineers in India, Int. J. of Engng. Ed., Vol 19, No. 4, 631-638, 2003

The problem of attracting girls into science and technology cuts across countries, even across the developing/ developed country divide. To some extent, the main problems in attracting girls to science and technology are common, viz. practicing both are regarded as difficult, time-intensive careers which are difficult for girls to undertake and later on to sustain. They differ in that society only recognises professions like medicine, engineering, law, etc. but regards employment prospects for scientists (other than in academics or teaching) as being practically non-existent.

In the case of doing science, children have no real idea of the value of doing science and their entire experience of science is through their science teacher. This leads us naturally to the second problem which is that of science teaching in schools. Here, the main problem is the lack of enthusiastic and motivated teachers who themselves understand science. For girls in particular, it is sometimes felt that the classroom atmosphere and examples used are particularly alienating. Specific problems can be that many girls' schools have no labs or hand-on teaching, so that girls, later, in colleges, are 'frightened' of experiments. The typical scientist or technologist is usually portrayed as a man, despite the fact that science teachers in our schools are frequently women.

Ways of teaching do not take into account the fact that many girls learn better in collaborative groups than in a competitive atmosphere. Finally, there are also questions raised about whether introduction to abstract concepts is poorly timed for girls i.e., girls languish in dull courses early on waiting for boys to 'grow up'.

A third problem is that given that entrance to elite institutions devoted to science and technology is through intensely competitive exams like the JEE, which require intensive coaching, statistics indicate that most girls do not even make the attempt to take such exams. Parents also do not encourage girls to take these exams due to a variety of practical and perceived problems.

The worst problem is societal expectations. Even now the education of girls is not taken seriously. The general philosophy is 'why pay more to have girls study science and engineering, when they are going to drop out and get married anyway?'. This can lead to the girls themselves not taking their work very seriously since they always have the fall-back option of getting married. Even in developed countries like Israel, a similar philosophy means that programmes for gifted children is less encouraged for girls than for boys.

Even for the women who have already crossed these hurdles, the problems do not end. In addressing the standard problem of balancing family and career, many women put their careers on the back-burner at the early stages, and then never quite catch up. There are also conscious and unconscious biases operating against hiring and promoting women, both by men and women. For instance, in a situation where there is a married woman whose husband is elsewhere applying for a job, and a man who is almost as good as the woman, there are biases which assume that the woman will not come, so automatically the man gets selected. Also, a soft voice, tentative styles and gentle personalities are associated with lack of confidence, so many women comes across as less effective in an interview or a seminar, even if they are actually more knowledgeable than many of the men who are selected. As one goes up the career ladder, these drawbacks prevent women from getting into leadership positions both at their own institutes, as well as nationally and internationally.

Now, how are the various countries trying to solve these problems? In many countries, sciences, especially physics, have initiated special programs, and in some cases, engineering programs have adopted similar strategies. In UK, Ireland and Scotland, where they are facing an acute shortage of physicists, several programmes have been initiated, where professors and post-doctoral fellows from universities go to schools to give lectures even to elementary school children. They have found that there is an enormous impact on young girls if the physicist from the University is a woman. They have also initiated programmes through which school students are taken to visit laboratories and universities and interact with physicists. The Universities have also encouraged this interaction by recognising this kind of work as part of the work of the scientist by giving it due consideration in promotions and awards, etc. This effort seems to have had a positive effect in some parts of the country as far as enrolment of students in physics is concerned.

Other countries like Ghana have had science clinics where they have worked on changing boys' attitude to girls in high schools. Brazil has experimented with having special classes to improve scientific skills oriented mainly to women students. In South Africa, physics graduate students offer to solve problems for industry in an effort to make the industries realise the value of physics. Some of these experiments could be tried in our country too.

To retain women faculty and to prevent their falling off the ladder, there have been certain policies which have been initiated in India like the DST programme for returning scientists and increased age limits for post-doctoral positions. In countries like the USA and UK, there are site visits which both assess the climate for women in the departments and offer suggestions for improving the climate. USA also has affirmative action which gives incentives to departments for increasing the percentage of women. Many American and European countries hold workshops for women scientists for personal and professional development.

Finally, what is it that can and should be done further to improve the situation? We hope the discussion will throw up some steps. Some of these could be:

• School and college teachers need to be trained and should be knowledgeable about current science. Hence, money is needed for teacher-training programmes, and for interaction with working scientists.
• Teachers should be educated in gender issues, and the classroom atmosphere should be 'girl-friendly'.
• Girls and their families should be encouraged to believe that full-time careers in science and technology are sustainable without serious hardship to personal lives and families.
• The curriculum should be revised to make it more interesting to girls by relating science and technology, in making the world a better place, to the environment and so on.
• Science and technology institutions should be better networked with schools and colleges. More outreach programs are needed. Efforts should be made to reach out not just to girls, but their parents.
• Child-care and creche facilities should be made available in all institutions.
• Departments should be 'women-friendly', so that women even if they are in a minority should not feel isolated or victimised. They should not tolerate sexist comments or attitudes in the work-place. They should make sure that there is women's grievance cell, and all women at all levels feel free to approach the cell. Gender sensitisation workshops for men may also be useful.
• Departments and institutions should be sensitive to the problems of couples in the same profession, and actively encourage couples to apply. Couples should also be mentored to ensure that each person has their own independent professional profile.
• Institutions and/ or conferences should be encouraged to hold workshops for professional development for women scientists and engineers, so that they can learn more effective ways of moving up the professional ladder.

