The Future of Learning : May 2011

digitalLEARNING

Contents cover story

Volume 7 > issue 05 > May 2011 issn 0973-4139

rni no. upeng/2008/25311

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Dr R Natarajan Chairman, BITES

regular features

08 cover story

Digital Content: The Future of Learning

school education

15 NIOS Launches Recording Studio

tech story

18 Bid Adieu to Vulnerabilities interview

20 Jasvinder Singh 46 Anil Goyal CEO, ACTUniv

Director, Mexus Education Pvt Ltd

case study Development through 24 Rural e-Learning

policy perspective

28 Veera Gupta Secretary, CBSE

higher education with Collaboration and 30 MBA Corporatisation

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international perspective

34 Sally Goggin

Director Education, British Council India & Sri Lanka

News National 06

News International 40

News Corporate 48

News Business 50

tele-education

38 Grab Success with Tele-Education interview

42 Dr R Natarajan Chairman, BITES

feature Learning 44 Digital Studies

Visit www.digitallearning.in for news, interviews, resources and articles on ICT in education in India Corrigendum

in Management

event report

36 Indian Education Congress 2011 49 HP Catalyst’10: Enhancing STEM Education

In the April 2011 interactive whiteboard issue, the article Smartly Focusing on Sustainability, digitalLEARNING regrets the grammatical errors and inaccurate information published about SMART Technologies and Mr. Sanjiv Pande - SMART’s Director, South Asia. The article cited figures from third-party sources that were not verified for accuracy with SMART. SMART Technologies is a leading provider of collaborative solutions that transform the way the world works and learns. The company believes that collaboration and interaction should be easy. As the global leader in interactive whiteboards, SMART brings more than two decades of collaboration research and development to a broad range of easy-to-use, integrated solutions. digitalLEARNING will produce an article about SMART Technologies, the company that created the world’s first interactive whiteboard, in the next issue.

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editorial

Promising Future for Digital Content in Education

Advisory Board Prof. Asha Kanwar, Vice President, Commonwealth of Learning

Dr. Jyrki Pulkkinen, CEO, Global eSchools & Communities Initiative (GeSCI) Shri Subhash C Khuntia, Joint Secretary, Department School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India Prof. V N Rajasekharan Pillai, Vice Chancellor, Indira GandhiI National Open University (IGNOU) Prof S S Mantha, Chairman (Acting), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) President: Dr. M P Narayanan Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Ravi Gupta Editorial Team: Dr. Rajeshree Dutta Kumar, Divya Chawla, Sheena Joseph, Pratap Vikram Singh, Dhirendra Pratap Singh Sales & Marketing Team: Debabrata Ray, Arpan Dasgupta, Bharat Kumar Jaiswal, Fahimul Haque (Mobile: +91-8860651632), Rakesh Ranjan (sales@elets.in) Subscription & Circulation: Gunjan Singh Mobile: +91-9718289123 (subscription@elets.in) Graphic Design Team: Bishwajeet Kumar Singh, Om Prakash Thakur, Shyam Kishore Web Development Team: Zia Salahuddin, Amit Pal, Anil Kumar IT Team: Mukesh Sharma Events: Vicky Kalra

Digital content has been one of the key elements for promoting and engaging students in the education sector. The massive opportunities are well being explored by educators all over the globe. Muti media content and technology has enabled educators to make their teaching learning process more engaging and exciting. The phenomenon is increasingly catching up in urban metros across India.

It is also encouraging to note that the decision makers are waking up to the need for enabling rural schools with ICT. The trend can be exemplified by the efforts of the Department of Information Technology which has announced a pilot project of setting up ICT centres in 247 out of 480 secondary and senior secondary schools in Ajmer. Several more initiatives by different State governments have shown that digitisation is going to make its presence felt in the rural hinterlands!

The recently launched Sakshat tablet demonstrates the continued attempt of the Ministry of Human Resource Development to bridge the digital divide in education. The tablet has been developed as a part of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology that aims to link 25,000 colleges and 400 universities on the subcontinent in an e-learning programme via the Sakshat portal.

Digital classrooms are now going to become a mandatory requirement in K12, with the Central Board of Secondary Education issuing a directive to all affiliated schools to digitally enable their classrooms Not only in India, digital content has come to address several issues of national importance in other countries. The Bangladesh government has facilitated a National e-Content Repository which will be used to promote trouble free access to available information on different areas including education, health and citizens rights. Open content today serves as a key solution for addressing the affordability and accessibility issues in higher education.

Opportunities also mean challenges, including those of producing pedagogically sound and good quality digital content for education.

Setting principles and guidelines for quality and efficiency would help practitioners and designers consider the fitness of the digital content and the purpose which it serves. Issues such as the lack of infrastructure, training requirements and resources are key challenges that need to be addressed in the process of digitising school curriculum.

Educational institutes may be open to change but the impediments that come in the way need to be productively addressed to ensure that the benefits are reaped by all.

Editorial & Marketing Correspondence digitalLearning - G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA 201301, India, Phone: +91 120 2502181-85, Fax: +91 120 2500060 Email: info@digitalLearning.in digitalLEARNING is published by Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. in technical collaboration with Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS).

Owner, Publisher, Printer - Ravi Gupta, Printed at Vinayak Print Media D-320, Sector 10, Noida, U.P. and published from 710, Vasto Mahagun Manor, F-30, Sector - 50, Noida, UP Editor: Ravi Gupta

Dr. Ravi Gupta Editor-in-Chief Ravi.Gupta@elets.in

digitalLEARNING / May 2011

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news

NATIONAL

Gandhian non-violence course in Vidyapith A course on Gandhian non-violence has been launched by Gujarat Vidyapith to cater to international participants who have been trying to understand his philosophy and looking towards institutes in India to get a formal training in Gandhian non-violence.

According to the Vice Chancellor of Gujarat Vidyapith, Dr Sudarshan Iyengar, a course of this kind has been launched after a gap of 13 years;

the last batch was in 1998. Gandhian nonviolence has always influenced people across the globe. This course is one step forward in spreading it more systematically.

The course will focus specifically on the non-violence aspect rather than covering general aspects of Gandhian philosophy, which was taught in earlier batches. According to the registrar of Vidyapith, Rajendra Khimani, this free four-month course is

Chandigarh schools bid adieu to blackboards

meant only for international students and it will commence on September 15, 2011.

Indian educationists to modify learning processes

For an accurate assessment of the current learning methods, education experts from Indian syllabus-based CBSE

schools in the GNU Compiler Connection and India are taking initiatives to ensure that students clearly understand core concepts while learning.

Recently a discussion was led by GEMS Education, a leading international education company, and

Karnataka Janapada Academy to be country’s first folk varsity Karnataka Janapada Academy, to be set up in Haveri district, is going to be the country’s first folk varsity. “The varsity will be spread on an area of 560 acre,” B S Channabasappa, Chairman of the Karnataka Janapada Academy said. Addressing the four-day All India Folklore Conference, he said that all necessary documents have been submitted to the state government and the process of launching the university will start in June.

