Minutes of the Standing Committee on the National Mission on Education through ICT on August 22,2009 a t IGNOU, New Delhi.

The Standing Committee Meeting on the National Mission on Education Through ICT was held in Room No. 5 in the Convention Centre, Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi on 22th August 2009. The following members of the SC and other invitees who gave presentations were present. It was conducted by Prof. K. Mangala Sunder at the request of Shri. N. K. Sinha Joint Secretary (Distance Learning), Higher Education and the Director of the National Mission and Professor Prem Kalra, Convener of the Stending Committee.

Members Present:

1 1 I Prof. Prem K.Kalra 1 1 2 1 Prof. Nandini lr-------- I

Kumar Datta 1 5 1 Dr. Uma Kaniilal 1 I 6 1 Prof. Pradeep Kaul

7 I Prof K. Mangala Sunder

The list of invitees who were i-equested to make a presentation of their project is enclosed as Annexure.

1 8 9.

The Chairman welcomed all the members and prospective Coordinators to the Meeting and impressed upon them their role in NMEICT and the collaborative aspect under which projects had to carried out. He suggested to the applicants for projects to the Mission to keep the National goal of quality content creation, tools needed for effective and efficient access of contents by everyone. Professor Mangala Sunder explained on behalf of Professor Prem Kalra, the Convener of the Standing Committee, the parameters on the basis of which the projects would be evaluated by experts and requested all those invited to have their detailed project report for both pilot and the full project be uploaded in the Sakshat web site if not done already, immediately.

Dr. Karmeshu --

~r0f.Y. -- N. ~ k h ----

The following project presentations were made by various investigators to the Naticnal Mission on Education through ICT. They are summarized and the recommendations of the SC included.

1. Design and Development of Next Generation e-Content for "Software Reuse by Design Patterns and Frameworks by Dr. Dr Manjari Gupta, Banaras Hindu University, U.P

The proposal was presented by Dr. Manjari Gupta. The objectives were to provide e-content and useful research materials in the area of software reuse. Contents will include interactive and animated presentations, solved examples, practical assignments, mini and major projects and dissertations as well as research materials. Some of the important applications for learners of this course include automation of reverse engineering of software and reduced software development cost. Contents will cover both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. The committee felt that this is a novel course and has not been covered previously.

Level of Importance for the mission: High Recommendation: Project be sanctioned for the pilot. External referee report: To be obtained soon

2. Students Self-Exploration through e-Learning Management System and On-Line Database by Prof P Suresh Kumar, Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, Erode.

The project was presented by Prof. P. Suresh Kumar. The objective of the proposal was to provide course contents through Learning Management System and online database and to offer Micro communication lab for improving presentation skills of students. This course is an intermediate course preparation aimed at preparing college students for studying advanced management course at Post Graduate level. The committee deliberated with the PI on the precise objectives of his program and measurable outcomes if a pilot project were to be considered. There is no doubt that both the PI and other faculty members involved in this project are well trained and well rounded in offering management study program, however, it was felt that the proposal as submitted does not have sufficient details or specific action plan and therefore requested the PI to submit a revised and more focused proposal whose outcome after its execution will benefit not only the students of the PIS parent institution but also students in many other institutions transitioning between an UG degree and a PG management program. The PI agreed to do the same within the next few days and submit a revised proposal with specific details.

Level of Importance for the mission: High Recommendation: Project be revised and resubmitted. External referee report: To be obtained after revised proposal is submitted.

3. TECHNOLOGY FOR THE PRODUCTION OF VALUE ADDED PRODUCTS FROM PATCHOULI by Dr. DR. SUNIL KUMAR, CAU, Arunachal Pradesh.

The proposal was presented by Dr. Sunil Kumar. The technical programme for this proposal included cultivation process, harvesting and drying. The detailed presentation by the PI made it clear that he proposed to set up a laboratory for monitoring quality control parameters, sensory analysis parameters and wet analysis. The SC members informed the PI that the mission does not have a mandate to create / support the development of research laboratory in agriculture o r in any other area. The SC can only consider proposals in which such developmental and research processes as detailed by the PI were captured in the form of a course and disseminated online, therefore, they requested the PI to reconsider his objectives and suggested that the area of specialization of the PI is an important area for content development. They invited him to submit a proposal for contents.