He has developed neuron models to significantly reduce training/learning time and data requirement for mapping of function and prediction. He has also applied Neural Networks to solve real life problems like prediction of refractory life in Steel making operations (Steel Authority of India Limited) and design of lube oils for Indian Oil Corporation. His recent work based on new applications of neural networks on finger print separation and audio separation has been very extensively supported by Intelligence agencies. Similarly his work on Audio separation is of great interest to the CAR group in TIFAC for development of quality assurance applications in automotive industry like TVS, Mahindra and Mahindra and Bajaj Auto. Prof Kalra has been developing novel solutions using Neural Networks supported with research publications, in the field of Power Systems, Transportation, Rapid Proto Typing, Modeling of Aerodynamics and Sensor Life prediction.

He has immensely contributed to the India Infrastructure report particularly in the field of Power distribution. His expertise has been utilized by the UP state Electricity regulatory commission in the area of Transmission Pricing. Prof Kalra has been recognized for contributing to policy issues in the area of education and electricity sectors.

At national level he is actively involved in e-learning / virtual classroom policy decisions and is a coordinator of projects viz. Indo-French Cyber-university and IITK-Chattisgarh knowledge sharing program for the government of Chattisgarh, India at IITK.

E-Learning initiative:
He took the initiative to give IIT Kanpur an E-Classroom which has become a model for other institutions in the country. The objective was to deliver live lectures from IIT Kanpur to any location in the world, without having to spend too much on the infrastructure at the receiving end. Today, we can deliver lectures from IIT Kanpur to any location in the world, transmitting slides, board, audio / video, application sharing in 512K per site. He is a strong supporter of the use of technology for quality education and for virtual classroom teaching. The facility at IIT Kanpur was put under test by transmission of lectures from UIUC by Prof. Shiv Kapoor on micro machining with students from IITK interacting with him in a live session. Two projects under the guidance of Prof. Kalra, which has put the technology to further use, are Indo-French Cyber University and IITK-Chattisgarh knowledge sharing program for the government of Chattisgarh, India. As a part of IITK-Chattisgarh knowledge sharing program, about 300 lectures have been transmitted from IIT Kanpur to three engineering colleges in the state of Chattisgarh in the fields of Mathematics, Physics, Computer Networks, modeling and simulation etc. As an extension to the above project IIT Kanpur will transmit lectures to other four science colleges in the state of Chattisgarh starting from September 2008. The link was tested with transmission from IITK to University de Paris VI in France and university in Toulouse.

Vivek is a founding member of a non-profit organization, India Development Coalition of America (IDCA). This organization provides a platform for sharing of ideas by networking among the non-governmental organizations, corporations and individuals in the United States and India to accelerate development in India. Most of the members of IDCA are focusing on accelerating development in the rural areas of India by linking the people and resources of the USA and India to address the WEALTH (Water; Education &Environment; Agriculture; Livelihoods; Technology and Health) issues. Vivek is currently the Chairman for the Education Initiative of IDCA. He worked with the National Knowledge Commission of India to gain his knowledge of the education system in India. He has also organized several panel discussions at conferences in both India and USA over the last few years. Vivek became directly involved with education when he joined the University of Phoenix and the Keller Graduate School of Management as Adjunct Professor. During the last 5+ years, he has taught classes in Critical Thinking, Ethics, Decision Making, Management and Finance areas. Additionally, he has served on the curriculum council of the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management to design a new course titled as Technological Change Management.

Vivek is currently a member of the Executive Committee of Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE), an initiative of American Society of Engineering Education, PanIIT and many other US based and international organizations to improve global engineering education for a better world.

Vivek's academic background includes MS in Electrical & Computer Engineering and MBA degrees from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India.

Prof. Bhaskaran started his teaching career at PSG Tech. Coimbatore, a private college of repute in 1963, went on to College of Engineering Guindy as a Senior Fellow under the three year Technical Teachers' Training Programme and then joined REC Calicut (now NIT Calicut) as Lecturer. He completed his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from IIT Madras on study leave from REC Calicut. His career took a turn in 1976 and for a period of over 5 years he worked at UPSC, N.Delhi, for most period in the Examination Reforms Division as Deputy Secretary. After retirement from IIT Kharagpur he got this unique opportunity to serve first as Principal and later now as Director of a progressive young Self - Financing College promoted by NRIs, Rajiv Gandhi College of Engineering at Sriperambadur where he has come to experience first hand the problems of private initiatives in Technical Education which contribute most to the generation of Technical Manpower for the country in India.

Prof Ray joined IIT Delhi in 1987 where he established the first Centre for Educational Technology in the IIT system and was instrumental in popularizing the use of ICT in the Higher Technical Education system in India. He taught in the EE dept and remained Professor & head, CET till 1995.