He also added that the All India Folklore Conference had attracted 54 scholars from different parts of the country, including those from Jammu and Kashmir.

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the India-based Educational Initiatives (EI), an internationally renowned organisation in the field of child psychology and student assessment methods. Research by Educational Initiatives shows that while children today respond to rote-based questions relatively well, they fail to answer unfamiliar or application-based questions due to unclear core concepts.

All the laboratories of Chandigarh schools will be digitised and have latest technological tools to aid in teaching English, Hindi and Mathematics. To implement the project, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan has roped in the Regional Institute of English, Chandigarh. Multimedia labs in schools will be equipped with 16 computers, 15 for the students and one for the teacher. To make them familiar with this innovative way of teaching, all teachers of these seven schools are being imparted training. Initially, the multimedia labs will come up at seven government schools. Once the project is implemented successfully, all schools will boast of multimedia labs. The lab for training at the Regional Institute has 31 computers, hi-tech software and an LCD projector, giving the teachers a feeling of a virtual classroom.

IGNOU to establish RCs in Bihar, Jharkhand to reform Higher Education Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) is about to establish two more regional centres in Saharsa and Deaoghar. With the approval of IGNOU Vice-Chancellor Prof. V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai, the University has decided to establish these two centres in Bihar and Jharkhand.

According to the notification issued by U.S. Tolia, Registrar of the University, the Board of Management (BoM) at its 107th meeting held in April 2011 approved the proposal for the establishment of the Regional Centre at Saharsa, which shall cover the districts of Khagariya, Saharsa, Supaul, Madhepura, Katihar, Arariya, Kishanganj and Purnia.

Message The magnitude of India’s role as the emerging economic power of the future recognises that twenty first century is the ‘century of knowledge’. We have to innovate and cleverly deploy our restricted resources to make education more relevant and to achieve excellence in research.

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 has been enacted, envisaging significant reforms in the Elementary Education sector especially with reference to admission, attendance and completion of elementary education by all children in schools. The government is carrying out fully the spirit of true and quality education policies especially in the under-developed regions of the country.

The rapid acceleration of change, driven largely by technological developments, is giving rise to new ways of value creation in the corporate world. Along with this, corporations are growing rapidly, transcending national borders and making their presence felt in different societies across the world.

It has to be ensured that such growth is in consonance with the progress of society as a whole and contributes significantly to social justice equity and human development, both within an organisation and in the larger community. The education system in India should respond to the education needs of the industry bridging the gap between industry and academia while providing for the workforce in India and across globe.

I wish to urge all the educational institutions to emerge as Centre of Excellence in all facets of education, rooted in Indian ethos and societal values. Let me compliment ‘digitalLEARNING’, a leading magazine on ICT and education, which has played a key role in providing a platform to all the stakeholders to voice their views and opinions. I also take this opportunity to wish the digitalLEARNING magazine for entering into its 7th year of publication. I hope it carries on this role for many more years to come!

I am also happy to know that the publishers of digitalLEARNING magazine are organising the first World Education Summit, a Global Platform for knowledge sharing on Innovations in Education, from July 13-15, 2011 at New Delhi, India. I congratulate the organisers on this endeavour. I am pleased to know that my Ministry is actively participating and supporting this path-breaking event. I wish this event a great success.

(Dr. D. PURANDESWARI)

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Digital Content: the future of learning

From gurukulisation to digitisation, the world has come ahead of traditional pedagogical techniques, which used to just impart knowledge without any assessment of the students’ mind. Digital content showcased tremendous potential to transform teaching and learning outcomes

By Pragya Gupta

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ketching the traditional classrooms, still existent in India, masks our mind with teacher droning through a long lecture with chalk in a hand, blackboard, and pile of books. Going back further, we are reminded of Gurukul, an ancient education place of teaching the traditional elements such as Indian religions, Indian mathematics, Indian logic at early Hindu and Buddhist centres of learning such as Taxila and Nalanda before the advent of Common Era. Students were expected to follow strict monastic guidelines prescribed by the guru and stay away from cities in ashrams. Tools have changed from ink and leaves to books and blackboard but not the education methodologies.

Picturing this also reminds that even after those long lectures, students remember only a tenth of what they learned. It has been realised over a period of time that we have to take the teaching and learning to the digitised era for effectively facilitating the next generation of innovators.

In the past few years, it has been seriously realised that education and socio-economic growth are critically intertwined making education an imperative tool for achieveing the larger goals of any country. Additionally, the education sector in India has witnessed a higher growth.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been a great enabler to the level of penetration of education to the grass root levels.

Among the various ICT components, digital content has made its impact becoming highly interactive, making learning a joyful experience for the learners.

Plato believed that children would never learn, unless they wanted to learn. Digital content has been proved to be a powerful teaching tool redefining the very concept of pedagogy. While its multimedia format engages minds, its adaptability helps teachers reach students at every level.

Thus moving away from textbook towards multimedia or online content has the potential to improve accessibility, save money, and enhance learning.

Digital content addresses individual learning styles and offers flexibility. While it engages student and teacher, it quickly facilitates the multiple ability levels of students. One of the major advantages of it

Teachers like the interactivity of the online textbook. “This is not a PDF version of the textbook put up on the Web,” says spokes person from McGraw Hill “The online format generates interest and engagement amongst students making them dig deeper into the content.

Moreover, they can also work with the textbook content while following links to sites that expand upon the textbook information or provide another perspective.

More importantly, teachers also like the integrated assessment features that provide feedback at the point of instruction,” shares the spokes person.

Digital content equips teachers to inspire various learning activities like planned and spontaneous research, taking notes quickly and efficiently, peer mentoring using multimedia presentations, and collaborating locally and globally in much easier form is that it is available in multiple languages and through one click tool it can be translated into different languages. The contents can be reformatted for presentations in various ways, allowing the fast dissemination of new techniques and processes, overcoming geographic challenges. Educators have found it useful for its multifaced features like, graphic, video, virtual reality, animations, simulations, audio, music, interactive and gaming elements.

One of most important reasons to take it as a transformational tool is that it engages students through a rich and varied array of intelligences at a greater extent.

Digital content equips teachers to inspire various learning activities like planned and spontaneous research, taking notes quickly and efficiently, taking notes quickly and efficiently, peer mentoring using multimedia presentations, and collaborating glocally in much easier form.

Digital content is not just PDF version of the text books but is customised and optimised to reach out directly to the students’ mind and make sessions interactive to turn rote learning to an interactive one.

Envisioning Classroom 2020 We see rapid percolation of instructional technology across classrooms in private and government schools. The real challenge would be pedagogical innovation to engage learners and inspire teachers through effective solution design. The classroom of 2020 would surely have personalised computing devices for each child to have them engaged with content and each other in innovative ways. Technology can be effectively used to identify and parameterise the learning need and style of each child. The content itself would definitely be able to adapt itself to the unique learning needs of the child.

According to the Forbes, in 2020 we will see an end to the classroom.