Level of Importance for t h e mission: Not within t h e mission objective. Recommendation: The PI i s requested t o submit a proposal o n content creation in h is a r e a of research.

4. e-Learning and Web Enabled Laboratories by Prof. Sudhir Agashe, College of Engineering, Pune.

The proposal was presented by Prof. Sudhir Agashe. The PI indicated that COEP has a number of web enabled laboratories and proposed conducting online examination on various topics in engineering and a number of practical lab courses from the labs such as Design Centre, Hydraulics and Pneumatic Center, Process Instrumentation Center. The SC members pointed that COEP should first study the course contents developed under the NPTEL programme; however the project of creating lab courses by COEP is very relevant to engineering, vocational education students and teachers. Therefore they suggested that the PI rewrite and resubmit the proposal with emphasis on preparing laboratory courses immediately.

Level of Importance for t h e mission: High Recommendation: A detailed DPR be submit ted containing development of e- learning a n d o the r interactive content fo r practical lab courses. External referee report: I'o b e obtained af ter DPR is submitted.

5. Learning by Doing (LBD) based Course Content Development by Dr. Kannan Srinathan and Ms. Sandhya Kode, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad.

The proposal was presented by Dr. Kannan Srinathan. The proposal follows the principles of the oldest Indian tradition of learning in four stages namely, learning by sensing, learning by doing, learning by relating and learning by living in

an area where there is currently the highest level of demand in quality improvement among students, namely, Computer Science and Engineering. A total of 20 courses are proposed to be done by IIIT Hyderabad and in the first phase the authors proposed 10 courses to be completed. Project also proposed to include Subject Matter Experts outside the institute. Most of the development is hands-on which would supplement existing lecture courses. The authors also proposed to build a problem centric approach which will test various skills of the learner against fulfilling specific task. Resources will include, where necessary, creation of video lectures and just-in-time lectures. The standing committee pointed out that all the topics proposed by IIITH are now integral parts of NPTEL project and therefore the Learning by Doing that IIITH would like to develop must consider in its design all those materials that are freely available. In addition the mission has identified a tentatively common budget of Rs. 7 lakhs per course with materials for one semester of course work. The PI'S proposal of Rs.24 lakhs is way too much and cannot be supported as it was felt that the project grossly over estimated the cost of making material in India. Therefore the SC members suggested that the authors discuss this with their institute Director and revise the budget as well as explain how they would integrate a large body of available and well-tested class room materials. The PI'S were invited to submit their revised proposal as soon as possible.

Level of lmportance for the mission: High Recommendation: Revise the proposal and resubmit. External referee report: Will be collected based on the new proposal.

6. Awareness Building & Publicity Strategy Formulation by Professor Rajanish Dass and Dr. Pradeep Varma , Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Both Dr. Rajanish Dass and Dr. Pradeep Verma presented the proposal. This proposal is a follow up to request by the Chairman and members of the SC during an earlier meeting (July 4, 2009) for creating public awareness about the National Mission and formulating strategies for disseminating Mission activities throughout the country. based on the advise of the Mission Director Mr. Sinha, a pilot project was presented for For defining and assessing all the Objectives and deliverables of the National Mission, Strategic planning of all the objectives and deliverables, Various alternatives for the execution and roll out plan, Creating frameworks and relevant matrix for the measurement of effectiveness and impact of the exercise and The total project cost for the pilot to publicize the National Mission appears quite reasonable.