Dr. Ray joined IIT Kharagpur Professor and Head of the Educational Technology Centre. Besides establishing, perhaps the largest & the most diverse Centre for Educational Technology, in the country, he pioneered many Technology Enhanced Learning programmes in India. The famous "Electronically Networked Life Long Learning" programme which trained over 12000 professionals in the field of ICT over a 5 year period in Study Centres spread across India, was an innovation of Professor Ray, based on the TVI model of the Stanford University. During his tenure as the founder-chairman of CET, IIT Kharagpur from 1995-2005 he introduced the first large scale VOD service in India, at IIT Kharagpur (2000-01), developed sophisticated Virtual Laboratory and Virtual Classroom tools.

Prof Ray was Professor Electronics, HCL Chair during 1995-97 at IIT Kharagpur and continues to teach Electronics at IIT Kharagpur.

He has been a consultant to UNESCO, UNDP, World Bank, member of numerous national & international committees & academic bodies, Directors of many Corporate Boards, has published a large number of papers and also has a rich industrial experience.

Dr. Ray is currently a Visiting Faculty at IIT Kharagpur.

Providing universal quality elementary education to 210 million children is, by any measure, not the easiest of tasks. But let us not forget that this massive number is divided over a million schools, and about 600,000 villages and perhaps 6,000 cities and towns. India has provided a school within 1 km of about 98% habitations and nearly 95% children in the 6-14 age group are enrolled in school. But, we do not have a million people at these million points who will take the ownership of making sure that the children in their charge will learn well. We do not have a system that will enable, and empower such million people who can take charge of a school and attempt to build it to excellence. We have money, and we have technology. Using it effectively and efficiently is the key problem. What we need is systemic reform but a systemic reform does not happen unless there are enough people who can drive such a reform.

This is why Pratham is trying to build a movement across the country. The Read India movement has reached close to 350,000 villages across India. At least one young person has participated in helping children in his village to learn some basics. But, we need to strengthen such efforts by raising the knowledge and skills of such young men and women who can turn around their village school. It can be done.

Sumathi Rao and Neelima Gupte

* Harischandra Research Institute, Allahabad, 211018

** Dept. of Physics, IIT Madras, Chennai, 600036

We discuss the problems in attracting girls into science and technology. We present some of the projects undertaken in various countries to ameliorate the problem and we conclude with some follow-up suggestions that can be implemented in India.

The problem of attracting girls into science and technology cuts across countries, even across the developing/ developed country divide. To some extent, the main problems in attracting girls to science and technology are common, viz. practicing both are regarded as difficult, time-intensive careers which are difficult for girls to undertake and later on to sustain. They differ in that society only recognises professions like medicine, engineering, law, etc. but regards employment prospects for scientists (other than in academics or teaching) as being practically non-existent.

In the case of doing science, children have no real idea of the value of doing science and their entire experience of science is through their science teacher. This leads us naturally to the second problem which is that of science teaching in schools. Here, the main problem is the lack of enthusiastic and motivated teachers who themselves understand science. For girls in particular, it is sometimes felt that the classroom atmosphere and examples used are particularly alienating. Specific problems can be that many girls' schools have no labs or hand-on teaching, so that girls, later, in colleges, are 'frightened' of experiments. The typical scientist or technologist is usually portrayed as a man, despite the fact that science teachers in our schools are frequently women.

Ways of teaching do not take into account the fact that many girls learn better in collaborative groups than in a competitive atmosphere. Finally, there are also questions raised about whether introduction to abstract concepts is poorly timed for girls i.e., girls languish in dull courses early on waiting for boys to 'grow up'.

A third problem is that given that entrance to elite institutions devoted to science and technology is through intensely competitive exams like the JEE, which require intensive coaching, statistics indicate that most girls do not even make the attempt to take such exams. Parents also do not encourage girls to take these exams due to a variety of practical and perceived problems.

The worst problem is societal expectations. Even now the education of girls is not taken seriously. The general philosophy is 'why pay more to have girls study science and engineering, when they are going to drop out and get married anyway?'. This can lead to the girls themselves not taking their work very seriously since they always have the fall-back option of getting married. Even in developed countries like Israel, a similar philosophy means that programmes for gifted children is less encouraged for girls than for boys.

Even for the women who have already crossed these hurdles, the problems do not end. In addressing the standard problem of balancing family and career, many women put their careers on the back-burner at the early stages, and then never quite catch up. There are also conscious and unconscious biases operating against hiring and promoting women, both by men and women. For instance, in a situation where there is a married woman whose husband is elsewhere applying for a job, and a man who is almost as good as the woman, there are biases which assume that the woman will not come, so automatically the man gets selected. Also, a soft voice, tentative styles and gentle personalities are associated with lack of confidence, so many women comes across as less effective in an interview or a seminar, even if they are actually more knowledgeable than many of the men who are selected. As one goes up the career ladder, these drawbacks prevent women from getting into leadership positions both at their own institutes, as well as nationally and internationally.

Now, how are the various countries trying to solve these problems? In many countries, sciences, especially physics, have initiated special programs, and in some cases, engineering programs have adopted similar strategies. In UK, Ireland and Scotland, where they are facing an acute shortage of physicists, several programmes have been initiated, where professors and post-doctoral fellows from universities go to schools to give lectures even to elementary school children. They have found that there is an enormous impact on young girls if the physicist from the University is a woman. They have also initiated programmes through which school students are taken to visit laboratories and universities and interact with physicists. The Universities have also encouraged this interaction by recognising this kind of work as part of the work of the scientist by giving it due consideration in promotions and awards, etc. This effort seems to have had a positive effect in some parts of the country as far as enrolment of students in physics is concerned.