The lone professor will be replaced by a team of coaches from vastly different fields. Tidy lectures will be supplanted by messy real-world challenges. Instead of parking themselves in a lecture hall for hours, students will work in collaborative spaces, where future doctors, lawyers, business leaders, engineers, digitalLEARNING / May 2011

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Expertise for Total Transfor How do you design digital content for K-12 schools?

Content design is a mix of understanding curriculum design and various innovative approaches to transact it. It is also about understanding user psychology (teacher or student) and their usage context (school or home)

Rohit Pande, Founder and CEO, Classteacher Learning Systems in conversation with Pragya Gupta, talks about the digital content scenario in India

journalists and artists learn to integrate their different approaches to problem solving and innovate together.

In schools around the country the transformation is already underway.

At the National Institute of Design in India, students learn to understand customer needs by working closely with companies like HP and Autodesk.

With emerging solutions and approaches, students collaborate with teammates, who have vastly different problem-solving approaches and understand what it takes to make new ideas viable.

Along the way they learn a methodology that equips them to tackle major and complex challenges far beyond those of classrooms.

Opportunities in K-12 Many schools in India are still new to the use of digital content and majority of the educators have shown a very high level of interest and acceptance but

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What is the procedure to get it approved by the government?

What are the parameters that the regulatory body expects the content to fulfil?

In K-12, there is an absence of regulatory bodies to approve the private content development efforts. In Higher Education, one could look at Open University certification or approach the Distance Education Council.

How do you ensure that provided content is rightly catering to the

due to various challenges like resources, awareness, reach and training, adoption level is still very low. digital LEARNING has conducted a study in schools across few districts in India on the adoption of digital content. The finding suggested that majority of the schools are still new to the adoption of digital content but adoption has been started; many big schools with branches across India have adopted digital content for their course curriculum in their respective schools.

The key issues in the adoption of the digital content are management buy-in and shared vision, and teacher training and support structures of the ICT partner to facilitate change within the schools. Schools are organic institutions with certain resistance to change, which needs to be managed.

Sharing his experience, Deepak Patankar, Principal, St. Rock’s High School, Mumbai, reveals, “The chalk and talk method does not work well for many schools now

learning needs of the students and teachers?

We do see each of our 600 schools as a Lab to spur innovation. We listen carefully to the feedback of teachers with varying styles and familiarity with digital tools as they attempt to deal with different kinds of learners in classrooms.

We have produced over 80,000 lessons that reflect this diversity. We are also sensitive to the usage paradigm in the design of content, for example, classroom (one-many or one-one), Labs or home.

Please share your customer engagement strategy? What advantage does your content offer over your competitors?

Our teams work with schools across the country as consultants to help them transact the tremendous change heralding our education systems. Rising paren-

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mation tal expectations, changing curricula, and advances in education technology are both an opportunity as well as a threat to school systems.

The range of our expertise and experience includes hardware, software and implementation services for total transformation. The multiple factors for which clients choose us include next generation content ideas, immersive teacher training and cost efficient and future proof technologies. We have recently launched a series of seminars, which shall take us to over 10,000 schools in 100 cities in 2011.

from being free to premium content.

Next generation content would be on the cloud and would be deployed in an array of mobile and 3G devices/ tablets.

We see the next generation content reflecting advances in learning pedagogies such as activity based learning, or use of gaming approaches and simulations. Since we have been developing content for a decade now, we have done multiple iterations to ensure that we do develop the next generation of content and continue to be thought leaders.

How do you see the future of digital content in the Indian market? What would be the next generation of it?

We are able to predict a proliferation of digital content, which would vary in quality and shall also vary

Still there is a huge gap in a traditional text book and digital content model. What are the factors narrowing this gap?

We see a new generation of interactive e-books bridging this gap between the two. We have set up an R&D cell which

as they have to make the classrooms and teaching more interesting for the students. The average performance of the child is highly enhanced with the use of digital content and group interactions.”

With the availability of Internet in all homes in urban areas, the access to information is easily available. “We have been using digital content in our classrooms and have found it especially beneficial in the teaching of subjects like Science, History and Geography. The language labs also prove to be extremely beneficial for the students as they engage in more interactive content than going through the dry interactions based on text-books.

For Mathematics, we have seen that the interactive white boards have been extremely beneficial in making the topics more interesting and interactive,” she adds further Rural schools can also benefit from the Edusat programme that has created curriculum based content for the stu-

is working on the same.

We do think that our organisation shall be thought leaders in heralding this change. As a company, we have been known to spot ideas in education technology early, for example, we were the first to introduce Interactive Whiteboards in the country five years back.

How can unauthorised use of digital content be controlled?

How do you address right management and piracy related issues?

We need strong laws to spur a culture of innovation and products development in this country. Right now, we don’t have strong incentives to protect the original and innovative thought in content.

Right now, we are using proprietary security systems to protect our content.

dents. The simple delivery of some topics beyond textbooks increases the interest and enthusiasm of the students manifold. These technology tools are being actively adopted by the teachers as they realise it as the need of the hour and help them to engage with the students beyond textbooks.

Cynthia Gomes, Principal, NCT Convent and Aryaa Gurukulam School shares that, “Technology is everything that is invented after you were born and it is not what the software does, instead it is actually what the user does. Any smoothly functioning of technology will give you the appearance of magic and the teachers and students together must be the change that they want to see in the world. So even though we have more and more of digital content and educational technology entering our classrooms, the most important foundation of education is to ask questions, and curiosity should continue. With the innovations and addigitalLEARNING / May 2011

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vancements in technology it will further fulfill our drive for curiosity.”

Government Keen on Digital Content While there is a lot of intent and budget now with the government for ICT models in schools, the tendering process and the overall evaluation process does limit adoption to some extent. Digital or multimedia content has been adopted as a contributor to bring change in the quality of the education. Commenting on the government’s adoption, Rohit Pande, Founder and CEO, Classteacher Learning Systems says, “We expect a fundamental change in this, as the government bureaucracy gets sensitised to

the factors that aid adoption of technology in education.

It is rightly said that if an egg is broken by an outside force, a life ends. However, if an egg breaks from within, life begins. It is said that great things always begin from within. Multimedia content has that power to break the egg from within by bringing interactive education, which brings out students’ interest from within but at the same time it should be frequently tracked and monitored that it is bringing the expected change without any compromise with quality. However, it has also been figured by few experts that, it needs serious monitoring for which we do not have any national regulatory body to

take this challenge on.

It is important for them to centralise platform decisions on the one hand and to decentralise creative content decisions to increase stakeholder participation and ownership in decisions.” In order to motivate talented teachers and develop creativity among students and teachers, a digital content development contest has been planned by the Rajya Shiksha Kendra in Madhya Pradesh.

The annual event, organised every year, will boost up talented teachers to show their creativity.

“There is a lot to learn from the experiences of various models, which have led to successful outcomes as in Finland or South Korea,” he further added.

Governments’ initiatives Educomp, one of the largest content providers in the country in the education space, has developed an ICT division, Edureach. Edureach is doing multimedia content development projects with various state governments. The case in the context is their projects with Government of Gujarat and Assam.