Level of Importance for the mission: Very High Recommendation: Pilot be sanctioned as is. External referee report: The statistics collected will also be studied by other management and technical personnel.

7. Development of Simplified Conceptual Content for Self-teaching on Advanced Engineering Topics by Profesors V. S. Chakravarthy, G.K. Suraishkumar, Anil Prabhakar, Arunn Narsimhan and Narayanaswamy, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

The proposal was presented by Prof. VS. Chakravarthy. The PI proposed the development of simple conceptual "Popular Science" style e-text books on advanced engineering subjects. This is an exercise that lies beyond a formal university education and hopes to achieve the same level of recognition in popular engineering content as is currently happening with popular science books in cosmology, particle physics, quantum physics, biology, cognitive science and chemistry. Specifically the authors proposed to encourage leading Indian engineers to create text books on the following subjects: Engineering electromagnetics and applications Language, Machine and computation Ubiquitous convection Fluxes and forces in biological systems and Brain: an engineering perspective.

The proposal is a pilot proposal which when carried out successfully will encourage many other researchers to create visually rich, narrative and non- mathematical but accurate popular text in engineering. The SC members unanimously agreed that this project is one of the most important activities under the National Mission and should be supported. However the PI'S did not submit a budget and suggested that they would like to know if the concept note provided by them is acceptable to the Mission. Prof. Chakravarthy suggested that he would submit a full budget soon after enthusiastic endorsement by all the SC Members present.

Level of Importance for the mission: Very High. Recommendation: Sanction a pilot. External referee report: Most of the SC members are familiar with the concepts and agree that refereeing and peer reviewing the contents be done in stages as the project is pushed forward. No pre-reviewing of the proposal is necessary.

8 and 9. Next Generation e-content for High Performance Computing by Ravi Shankar Singh and E-content for Video Processing by Dr. Sanjay K. Singh, IT BHU, Varanasi.

The proposals share all the common features of e-content development. High performance computing is an extremely important area where Indian Institutions are setting up programmes and hardware for analysis of massive data in areas such as weather modeling, molecular modeling, bioinformatics, gene and quantum computing. Therefore learning modules on the methodology and practices of high

performance computing are very much needed. The proposal on high performance computing hopes to fill this void. The proposal on video processing is another major subject area overlapping commercial non-technical video production to state-of-the- art technology development for video production. For example, some of the applications of video processing are video surveillance, video authentication, video telephony, medical video, development of digital T.V, video compression for streaming applications and video teleconferencing methodology. The PI provided details for creating e-contents and also for some mini projects in various topics in video processing. Both these proposals capture in a sense the necessity to have high qua!iiy learning materials and are from the same institute. In addition IT BHU has s~lbmitted other programs. The SC members requested that various coordinators from ITBHU work together in the creation of a common IT/Software/Hardware infrastructure and human resource teams for carrying out the projects in synchronization and not create redundant and multiple facilities within the same campus. A pilot project will help the coordinator to start these activities

0 independently, however, it should be supplemented by bringing all the ITBHU teams together as is done in other major projects such as NPTEL, Virtual labs, ERP, Open source contents etc.

Level of Importance for the mission: Very High Recommendation: Pilot be sanctioned. External referee report: To be collated,

10. Development and Deployment of an Efficient Method for Spreading Digital Literacy to Empower Teachers of the Next Generation by Samiran Chattopadhyay, Matangini Chattopadhyay and Yandra Mitra, Jadavpur University.

The proposal was presented by Dr. Samiran Chattopadhyay. The PI proposed that the project would create a model for curriculum and teacher development through a suitable ICT framework and would train approximately one thousand teachers. Infrastructure requirements include setting up digital literacy lab with about 50 seats and a mobile lab with wireless infrastructure. Human resource team * would include digital literacy trainers. The activities include a series of seminars, hands-on workshops and at least one International workshop with a community in the developing world. The chairman of the SC suggested that this should be a pilot to train hundreds or thousands of teachers rather that restrict itself to a small pool of one thousand teachers. He suggested to the PI to work on scaling up this activity with other institutions and suggested to the PI that this proposal is already one of the most important activities recognized under the Mission. The SC suggested that pilot would be recommended, however Prof. Kalyan Kumar Dutta from Jadavpur University who is also an SC member was requested to help the PI and other potential investigators for submitting a scaled up version.