Other countries like Ghana have had science clinics where they have worked on changing boys' attitude to girls in high schools. Brazil has experimented with having special classes to improve scientific skills oriented mainly to women students. In South Africa, physics graduate students offer to solve problems for industry in an effort to make the industries realise the value of physics. Some of these experiments could be tried in our country too.

To retain women faculty and to prevent their falling off the ladder, there have been certain policies which have been initiated in India like the DST programme for returning scientists and increased age limits for post-doctoral positions. In countries like the USA and UK, there are site visits which both assess the climate for women in the departments and offer suggestions for improving the climate. USA also has affirmative action which gives incentives to departments for increasing the percentage of women. Many American and European countries hold workshops for women scientists for personal and professional development.

Finally, what is it that can and should be done further to improve the situation? We hope the discussion will throw up some steps. Some of these could be:

1) School and college teachers need to be trained and should be knowledgeable about current science. Hence, money is needed for teacher-training programmes, and for interaction with working scientists.

2) Teachers should be educated in gender issues, and the classroom atmosphere should be 'girl-friendly'.

3) Girls and their families should be encouraged to believe that full-time careers in science and technology are sustainable without serious hardship to personal lives and families.

4) The curriculum should be revised to make it more interesting to girls by relating science and technology, in making the world a better place, to the environment and so on.

5) Science and technology institutions should be better networked with schools and colleges. More outreach programs are needed. Efforts should be made to reach out not just to girls, but their parents.

6) Child-care and creche facilities should be made available in all institutions.

7) Departments should be 'women-friendly', so that women even if they are in a minority should not feel isolated or victimised. They should not tolerate sexist comments or attitudes in the work-place. They should make sure that there is women's grievance cell, and all women at all levels feel free to approach the cell. Gender sensitisation workshops for men may also be useful.

8) Departments and institutions should be sensitive to the problems of couples in the same profession, and actively encourage couples to apply. Couples should also be mentored to ensure that each person has their own independent professional profile.

9) Institutions and/ or conferences should be encouraged to hold workshops for professional development for women scientists and engineers, so that they can learn more effective ways of moving up the professional ladder.

As dean of engineering at University of Massachusetts, he has been recognized for his leadership in building unique partnerships with business, K-12, state agencies and other educational institutions. He was responsible for raising several millions of dollars for scholarships, endowments and facilities from private sources and for overseeing a significant improvement in the quality of students and faculty as well research and teaching facilities at the Francis College of Engineering.

He is Founder and Executive Chair of "Massachusetts STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) Collaborative" aimed at increasing the number of youth interested in science and engineering careers in MA. The Collaborative has been hailed throughout the State of Massachusetts for bringing together leaders of business, higher education, K-12 and state agencies to address this very critical need for the future of the Innovation Economy of Massachusetts. The Collaborative was instrumental in obtaining several million dollars of private and state funding and for implementing the Board of Higher Education Pipeline Grant Program and establishing seven Regional PreK-16 Networks throughout the state.

More recently Prof. Vedula has been identifying, developing and championing innovative ways to use technology to improve the content and delivery of engineering education in order to enhance the quality of the engineering workforce of the future.

Dr. Vedula has been recognized for these accomplishments by his peers in many ways. He is a Fellow of ASM International and has received several awards from Case Western Reserve University, Iowa State University and University of Massachusetts for being an outstanding engineering educator. He has been recognized state-wide by business and education leaders as ‘Workforce Development Leader (MTC)" in 2000, "Mass High Tech All Star" in 2001 and given the "Indus Star Award" in 2002. He is appointed by the Governor to the Board of Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and the Educational Technology Advisory Council. He has been a Founding member of the Board of the Merrimack Valley Venture Forum. He has made keynote presentations at several national and international conferences.

Dr. Vedula has B.Tech (IIT Bombay, India, 1967), M.S. (Drexel University, 1969) and Ph.D. (Michigan Tech University, 1980) degrees in Materials/ Metallurgical Engineering. He has 25 years academic teaching and research experience in materials science and engineering, including 10 years as a faculty member at Case Western Reserve University, 5 years as chair of the materials science and engineering department at Iowa State University and 8 years as dean of an engineering college at UMass Lowell. In addition he has spent 2 years managing federal research and educational programs.

Vijay was the Principal Investigator of O.K.I (Open Knowledge Initiative), an MIT-led collaborative project to develop an open architecture for enterprise educational applications.

Vijay is a member of the Advisory Committee of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) and a member of the steering committee for I-Campus, the MIT-Microsoft Alliance initiative for educational technology. He is the Executive officer for MIT's Council on Educational Technology. Vijay also served on the Applications Strategy Council for Internet2, as Chair of the governing Board of the Seminars on Academic Computing (SAC) Snowmass, CO and NERCOMP, and as trustee of the Corporation for Research and Education Networking (CREN).

Vijay is honorary advisor to India's National Knowledge Commission and advisor to the Open University of Catalonia.