Gujarat Context Under the project with the government of Gujarat, the company will develop and install 2D/3D based multimedia content across all schools of Gujarat and develop web portal for learning management. For five years, the company will take care of updating content as per the change of state syllabus.

Gujarat government has defined the scope including the development of multimedia learning content in Gujarati medium for class VIII to X covering core subjects including English, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies in around 265 learning areas, and development and conversion of content in MS Windows and Open Source platform. Spanning across 3,500 schools, the project also entails development of web portal with interface for using the multimedia base learning content as well as upgrading the developed learning content with the change of syllabus.

According to Educomp, the education solutions provider will also build up the capacity of school teachers on the usage of ICT application to be developed for seamless transaction of classroom teaching learning process.

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Assam Context Assam government has also been focusing on the adoption of digital content for Axom Sarba Siksha Abhijan Mission. For digital content, Assam Government has selected Educomp for providing computer aided learning solutions in 2,199 middle schools of the state. Educomp will develop, supply and install multimedia based educational content for computer based education in Science, Mathematics and English in three vernacular languages-Assamese, Bodo and Bengali. The multimedia learning contents will be developed on 60 learning areas identified for Class VI and VII. Educomp has been given the charge for building capacity of the school teachers on usage of the multimedia learning content and its transaction during the classroom transaction process.

Kerala Context The state is in the process of implementing an ICT enabled educational system, which is the immediate step after IT education. This model targets the curriculum comprehension as well as skill development of students and in this process, multimedia content forms a crucial element. The state is thinking of a constructive pedagogical approach in which students would also be a part of knowledge construction, a process in which students would enjoy getting involved. Innovative, creative and serious e-Games have to be developed to facilitate this process. These initiatives have been started using free software in Lower Primary section.

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view POINT In India, there are 1 Lakh 55 thousand secondary and senior secondary schools but only 40 million students study in these school. There is only 40 percent GER at secondary level. In India gross enrolment ratio is considerably low at secondary and senior secondary education. Various efforts are being made to improve GER and one such initiative is the introduction of digital content to make the learning interesting and interactive. Here are industry veterans sharing their views on digital content and how it helps in improving GER and minimised drop out ratio and failure rate.

K Anvar Sadath, Executive Director, IT @ School Project, Department of General Education, Government of Kerala: From our experience in implementing ICT in School Scheme for the last 8 years in the state of Kerala, it is seen that all students, irrespetive of their location, background etc are showing much interest in technology, especially Information and Communication Technology. It can also be seen that students who are not attending or excelling in other classes are doing excellent work in Information Technology. Infact, when we compare the subject-wise results achieved by students in Std X (SSLC) examination over the last 6-7 years, it could be seen that the Information Technology is the favorite subject of students, in which the highest number of A+ grades are scored each year.

Specific contents have to be developed to address the marginised sections of students; i.e. students who are differentlly abled like the visually challenged. Currently very limited contents of such nature are available to these students. The key point here is that students could unknowingly acquire lots of knowledge through these exercises and it becomes part of a knowlege construction process and such a content development process is currently unavailable at national level. At present, the type of contents available in the market is prepared by animators and industy personnel and hence it lacks specific academic and student centric goals. Instead these products are targeted for revenue generation alone. In such circumstances, the new model of multimedia content has to be developed not simply by animators and industry personnel, but it has to be a combined activity by academicians, pedagogits along with industry people and animation experts. This would indeed benefit the whole process and the resulting content would definetely serve its purpose. Otherwise the entire process would remain a time-pass mechanism, which is least effective and serious.

Gaurav Mittal, Co-Founder and Chemistry teacher, Paarth Institute, Mathura says, Even before the advent of digital multimedia content, teachers have used sort of media content using physical models to illustrate the concepts and ideas.

These approaches have also provided desired results. But the digital multimedia content is more powerful and efficient. If a student has never seen an air plane, or a ship, he cannot appreciate any ideas about those objects; probably he makes his own imagination of those objects, which may be totally contrary to what they really are. But if the digital media content can show him the images or videos of those objects, his learning will be much more accurate and refined. Therefore, digital media content as an enabler will surely go a long way in minimising failure.

What I don’t concur with is the over usage of this content in helping the student learn. For example, once a teacher has given an orientation as to what a tetrahedron is, then showing the student all other possible shapes, tetrahedron can take, beforehand, without letting him think on his own. This will not help him develop his imagination and further understanding of the concept. And in the examination, when the student will be asked for other variations of the concepts learnt, he may not be able to answer them, thereby increasing his chances of failure.

The probable solution to this paradox lies in the hands of the teacher. It relies on his wisdom, when and where to use or to avoid the use of this content. Use of multimedia content surely helps in enrolments as students today are fascinated about new techniques of teaching.

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school focus

NIOS Launches Recording Studio

NIOS’ new studio, inaugurated by Dr. D Purandeswari, Minister of State for Human Resource Development, will be used to record programmes for Vidya Darshan to telecast programmes with NCERT at a 12-hour stretch each

T

he hub of national news channels, radio stations, NOIDA, has seen the launch of a channel ‘Vidya Darshan’ on 13th April 2011.

A Recording Studio, set up in premises of the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), was inaugurated by the Honourable Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Dr. D. Purandeswari. Staff members from NIOS headquarters, Regional Centre Delhi and CWC were present at the occasion.

The Studio will be utilised for recording programmes for the proposed 24×7 School Education Channel, VidyaDarshan. While the NIOS proposes to telecast its programmes for 12 hours at a stretch, the NCERT will take up the remaining 12 hours in this channel.

The NIOS has been utilising the electronic media to make the teaching and

learning process more effective and efficient. Audio and video programmes produced by the NIOS are significant components of the multi-channel package offered by NIOS. These programmes are also broadcast and telecast on Gyanvani and Gyandarshan channels.

Further, the NIOS being one of the apex organizations for the flagship programme of Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) to universalise secondary education, the setting up of the Studio is a step in the direction of building its own infrastructure.

Dr. Purandeswari, in her inaugural speech emphasized on the strong role to be played by the Open Schooling System at various levels in the implementation of the Right To Education Act. She urged the NIOS to shoulder this responsibility with credibility and quality to reach out to about 80 lakh children who are out

of school. She also pointed out that the 24×7 channel would be an innovative method to make learning interesting for learners by including interactive sessions to capture the interest of learners.

Appreciating the NIOS initiative to start a Community Radio Station soon, she felt that the NIOS should innovate and investigate new ways such as increased use of technology to reach out to the learners.

Dr. S.S Jena, Chairman, NIOS, in his welcome address spoke about the milestone achieved by the NIOS in the form of the Recording Studio in its premises.

He hopes that the NIOS would now be able to produce quality audio and video programmes to supplement its self learning material popularly referred to as “Teacher in Print”.

