Project Background
Since inception, IIT Bombay has been offering training programs for teachers and professionals through QIP and CEP courses. To enhance the reach of such training programs, the Institute launched a distance education program in the year 2000. Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, which has since merged with the Computer Science and Engineering department of the Institute, deployed Satellite communication connecting a few colleges in the country. The video conferencing application permitted live interaction between the attendees at the colleges and teaching faculty at IIT.
The teachers training workshops were first conducted under the eoutreach program which received funding support from TIFAC. Around the same time A-VIEW application was developed by Amrita University. This application worked on internet and was adapted for use for these workshops. The first 3 Remote Centers VNIT Nagpur (erstwhile VRCE), SGSITS Indore and MGM College Nanded attended the workshop using VSAT; subsequently the number was increased to 15.
The “Teach 1000 Teachers” programme was initiated by IIT Bombay in 2009 under the project, “Empowerment of Students/Teachers,” sponsored by NMEICT (MHRD.) This program has now grown to include 10,000 participating teachers. The main focus of this programme is to work with Engineering Colleges in the country to enhance the teaching skills of faculty in core Engineering and Science subjects.
The “Teach 1000 Teachers” uses an ICT enabled process involving both synchronous and asynchronous mode to actually reach out and engage a large number of teachers, and through them, a much larger number of students.
Methodolody
Under the programme, IIT Bombay conducts ISTE workshops during the vacation period in summer and winter. Teachers attend the workshops at a designated Remote Center (RC), close to their own college. Lectures are delivered by faculty from IIT Bombay, while tutorials and lab sessions are conducted locally in the same RC. The lecture transmission and live interaction take place in a virtual classroom environment, using the AVIEW technology on the internet.
Faculty coordinators are appointed at each remote center, to handle the technology infrastructure and other operational logistics. Additionally, for each workshop, there is a workshop faculty coordinator for that subject who will help in the conduct of labs and tutorials at that center. We invite expert faculty from various remote centers to a five-day Coordinators training workshop which is held in IIT Bombay, at least two months before the main workshop. These Coordinators then act as Workshop Coordinators during the main workshop, liaising between the participants at their Remote Centers and IIT Bombay from where the workshop is transmitted live. During the main workshop, the Workshop Coordinator at every center supervises the conduct of tutorials and Labs. All the lectures and tutorial sessions are recorded. The final edited audio-visual contents, along with other course material are released under Open Source. These contents can be freely used later by all teachers and students.
Since December 2009, eleven workshops have been conducted under this programme on various subjects which include, “Effective teaching/ learning of Computer Programming,” “Database Management Systems,” “Basic Electronics,” “Thermodynamics,” “Software Development Techniques for Teachers of Engineering and Science Colleges,” “Heat Transfer,” “Solar Photovoltaics”, “Writing Effective Conference Papers”, Computational Fluid Dynamics,” and “Introduction to Research Methodologies.” IIT Bombay has 188 remote centers across the nation where the participants can attend the workshop through the A-VIEW virtual classroom. A total of 16000 teachers have attended our workshops till now with an average of 400 colleges participating in every workshop. The contents generated through organization of workshops include recorded video lectures, assignments, and study material given by the teaching faculty. These are released in Open Source on our portal for the benefit of students, teachers and professionals.