Vijay's research, as well as his extensive engagement as advisor and consultant with academic and professional institutions are directed toward strategy, planning and implementing innovations for education. Vijay is actively involved in efforts, such as those supported by the Hewlett Foundation, and Curriki to advance the use of Open Educational Resources for improving educational access and quality. He is a co-editor of a Carnegie Foundation book "Opening Up Education" (MIT Press, August 2008). He has authored numerous articles in the area of educational innovations and technology strategy.

Vijay's doctorate in Education (Future Studies, focusing on educational computing and planning for technological innovations in education) from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst is preceded by a MS in Industrial Management and a B. Tech. in Chemical Engineering, both from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras.

In spite of the large number of engineering colleges coming up and the increasing numbers of engineering graduates, not all of them of the right quality, produced every year, in terms of the percentage of our population the same is insignificant compared to what it is in developed countries. Indeed, even China is said to have a higher percentage of engineers in terms of their population than our country. Besides improving the quality of the engineers we produce, we need to produce many more engineers to meet the challenge of growth and economic competitiveness as years go by. In a country with a large population of youth like ours there is also, understandably, a demand and expectation by people for opportunities for Technical Education. Presently a large number of our youth go abroad to the USA, Australia, and Singapore etc. even for undergraduate engineering studies, leading to outflow of millions of rupees in foreign exchange from our country. If we can provide international quality of Technical Education in our own country we may be able to not only reduce this outflow but can also compete with these countries, which are becoming popular technical education service providers, for earning foreign exchange. The most important of all reasons for expanding opportunities for higher education is an opportunity staring at our face called 'demographic advantage'.

There is going to be an acute shortage of engineers and skilled workers in most developed countries of the world in the coming years due to lower birth rates and ageing working population. By 2020 the shortage is expected to be about 40 million counting only USA, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Japan. Even China and Russia are expected to face such shortages. The resulting wage imbalances and the threat to their competitiveness in a globalised economy will necessitate these countries to outsource work to countries with adequate skilled work force and, indeed, even relax their immigration norms to accommodate available global work force. India is expected to have a surplus of 47 million in the working age group by 2020 and if only they can be provided the necessary skills and knowledge there will be great economic opportunities for the country. On the other hand, if we do not address this issue as soon as possible, there is bound to be social unrest and strife due to unprecedented unemployment among youth by that time. In other words, we have no choice but to take all necessary steps to improve the quality and reach of affordable Technical Education in all fields of the anticipated global needs soon. No doubt the Government of India has recently established a few more IITs and other Institutions and Universities and is planning for many more in the 11th Five Year Plan but these efforts will continue to be grossly inadequate, given the population of our country and the existing severe regional imbalances in terms of facilities for Technical Education. Women, constituting about 50% of the population, tribal communities, and the handicapped and other disadvantaged groups among the youth also need to be provided their share of opportunities for Technical Education. IITs are already playing a role to improve the quality of Technical Education directly through their outreach programs and NPTEL etc. and an indirect role by providing opportunities for improving the qualifications of teachers through regular and QIP M.Tech. and Ph.D. programs and Short Term Courses, but can play a much bigger role. PAN IIT is already involved with the indo US collaboration for Engineering Education but can get involved in a bigger way, may be in similar lines as IITians for ITI. The IIT alumni can also get involved in various ways to ensure that the country is able to meet the above challenge.

We have in this Session Two Key Note addresses by our eminent alumni who have distinguished themselves in the USA, Prof. Krishna Vedula, Dean Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Lowell and Executive Director, Indo US Collaboration for Engineering Education and Prof. Vijay Kumar, Senior Associate Dean and Director, Office of Educational Innovation and Technology MIT, USA. Unfortunately due to a clash with another program Prof.Vedula is unable to present his Address. The task is being carried out by another eminent alumnus of ours Mr. Vivek Singhal, Founder Chairman of Strategic Business Management (SBM), Chicago USA and Executive Committee Member of Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE). Abstracts of their addresses are in the website.

We also a Panel Discussion with six Panelists, senior and very distinguished Professors of the five IITs, namely Prof. A. K. Ray of IIT Kharagpur, Prof. Kannan Moudgalya of IIT Bombay, Prof. Prem Kalra and Prof. Gautam Biswas of IIT Kanpur, Prof. Mangala Sundar Krishnan of IIT Madras and Prof.Kushal Sen of IIT Delhi who have been involved with the outreach programs of their respective IITs and the National Program of Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). Their presentations which would cover various aspects of the Topic and the Theme are already in the website. The discussion phase of the Panel Discussion would focus on to what the IITs, alumni of IITs and PAN IIT need to do to enhance the quality and reach of technical education.

Some of the initiatives touched upon by the Speakers would certainly yield results in terms of improving the knowledge gained by the students in various subjects in their curriculum. However, how far it will help the students to acquire the new set of competencies required for a engineer in the knowledge society, namely, soft skills like problem solving skills, analytical skills, team skills and communication skills, besides an ability for continuous learning is worthy of debate.