Programme ended with vote of thanks

by Sri G.G Saxena, Secretary, NIOS. \\ digitalLEARNING / april 2011

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Bid Adieu to Vulnerabilities

e-Learning in K-12 education, college education, competitive or professional courses have many security challenges.There is a pressing need for solution providers to address these issues

By Pragya Gupta, digital LEARNING Bureau

E

-Learning has been realised as one of the biggest tools in the education reform strategies. ICT in education has taken various shapes with the changing time from one sided learning tool to social learning. Today’s Learning 2.0 is out of the conventional e-learning systems based on instructional packets using internet technologies, however, new e-learning emphasis on the use of social platforms like blog, wikis, podcasts and virtual worlds.

It is becoming more and more popular as universities strive to cut costs and reach larger students who are adopting e-learning solutions. Considering the huge costs involved in creating and

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maintaining courses, security has not yet been considered as an important issue.

With the increasing popularity and penetration of e-learning solutions, emerging security risks are making systems vulnerable. Protecting digital content from copying, printing and distribution should become an integral part of content generation, especially when relying on revenue generation for that work. Protection of both the information and the tools are of equal importance.

There are number of issues that can create nuisance among practitioners like Secrecy which is one of the key issues.

They need to be ensured that objects are strictly accessible to the authorised per-

son and the person they are not granted access to information must not see or modify data or programmes. New grade based examination system has given the need of non-repudiation. It is mandatory to keep track on whenever grades of students are changed and it must be possible to reliably trace who has performed the modification and also deny the person with unauthorised access. e-Learning in K-12 education, college education, competitive or professional courses have many security challenges and there is no single solution, which can address those challenges largely.

Sharing solutions, Rana Gupta, Safenet says, “Earlier there were many touch points in education at the backend, inviting paper leaks and information leaks but now only authorised users have access to particular information and data modification. However, the management is important. There are rising threats related to IP, content and applications security for which we offer right management products called Safenet Right Management (SRM) products to manage rights for e-learning. It helps in encrypt the content which is accessible by those who have token to decrypt that can be in the shape of hardware, software or a combination.

The youth today is very active on social networking as they use this platform to keep themselves abreast with information and stay in touch with friends, it thus opens up a good hunting ground for Cyber Criminals. According to the Amit Nath, Country Manager India and SAARC, Trend Micro, “Cyber criminals misuse the credibility and popularity of such sites for their own benefits. They could play with users’ personal information in order to commit ID theft. For example: recently, cyber criminals used Twitter as a technique to lure users into

Tech Story

clicking a malicious link. Since Twitter is a trusted source, users may think the email they received is legitimate.”

He further suggested that students thereby should realise the significance of the kind of information they are uploading on the web. Personal information such as date of birth, email, job and marital status should not be shared on the Internet as criminals can access such valuable information to steal the identity of an individual.

It is also observed that there is a significant increase in traffic to different community blogs or portals. The criminals also have become quite active on these sites. It is also important for users of these community sites to be wary of messages received, even if supposedly sent from friends. With some crafty social engineering, unsuspecting users may visit the first of the fake pages, where they discover they cannot view their video and are told to download an updated version of Adobe Flash Player or another plug-in or codec.

A second fake page informs users that the video they were trying to view cannot be shown, making users think nothing has occurred when, in fact, downloading the supposed plug-in imported malware.

With the increasing threats, for secure computing and adequate trust and confidence in the electronic transactions, Department of Information Technology, Government of India has come up with the National Cyber Security pol-

icy’s draft and invited stake holders’ response. The draft proposed that the children and small and home users on the internet for criminal, special campaigns are required to promote an acceptable and safe use of information technology. This combines the knowledge of the needs of protection while understanding the power of information technology. In addition, campaign may also be directed to raise the awareness among the parents about the means of helping children to go online safely.

Awareness is an important tool for creating secure practices among students and educators. In order to create awareness, Business Software Alliance (BSA) has started B4U Surf campaign where BSA and its partners aim to provide educators, parents and students, information and educational resources to help them understand the dangers that exist online for safe computer usage. BSA is a non-profit association dedicated to promoting a safe and legal digital world.

‘B4U Surf ’ campaign focuses at spreading awareness about cyber wellness including cyber-safety and cyber-ethics among the youth, aged 10 – 18 years.

Lizum Mishra, Director, BSA highlighted software piracy, data security, legal liabilities and intellectual property rights management as a security concern for education vertical. Though many bigger educational organisations have software asset management policy but still the penetra-

Intellectual Property should be included in course curriculum of computer science to make students learn new wave of cyber safety and ethics tion of security is not up to the mark. She further suggested that Intellectual Property should be included in course curriculum of computer science to make students learn new wave of cyber safety and ethics.

Along with awareness, best security practices and mechanism is mandatory.

“It is important for institutions and universities to opt for an enterprise protection mechanism to shield the systems used by their students from any cyber threats. Our Enterprise Protection Strategy combines multiple layers of products and services for intelligent, comprehensive protection against known and unknown threats,” added Nath At the education level, security is equally crucial when we are relying on ICT at a great level. \\

• e-learning- practitioners should ensure the protection of the content, content players, implementation of licence management to facilitate business intelligence • Lower focus on quality and customer orientation • For examination data, protection should be done in real time clock based encrypted hardware so that it can only be opened only on the particular time.

• Data protection is a mix of laptop and desktop hardware encryption to avoid leaks. To secure data from physical threats, implementation of transparent data encryption for data sites, filters in servers, web servers and database servers are required.

Rana Gupta Business Head- India and SAARC shared security tips for e-Learning

• Rather than going for the UTM (Unified Threat Management Solution), big organisation should go for dedicated security module and expert staff to handle each for better performance and advance security • e-learning content is delivered as a service in a hosted environment over the cloud. Content protection and subscription protection is required to safeguard revenue.

• e-learning content service provider need to use Authentication Token as another factor in addition to user name and password for security.

digitalLEARNING / may 2011

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corporate diary corporate diary

Progressive English Learning with Technology Language is never learnt. It is acquired.

With this philosophy, ACTUniv has taken the language learning for students to the pinnacle of success in a short span of time. In an exclusive interview with Jaydeep Saha, Jasvinder Singh, CEO, ACTUniv talks on various aspect of language learning, and deliverables.

Excerpts:

What is the main content that you deliver? How does it enhance education in schools and colleges?

We deliver English Language Lab, the digital content that provides resource on all language aspects serving the needs of the Indian audience. The focus is on development of skills in functional usage of the language, grammar and phonetics besides vocabulary, remedy to regional influences, pronunciation and games. Learners need a practical approach to skill acquisition and a lot of practice. We also provide special content for the Teachers of English and structured curricula besides Trainer manuals and the much needed Training of Trainers. The lessons are practical and represent common practices that are easier for the learner to relate to and comprehend.

What are the basic features that you develop in a child? How competent have they become ever since they are taken care by your technology?

English is a skill and should not be treated like a subject.

Our products are interactive and feature several tools for a learner to use and develop the L.S.R.W. skills. It is our endeavour to keep learning simple, progressive and participative.

“Leading by example” and “Learning by doing” are the keys.

The learners mostly enjoy the freedom to error (with no em-

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corporate diary

barrassment) and remedy such errors with practice. Learners have grown in confidence and are able to express themselves better. The students enjoy learning through language labs and have become passionate about English as a language, which has made the difference.