Level of Importance for the mission: Very High Recommendation: Pilot recommended. External referee report: To be sought after the scaled up proposal is received.

11. Production Management Systems by Dr. T. Radha Ramanan, NIT Calicut, Kerala

The proposal was presented by Dr. T. Radha Ramanan. The objective of this proposal is to develop courseware / an interactive package for production management systems and to understand the system dynamics of production planning and control systems. The PI also proposed the creation of gaming procedures and interactive process for MRP explosion in multi-production environment. The content creation was divided into four units to follow a certain timeline and topics to be covered in each unit were also indicated. The members of the SC agreed unanimously that the proposal was well laid out.

Level of Importance for the mission: High Recommendation: Pilot be sanctioned. External referee report: Proposal be sent for detailed review by MRP experts.

12. E- Content on Numerical Methods by Sawal Kishore Singh, National Institute of Technology, Patna.

The proposal was presented by Prof. Sawal Kishore Singh. The subject of Numerical methods covers applications of mathematical models using computers to all fields of Science and Engineering. The PIS proposal consisted of e-content generation for standard methods such as errors and approximation, algebraic and transcendental equations, operators, Interpolation, Numerical differential integrations etc. The PI also proposed to integrate and organize a large body of existing open course ware materials such as MIT, OCW and NPTEL in his content development programme. The SC recommended that the PI prepare a pilot program content development in such a way that it builds on the strength of existing material and not reproduce or restate them in another version. The examples and programs to be developed by the PI should supplement/compliment existing courseware.

Level of Importance for the mission: High Recommendation: Pilot recommended and be sanctioned. External referee report: The Standing Committee members are generally familiar with the area of content development and suggest that an expert committee of professor's review developed content in stages.

13,14. E-content generation for the courses on Livestock Production and Management by R.M.V.Prasad and e-content generation for the courses on Animal Genetics and Breeding by P.JAYA LAXMI, NTR College of Veterinary Science, Andhra Pradesh.

Both the proposals were presented by Dr. Jaya Laxmi. Comments are applicable for both the projects. The proposals have the objective of creating e- content on live stock breeds, biostatistics and computer applications for veterinary

science and animal husbandry students. The PI proposed the development of e- content modules that contain lecture notes, video programs for use in T.V bi;oadcast/P.C, FAQ's, learning object repository, a new website with resources and e-learning tools and messaging service for student teacher interaction. Dr. Jaya Laxmi explained necessary and relevant details as well as a program for translation of the contents from English to other regional languages such as telugu, tamil etc. Prof. Mangala Sunder pointed out that a much more comprehensive exercise of e- content creation is being currently undertaken by Tamil Nadu Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry University, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Fisheries College in Mangalore, Thoothukudi Tamil Nadu under the National Agricultural Innovation Project through World Bank Funds provided to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. He also offered to provide the necessary links of PI's and Co- PI's in the NAIP Programme so that Dr. Jaya Laxmi and her colleagues can benefit from related and parallel developments happening elsewhere. The Standing * Committee was highly appreciative of the PI's effort and wholeheartedly welcomed the project.

Level of Importance for the mission: Very High Recommendation: Project be sanctioned with sufficient funds. External referee report: The Standing Committee will seek the help of experts of NAIP Programme to monitor and assess the quality of learning materials developed during the project.

Prof. Mangala Sunder summarized the programme and requested all the PIS who attended the meeting to provide the DPRs as quickly as possible in the Sakshat website. The meeting ended with a Vote of Thanks to the Chair.