Many a time even at an IIT some of the students have no motivation for studies. They enter IITs because of parental or societal pressures. The situation is much worse in smaller engineering colleges. It is difficult to motivate such students to learn. Private self-financing colleges normally place greater emphasis on getting as many students as possible pass and encourage rote learning looking at question papers of previous years and other ways. Young teachers of many engineering colleges have come for the profession of teaching primarily because they have not landed up with a job in the industry and hence are equally not motivated to teach, leave alone make their students learn. Further excessive controls by the affiliating Universities and Regulatory Authorities stifle flexibility and innovation in the large number of private colleges in the country. How far the various proposals by the Speakers and Panelists would be effective given these realities is worthy of discussion.

Also worthy of debate is whether or not IITs cannot jointly set up a Virtual IIT, given the expertise they have gained in creating high quality content on the web and video and also gained sufficient expertise in delivery of such distance education to far off places. Laboratories can also be in the Virtual realm, developments in this direction having already been proved as workable. There could be some laboratories set up in Regional Centers where these distance education students can attend. If it is too difficult to think in terms of a Virtual IIT for a gamut of undergraduate degree courses, can we think in terms of a Virtual IIT offering Post Graduate Degrees mainly for faculty in Engineering Colleges and the working engineers in the Industry? This will enable a larger number of faculty members in engineering colleges to get postgraduate degrees and help improve the quality of engineering education. It will also help a large number of working professionals in the industry to upgrade their knowledge to face the challenges posed by the globalised economy. A proposal that a Virtual Technical University could be set up for improving the quality of Technical Teachers has already been made in the Report by a High Powered Committee for Faculty Development in Technical Institutions, headed by Dr. Rama Rao, to AICTE in 2006. The prospects and challenges for establishing a Virtual IIT for offering postgraduate degree program for faculty of engineering colleges, if need be only through course work, as proposed by the National Knowledge Commission, is another issue which is, in my view, worthy of discussion.

He initiated the Web courses development programme in IIT Madras in the year 2001 using WebCT and later designed and developed the Web Studio which now serves the entire Institute as its web support team and the NPTEL Project for all of India. He has been nominated as the National Web courses Coordinator for the NPTEL project by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India since 2003 and is also an advisor to the E-Learning Programme Committee of the Ministry of Information Technology, Govt. of India. He is actively involved in implementing the Open Learning Initiative of Carnegie Mellon University in IIT Madras with development of several Chemistry courses and has developed hundreds of visuals and two and three dimensional animations for teaching physical chemistry in IIT Madras.

He has guided more than a dozen M.Sc. Students in Chemistry for their projects and has also supervised three Ph.D Candidates in Theoretical Chemistry. There are three more Ph.D Scholars currently working in his group on several frontier areas in theoretical Chemistry. More details about his research, publications in journals and International conferences and lectures delivered nationally and internationally, teaching and technology initiatives can be obtained from the website http://chem.iitm.ac.in/professordetails/profmangalsunder/index.htm or, by searching under his name in Google.

We have developed, after 14 years of R&D and field trials a 100% interactive web based e-Teacher & e-Trainer, called 'Dynamind'. The core of this is architecture is the e-Teacher platform which is designed to diagnose weaknesses and suggest remedial steps for each learner, student or a trainee. It provides adaptive learning experience that is customized as per each user's needs. The e-Teacher is developed on unique bio-inspired computing paradigm. Its core architecture resembles the way information is processed in the human brain. It uses patented algorithms developed using Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Neural Networking to provide a highly personalized and customized learning experience to each and every user, learner or student. The mentor or teacher has overall control on the e-Teacher / e-Trainer. See www.i2k.in for details.

As per the survey done by us in APEC countries, USA and the EU, we seem to be the only player in this class. The CET at IIT-Kgp has also found this as a very useful platform for teaching and training. The National Knowledge Commission has found the e-Teacher as a technology which could be used for capacity building in the field of education and training. The MHRD has also reccommended the same to State Governments who wish to use ICT.

• Even after nearly 60 years of independence our Education at all levels leave much to be desired.
• It promotes only 'rote learning'.
• It is just 'marks driven'.
• No attempt is made to develop the thinking abilities of our children.
• Close to 40 per cent of school children did not know the alphabet and could not count up to 10 after six months of basic education.
• The myth about urban schools and even private elite schools is shattered when the ASSET results were published. A student can not say what is the chemical formula of 'steam'!
• One wonders what type of education we are imparting if the type of question is slightly modified, they can not answer and to top it all they even complain of questions being 'out of portion'.
• They are simply programmed to repeat certain things their teachers say in the class or is found in the text books and still manage to get in the exams 100 out of 100.
• After twelve long years of schooling a student must have to go for intensive tuition or coaching for at least three years in parallel to prepare them to write a concept oriented problem oriented examination like the JEE!

Is there no hope? What is the government doing all these years? Can we, IITians, help in any way to reverse the situation?

Well, well, well! Come and be part of the Education Track Discussion meeting on 19th afternoon between 2 and 4 pm to find out that after all the end of the world is not that near!

You would be astounded to see so many brilliant ideas which have been developed by several groups of alumni of IITs, NGOs and entrepreneurs, who have researched the system thoroughly in the context of the above scenarios and have come out with such wonderful and seemingly simple solutions some of which are technology enabled and some volunteer intensive. I am sure these will make every one of you gasp and feel really comforted that the situation is not all that alarming as it was made to appear above!