Please define ILT and CBT. ILT: Instructor Led Training referring to the training provided by the teacher and CBT: Computer Based Training refers to the self help exercises on a PC. These are the terminology that is associated with e-learning and also with language labs.

However, what matters most is the content included therein and the effective use of technology elements to provide training support. In our products we ensure that the teacher as well as the learner is provided with the best of tools to demonstrate, practice and assess covering LSRW and more.

Do your students actually travel through the deserts of Sahara and Rain Forests of Amazon in classrooms? How can an Indian downtrodden suburb primary school benefit from you?

The global orientation is evident in the communication capabilities that we have focused on in our programs, although we don’t take the learners globetrotting, the scenario’s in our product provide exposure to various situations that also compliments other academic subjects.

Our content has been adapted to suit the Indian public especially the majority that is rural. Reaching the rural has its challenges as electricity and computers are a problem and we have addressed these with specialized solutions.

We believe in being practical about functional English and want our learners to be able to use English for everyday chores. The lessons are based on scenarios that are common to every day routine as well as in sync with the ALTE/CEFR framework. The benefit to even the remote school is that their students will be able to understand and use English in conversation. In our experience we have found that the rural students, be it schools or otherwise, are more serious about learning English and are fast learners.

Over 1100 installations in Indian Institutions and 1000 more by the end of 2011, stand testimony of the products, implementation and training What emphasis do you give on LSRW? How does a language lab work in correcting the vocabulary and pronunciation of a child who uses Colloquial English?

Language is never learnt. It is acquired.

If one wants to acquire language, learners must follow natural way of learning things. L-S-R-W is natural way of acquiring language skills. Besides the LSRW, vocabulary and pronunciation aspects, our products provide the much needed remedy to the influence of regional languages. Our products are built with several tools that provide expert audio, graphical patter of voices including the learner’s recorded audio, comparison, intonation and modulation, words and phrases, meaning and association, pictorial reference etc. These tools complement the appreciation of the context.

Please specify your contribution to higher education students in their market-ready attitude. What extra do you put to make them competent?

The Words Worth content is designed to prepare an individual to face the professional environment empowering him with capabilities to face interviews and present their views and expressions through English as a language of communication. Through our initiative more than 1, 00,000 students have benefited. We have also included the much needed soft skills for the students of higher and professional programs.

Please throw some light on RSCEL and SCOPE. What has been the main content for the uplift?

English is the language of the economy, much needed by a progressing country and even more to India that is in the lead. SCOPE is an initiative of the government of Gujarat and RS-CEL is that of Government of Rajasthan. These are India’s largest state sponsored capacity

building initiatives to enhance capacities of the masses with proficiency in English. These programs are a great success as proficiency in English enhances the job prospects of an individual by 300 per cent. The Words Worth content and methodology is deployed in these projects. We are about to introduce a self learning English language tool, which reduces the dependency on teachers in one of these projects.

Please say something about your take on foreign universities, including Cambridge and Trinity.

Why PTE-G? International Language Certification is important as it provides a measure the learner’s knowledge and usage of the language on par with international level. We follow the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) and encourage learners with tests based on these frameworks.

The Pearson Tests of English (PTEG) certificate is equivalent to IELTS and TOEFL and has been accepted by over 70 universities in Europe for both immigration and study abroad purpose.

In India there is a Boon for “Spoken English” but there is no certificate provided for General English by institutes to prove an international validity and certificate for the course. We create “Test centres” of the existing Schools, Colleges, and Universities and private vocational training institutes. By doing so, they can train and provide certificate to their students and raise their linguistic bar.

What and where next in India and abroad?

In India, we intent to reach every corner through our various delivery mechanisms. We have content for both urban and rural markets. There are inquiries from abroad that we are examining and hope to connect in this financial year. \\ digitalLEARNING / may 2011

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exhibitors

KeyNOTE Speakers Dr D Purandeswari Minister of State Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India

Vibha Puri Das Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of HRD, Government of India

Prof Yashpal Former Chairman, University Grants Commission (UGC)

Shri Thakur Singh Powdyel Hon’ble Minister of Education Thimphu, Bhutan

Participating Institutes (International)

and many more..

WATCH OUT FOR More than • 80 International Higher Education Institutes • 200 Indian Higher Education Institutes • 300 schools from across the globe

programme chair

Prof V N Rajasekharan Pillai Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University

Speakers Prof S S Mantha Chairman (Acting), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) Sharda Prasad Director General, Directorate General, Employment and Training, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Govt of India

Dr Thomas Christie Director, Aga Khan University Examination Board

Prof Fong Soon Fook School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains, Malaysia

Biswajit Mukherjee Managing Director, International Center for Academics, Kathmandu, Nepal

Pureza Valdehueza Veloso President, Cebu International Distance Education College

Naimur Rahman Director, OneWorld South Asia, OneWorld International

Mr Goeffrey Conaghan Commissioner to India State Government of Victoria, Autralia

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case study

Rural Development Through e-Learning The Andhra Pradesh Academy of Rural Development (APARD) has initiated an e-learning model to deliver its courses on rural development to officials at district and state level, elected representatives of Panchayati Raj and Farmers

By Pragya Gupta, digitalLEARNING Bureau

M

ore than 70 percent of India’s population lives in rural areas.

Educating people in rural areas is essential for substantial development and rural economic competitiveness of our country and challenging at the same time as issues of equity, quality and access remain areas of concern. However, ICT in education is fast emerging as a solution for transforming education and percolating learning to remote rural areas.

For rural empowerment, it is mandatory to empower those who are appointed as the agents to bring change to the rural areas. Following the wind of change, Andhra Pradesh adopted elearning for rural empowerment.

The Andhra Pradesh Academy of Rural Development (APARD) is the apex training institute in the Andhra for capacity building of rural development officers and Panchayat Raj officials. The institute, consistently focuses on research to offer high quality consulting services in rural development, has initiated an e- learning project and a number of e-learning products have developed for various target groups for continuous learning.

Highlighting the importance of ICT for capacity building of rural development officers, Phani Kumar, Former Commissioner, APARD said, “In Andhra Pradesh, we have about 2.61 lakh elected representatives of Panchayati Raj Institutions. There are another two lakh of mates and field assistants working for NREGP. We can deliver face to face training to them once a year in a cascade mode for about three to four days. If we have to deliver training for more days,

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then it has to be only using IT and relevant androgogy,” APARD reached out to vulnerable and hard to reach communities, managing projects in sectors that include community development, natural resource management, environment and disaster

management, women empowerment and children development, land administration, social empowerment and equity.

Solution To accomplish the task of addressing such a diversified stake holders (literate,

case study

semi literate and illiterates), APARD developed its own Learning Management System (LMS). “We have used Moodles as the LMS. For the semi literate, we have used books in the comic book format like Amar Chitra Katha, Phantom or Tarzan. For the illiterate; it was completely through audiovisuals.”