Let us get Inspired! Let us Innovate! Please be there on time at the venue, together we can certainly Transform!

I wish to give you a brief outline of these excellent ideas which you would miss in case you decide to stay away from this session!

Every student is unique and learn differently. Conventional education assumes all learners are identical and learn in the same pace and order. Modern management rules say that managing individuals with clear goals yield far better results. So a personalized education with individual tutoring or one-to-one tutoring is the effective way of delivering education. This has become possible with the advent of modern technology and internet. This is the model advocated by Dr Peje Emilsson, Chairman of Kunskapsskolan Education Sweden and Mr. Kishan Khanna of Dynamind Mumbai.

Sridhar Rajagopalan of Educational Initiatives (http://www.ei-india.com) feels Research into Education is an important activity that we must engage ourselves in to come out with solutions which can improve the education in our schools. He pleads for 'learning with understanding' instead of too much stress on rote learning. According to him assessments are not done to check how 'good' a child is but to check how well the system (or school) is helping him/ her learn. He speaks of assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning. They conduct ASSET an assessment test for private and government schools. They bring in a MINDSPARK system which is a digital adaptive learning system. Reforming education is not going to be only about dedication, commitment and sacrifice. They believe it is going to be about research, devising solutions, solving complex problems and making them work.

Shaheen Mistri talks about Akanksha, an organization that works to maximize the potential of children living in the urban slum communities in Mumbai and Pune. They want to focus on Akanksha's attempt to work with the government to develop a scaleable model of high quality education for the underprivileged children in urban India.

Their movement 'Teach for India' seeks support from some of the best and brightest young people across India to enroll as dedicated teachers for their noble mission to work tirelessly to expand, in a measurable way, the educational opportunities available to hundreds of thousands of India's most underprivileged children.

Gaurav Vaish talks of leveraging technology to reduce cost and make learning fun and more accessible. Besides, the validation and checkpoints at various steps are necessary. Gaurav outlines a few ideas to be implemented, some of which are already being piloted. He takes a pragmatic approach to solving some of the key challenges of education.

The best way to unleash the learner is through Activity Based Laerning according to G Gautama, Principal of The School (KFI). Teacher trainers of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan were exposed to the educational principles of Active Learning Methodolgies (ALM) through the processes being suggested. The practice of ALM has spread to 10000 schools where the emphasis subtly and definitely shifted to learning, rather than teaching.

Sparking scientific curiosity among rural Indian children and teachers is the objective of Agastya Foundation Kuppam, says Parthan Subbu. Transforming education requires strong and inspirational leadership, including large grassroots efforts to spark curiosity, or the spirit of enquiry, through a more engaging, interactive and liberating education system targeted at children, teachers and adults. He advocates a system, that promotes the qualities of observation, awareness, assimilation/ integration and application through hands-on science education, delivered by motivated and energetic village teachers it is possible to spark curiosity across millions of children. Parthan speaks about Agastya International Foundation which is achieving this through its 31 mobile science labs, 14 rural science centers and a 170-acre creativity lab near Bangalore.

Essentials needed to provide universal quality elementary education, providing reach and access at the same time ensuring quality is the goal set by Madhav Chauhan of Pratham. Providing universal quality elementary education to 210 million children is, by any measure, not the easiest of tasks. But let us not forget that this massive number is divided over a million schools, and about 600,000 villages and perhaps 6,000 cities and towns. This is why Pratham(http://www.pratham.org) is trying to build a movement across the country. The Read India movement has reached close to 350,000 villages across India.

May I request you to be present positively in the session and participate actively in the discussions with these eminent panelists? I am sure you would be inspired to be part of this great revolution in Education and we would welcome if you would wish to get involved in any of these activities. We believe our deliberations must be a beginning of a lasting relationship among fellow IITians towards transforming India through Education!

The presentation will span my journey with low-income children over the past 19 years through building Akanksha, an organization that works to maximize the potential of children living in the urban slum communities in Mumbai and Pune. It will focus on Akanksha's attempt to work with the government to develop a scaleable model of high quality education for the poorest children.

The presentation will then focus on Teach For India, a new organization that is building a movement of some of the best and brightest young people across India. In the short run, Teach For India will provide a source of dedicated teachers who will work tirelessly to expand, in a measurable way, the educational opportunities available to hundreds of thousands of India's most underprivileged children.In the long run, Teach For India will build a powerful and ever-growing leadership force of alumni who, informed by their experiences and insights, will work from inside and outside of education to effect fundamental, long-term changes necessary to ultimately realize educational opportunity for all.

The presentation will include a 9 minute video on Teach For India.

IIT support - The presentation will give the IIT community concrete ways to help recruiting (both from IIT and outside) TFI's first cohort of fellows and ways to support the movement as it grows.

Email: shaheen@teachforindia.org

Email: shaheen@akanksha.org

A Chemist by training, he got his doctorate in Chemistry from the Ohio State University in 1984. After a stint as a post-doctoral fellow and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Houston he returned to India and was appointed Reader in Physical Chemistry at the University Department of Chemical Technology, University of Mumbai in 1987. In 1989 he got involved in the adult literacy work in the slums of Mumbai and founded the Committee of Resource Organization (CORO) for Literacy and began to move away from Chemistry. He was involved in the social organization aspects of the Integrated Waste Management Project of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India between 1992-94.