APARD wikis were formed for collaborative learning. The difference between the teacher and the taught will be reduced, if not eliminated. WEB 2.0 technologies enabled them to depart from traditional androgogy. PR comprehensive helpline consists of a traditional helpline using a BSNL phone line, and USHAHIDI technologies have been incorporated. People can lodge their complaint through phone, email, SMS or register on the website. As Google maps are a part of the USHAHIDI system in use, APARD also know the location of the complainant. “We have encouraged

“Computer and telecommunication penetration, above all, mobile penetration in rural areas has been responsible for the acceptance of new technologies”

Phani Kumar

Former Commissioner, APARD

our instructors also to use the helpline for clearing the doubts of participants if the instructors do not know the answers themselves. We have used social networking sites primarily to hold the instructors, field officers and interested members of the public together in a learning community. A lot of bonding has taken place between them,” added Kumar APARD has also taken the route of offline training with manuals, illustrated books, CBTs etc. For online tools like WBT (web based tutorials,) wikis, and ebooks and educative movies on Youtube are being used. Content posting on the web has saved from the trouble running out of print while training. APARD’s LMS site is called Knowledge Commons.

On the acceptance of the training he commented, “It is really amazing to see how willingly and easily people adapted themselves to new ways of capacity building. Computer and telecommunication penetration, above all, mobile penetration in rural areas has been responsible for this acceptance of new technologies. Mobile phones have taught them how to download caller tunes, ring tones and upload pictures, etc.”

Multimedia content helped this project as is easy to develop multimedia content and transfer it to any location.

Kumar said that APARD have copied content from their CBTs onto SD and micro SD cards and gave them to participants to use them in their mobiles at their leisure. “It is much more fun to watch a video or listen to a podcast than to read a look,” Said Kumar

APARD collaborated with HCL in creating and deploying e-Learning courses on rural development. The courses were designed considering the low literacy rates of the rural development as well as its implementation in hard to reach village areas of Andhra Pradesh.

Monitoring and assessment Firstly, APARD has monitored the use of this content through our machinery. Then the third party assessment was subjected by Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), and National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD). This project’s main deliverable is bringing about an acceptable change in the mindset of participants regarding self paced electronic learning. I think we have achieved that, by and large.

APARD organised a workshop to build a collaborative learning community in October, 2010 with the selected group of officers to build a community of learners. “The October 10 workshop was organised with intent to make APARD, a learning organization. We wanted to develop champions of this cause.”

ICT and multimedia enabled APARD delivering credible, stimulating and relevant training to the diversified target audience. E-learning enables one to gain subject knowledge anytime and anywhere without any geographical barriers and empowers learners through access to a wide range of learning resources both online and offline. \\ digitalLEARNING / MAY 2011

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INDIRA GANDHI NATI Maidan Garhi, New Delhi

Information on IGNOU • In just four years, IGNOU has, in the face of stiff competition from both public and private institutions almost trebled the number of students on its rolls from 1.1 million to about 3.5 million.

• Has contributed over 11 lakh professionals to the country’s talent pool so far since its inception in 1985 – thus working towards its twin goals in the Decade of Innovation – providing Inclusive Growth and enhancing Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER).

• Reached out to the unreached and the marginalised by offering a slew of programmes for jail inmates sex workers, differentlyabled • Provided an alternative educational system by setting up 517 Community Colleges across the country • Reached out to the Armed Forces with initiatives like Gyan Deep with the Indian Army and Akashdeep with the Indian Air Force • Ushered in a new era of multimedia and ICT-enabled education through initiatives like Edusat, FlexiLearn and the newly launched website on IT Mass Literacy Programme of the Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Govt. of India • Producing industry-ready managers for several sectors by partnering with public and private sector institutions • Establishing a global educational footprint with over 42,000 students enrolled at its 67 Overseas Study Centres in over 40 countries • Diversifying educational delivery through on-campus, online and distance learning modes

NEW PARADIGMS AND INITIATIVES The University continues to make path-breaking advances in challenging existing modes of delivery and ushering in innovative combinations. Major achievements include:

Expansion in On-Campus Programmes Several new programmes have been added to the bouquet of on-cam-

pus teaching. Three new programmes have been launched by the Economics faculty at the postgraduate level. M.Phil. and Ph.D. programmes in Economics are also on offer in the on-campus mode.

The School of Performing and Visual Arts has launched four new on- campus and fulltime Master’s Degree Programmes in Performing and Visual Arts. These programmes include: Master of Performing Arts – Hindustani Classical Music (MPA – HVM); Master of Performing Arts – Bharatanatyam (MPA – BN); Master of Performing Arts – Theatre Arts (MPA-THA); Master of Fine Arts – Painting (MFAP).

The School of Gender and Development Studies has launched a new Master’s in Women’s and Gender Studies from July 2010.

Reaching the Unreached: Major Strides through Community Colleges The Community College Scheme of IGNOU has been extended to the Indian Air Force and Indian Navy after a very fruitful and successful collaboration with the Indian Army was initiated. The Gyan Deep project with the Indian Army was launched by the

ONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY – 110068, India, www.ignou.ac.in President of India and has achieved remarkable success.

An estimated 1.25 lakh Indian soldiers are now undergoing education in IGNOU community colleges.

So far 517 Community Colleges have got registered with IGNOU. The total number of students who have taken admission so far is 43000.

The total number of programmes offered through Community Colleges is 1615.

Multimodal Education Delivery: Advances in the Convergence Scheme The Convergence Scheme optimizes use of both conventional and ODL systems. As many as 464 partner institutions are participating in the Scheme. In the year under report, 35 new Partner Institutions were added under the Convergence Scheme. The number of learners added in 2010 is an unprecedented 41,986. The total number of students under this scheme is now 1,01,755.

programme in Functional English through Nokiaphone’s Ove Life Tools primarily using SMS. The initiative is to start initially in six districts of Maharashtra and will be launched nation-wide after a review.

IGNOU has already initiated a number of moves in the area of IT research through its Research and Teaching Assistantship (RTA) scheme and ODTEL.

On-Demand examinations In addition to the six monthly term -end examination held conventionally, IGNOU also provides the facility of On-Demand Examination in 135 courses of different programmes through 15 Regional Centres of IGNOU. NCIDE has also developed a prototype system of On-line examination and evaluation aiming at “instant testing- instant result”.

Dimensions of Technology Use and Upgradation IGNOU offers state-of-the-art education facilities to its students. Today the university’s educational programmes reach over 10 million homes through the DTH and Edusat.

The recent innovative moves such as mobile telephony, online admission to certification, on-demand examination and all-time admission have created new directions to democratize higher education and research. In the recent past a firm step has been taken to ensure quality research and documentation through digitization of contents and repositories.

IGNOU launched a SMS facility to benefit students studying in the Madurai Regional Centre. Students across 17 districts are able to receive periodical information from the University regarding fee details, last date for payment, classes, special assignments and programmes with roll out of new services.

In order to effectively use modern technology in distance education, the University would provide a Certificate

Building learner-friendly services The Student Satisfaction Survey, a first of its kind initiative in the country, enlisted open participation of all students and responses were encouraging. The feedback has helped identify and initiate refinements and corrections in the course curriculum. The Survey is now a mandatory aspect of the academic programmes and will be administered every year.