Dr. Chavan has been a creative contributor in the field of adult literacy, elementary education, and the development sector in general. His contributions range from scripting and presenting a unique prime-time Mumbai Doordarshan serial "Akshardhara" (1990-91) on adult literacy, penning the Government of Maharashtra's theme song for girls' education, and the most recent 'learning to read' technique to the innovation of replicable and scalable programs for education.

Email: madhavchavan@gmail.com

His areas of specialization include textile chemical processing, texturing, structure-property analysis, and geo-technical textiles. Finishing of silk, micro-encapsulation and electrically conductive textiles are his current research interests.

Hea has guided 7 Ph. D. theses and 49 masters' theses in the various areas of textile technology including textile chemistry, texturing and fibre science. Has over 50 publications in journals to his credit and has presented several papers in national and international conferences.

He has been actively involved in sponsored research and consulting. Some of his major sponsored projects in the area of textiles include, carbon fibre precursors (SAF), creation of Nodal Center for Upgradation of Textile Education as a co-project investigator and establishment of Eco-textile Testing Laboratory.

He has keen interest in Educational Technology. Has made several films on textile chemical processing for handloom workers and has produced video courses for the undergraduate and postgraduates textile courses. He initiated the educational transmission of video programmes from IIT Delhi in 2001 which has resulted in a full fledged 24-hour Educational channel-Eklavya, which is beamed from IIT Delhi and footprints 95% of India. He is currently administering this channel. He is also the IIT Delhi coordinator of the national project-National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)-a project which has a mandate to develop video and web-based courses in the area of engineering education.

On the administration front at IIT Delhi, has been the Dean, Alumni Affairs and International Programmes and Head, Educational Technology Services Center, President, Board for Recreational Activities, and is currently the Professor-in-charge, Training and Placement, IIT Delhi.

Email: kushal@textile.iitd.ernet.in

EI is dedicated to offering products and services mostly around assessment aimed at improving the quality of student learning. EI is a professionally-managed company working exclusively in the area of school education. It develops tools to measure and improve student learning and achievement levels in primary and middle schools in English and about 15 Indian languages.

The ASSET test offered by EI is already India's leading test for students of classes 3 to 10 and over 20,00,000 tests have been taken throughout the country in one of the largest such systematic exercises in the country. EI is doing or has completed prestigious education projects with companies like Intel, Wipro, the Reliance group, the TVS group, ICICI Bank, the World Bank, UNICEF and about 13 state governments.

Sridhar is a member of various education committees of the Government of India like the NCERT's National Expert Group on Assessment in Elementary Education (NEGAEE). He was a member of the Joint Review Mission of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. He is a trustee of Pratham, Ahmedabad and other educational institutions.

He lives with his wife Aparna in Ahmedabad.

As the Head of CDEEP, Dr. Kannan Moudgalya is currently spearheading IIT Bombay's distance education activities. During his headship, the distance education activities of IIT Bombay have grown manifold: IIT Bombay started transmitting its courses through EDUSAT to more than fifty centres, free of cost. It also started transmitting a large number of courses through webcast, simultaneously from five classrooms. Anyone with only 100 Kbps bandwidth can receive a video transmission of these courses through internet, once again, absolutely free of cost.

Prof. Kannan Moudgalya works in the general area of controls. He has been applying feedback control techniques for optimal utilisation of computing systems. His students have used feedback control techniques in diverse problems, such as, quality of service, optimising resource allocation and admission control for web based applications. Kannan Moudgalya has written a highly popular book "Digital Control", published by John Wiley & Sons. This book is especially useful to computer scientists, because, it teaches discrete time control techniques from scratch - one need not know analog control to use this book, unlike the other books in this area. This book is received well by the traditional control engineers as well. This book is based on the eponymous course delivered through CDEEP many times. Kannan Moudgalya has also written the book, "Optimization Techniques: Theory and Practice", jointly with Prof. Mohan Joshi of IIT Bombay.

Kannan Moudgalya has extensively published in the areas of mathematical modelling, simulation and control in international journals and conferences.

In 1998 Mr. Raghavan left a commercial career in banking and finance in London to create Agastya International Foundation, an innovative education charity in India.

Mr. Raghavan has worked as a senior executive in organizations in the US, Europe, the Caribbean and Asia and created and managed businesses in financial services, consulting and software. Mr. Raghavan created Agastya International Foundation in April, 1999. He returned to India with his family in 2002 to run Agastya. As Chairman of Agastya, whose members include eminent scientists, educators, CEOs and entrepreneurs from India and abroad, Mr. Raghavan leads a grassroots initiative to support and transform primary and secondary education in India. Operating with a fleet of 31 Mobile Labs, 14 rural science centers and a 170-acre Creativity Lab near Bangalore, Agastya has reached hands-on science education to nearly 2.5 million disadvantaged children and 100,000 teachers in rural India. Mr. Raghavan is a member of the Prime Minister's National Knowledge Commission (Working Group on Attracting children to Science and Math). He has written articles on education for Indian and foreign journals and spoken on creativity and leadership to audiences in rural and urban India, the UK and US.

Website: www.agastya.org