More Information • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Over 3.5 million Students 21 Schools of Study 12 Divisions 445 Academic Programmes Over 3,500 Courses More than 45,000 Academic Counsellors Over 500 On-Campus Students Over 120 Research Scholars at the Campus Presence in 40 Countries 67 World-wide Partner Institutions 62 Regional Centres More than 3,000 Study Centres Nearly 517 Community Colleges Largest Number of Foreign Students among Indian Universities • Tie-ups with Universities in Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, America...

policy interview perspective

Dr Veera Gupta, Secretary, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in conversation with Sheena Joseph, elaborates about the progress of CBSE’s current initiatives in education and also provides snippets about what we can expect from CBSE in the coming months

Vocationalisation of K-12 is the Need Today In order to curb commercialisation, CBSE has recently put restrictions on schools with regard to charging hefty fees. What is CBSE’s mandate in this regard?

CBSE has always supported and worked as per national policy directives. All its policies are directed towards curbing commercialisation of education. Most of the schools affiliated with CBSE are independently managed, having varied fee structures. We have been getting com-

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plaints about exorbitant fees being demanded by schools. Also there have been cases where schools have been profiteering through the sale of school uniform and textbooks at the school premises.

CBSE will be coming out with a circular to curb such practices.

To address grievances from parents or student bodies regarding the fee structure, CBSE bylaws have prescribed that the school fee should be in consonance with the facilities that are offered at the

school. CBSE has been regularly looking into such matters and taking relevant measures.

CBSE has proposed the introduction of ‘Body Science’ as a vocational subject for classes XI and XII. What is the importance of vocationalisation in secondary schools?

Vocationalisation is an emerging issue and since CBSE is a board for secondary

policy perspective

and senior secondary education, it will be taking up activities towards the same in this sector.

Secondary education, as has been observed in the last few decades, has lost its character, with it being relegated to the status of merely being a precursor for higher education. Secondary school education in itself does not have an identity, ethos or personality of its own.

However, if we observe the current student trends in India, only 11% of students enter higher education after completion of their schooling. The remaining percentage of students either drop-out before completing secondary education, or might only manage to complete secondary schooling. Entering into higher education may not necessarily be an option for them. Therefore, there has been a need to create a system where vocationalisation of school education is also given adequate importance, with focus on enhancing the skills sets of students between the age of 14-18 years.

Because of its need and requirement in the current situation, there is a sustained effort from policy makers towards vocationalisation. In principle and practice, CBSE will make all efforts to actually implement vocationalisation in its true spirit so that we can reap the advantages of India’s demographic dividend, that is, of being a young nation.

We are going to start a vocational cell which will make concentrated efforts in creating new courses, designing of new curriculum, text books, and evaluation methods to promote vocationalisation.

What is the role of technology in creating a better teaching-learning environment for students and teachers?

ICT is integral to the teaching learning process. In an age where massive expansion of education is required, we cannot do without the use of technology.

ICT is vital for dissemination of knowledge, for evaluation and for keeping data and records. The role of ICT is multi faceted and it has to be exploited to the maximum potential.

The capacity building of teachers in ICT has been a mandate of teacher

Overall, from the responses that we have received, both the teachers and students are satisfied with the entire process.

Gradually, fears and apprehensions have allayed.

We have several plans for training of teachers in CCE. Last year we had conducted training of 40,000 teachers all over the country and in this year we are targeting 50,000 teachers.

Could you elaborate on some of the future initiatives that CBSE will initiate in the school education sector?

As expansion in education is high on the national agenda, CBSE is also looking to-

We are going to start a vocational cell which will make concentrated efforts in creating new courses, designing of new curriculum, text books, and evaluation methods to promote vocationalisation in secondary education training colleges and National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). They have been taking care of the training needs in ICT. What is the progress of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) training by the CBSE? CCE was recommended long back in 1949 as a part of most of the national policies and commissions on education.

It was a reform that was long due and CBSE introduced it in 2009. The batch of 2011 will be the first to pass out of the CCE assessment system. CBSE has made all efforts in order to implement it successfully in schools.

We have recently launched a project where CBSE is going to collect evidence of the actual assessments being carried out in schools, by studying the activities done by students under formative assessments.

This will provide us with a major feedback on the impact it has made on student learnings as well as the level of understanding and outcomes of CCE among the teachers. The project will be initiated in a few months from now.

wards expansion, while at the same time ensuring that quality education does not take a backseat. With this in mind, CBSE is going to initiate accreditation of schools which will be separate from the affiliation bylaws. Accreditation will be done by an independent agency which will not rank or rate the school but will accredit it by finding out if they meet the set quality standards. This will go a long way in ensuring quality in school education. This is one of the major initiatives which CBSE is planning in the future.

What are your views on global collaborations among schools in India and abroad?

Diversity is always an indicator of quality. CBSE believes in this idea and this is the reason it has launched CBSE-I (International) which is an international curriculum. Under this we have around 26 schools and the aim is to prepare students for the global environment and culture. We encourage collaborations and would definitely explore opportunities for sharing ideas, expertise, knowledge and excellence globally. \\ digitalLEARNING / MAY 2011

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higher education

MBA with Collaboration and Corporatisation Higher education is increasingly getting blended with corporate expertise and dedicated training insight, so that young recruits to the corporate world, and also the honchos can be groomed and updated. IGNOU is among the institutions spearheading the move in India

By Dr Nayantara Padhi

W

ith the exhilarating Indian economy, MBA is the most demanding course in India.

There are various innovative disciplines in business have sprouted out like Aviation Business Management, Network Infrastructure Management, Transportation Management, Textile Management.

At the same time, collaborative (including Public Private Partnership) educational programmes are invigorating in the current scenario. The concept of corporatisation of education is not very new in foreign countries but in India it is picking up in recent years. By this corporate houses take the responsibility of providing education to their employees and also to general public.

Corporate education is the umbrella under which all the initiatives related to imparting knowledge; skill and ability are undertaken by corporate houses.

Higher education is increasingly getting blended with corporate expertise and dedicated training insight, so that young recruits to the corporate world, and also the honchos can be groomed and updated. IGNOU is among the institutions spearheading the move in India.

IGNOU being the largest university in the world, it is committed towards democratising education with a goal of reaching the unreached. It invents the best possible mechanisms like collaboration and corporatisation to achieve the goal. IGNOU has entered into several collaborations to educate people in different spheres and award them certifi-

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List of MoUs by CCETC: Name of the Collaborator: • Cochin International Aviation Services Ltd., Cochin • Centum Learning Limited. New Delhi • Future learning & Development Ltd., Mumbai • Institute of Rail Transport, New Delhi • Sri Sanskar School of Etiquette & Career Development (P) Ltd. New Delhi • Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., Noida • Everonn Skill Development Ltd., Chennai • P N Vijay Financial Services P. Ltd, New Delhi • Global Talent Track, Pune • Training and Advanced studies in Management & Communication Ltd. (TASMAC), Pune • Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International School of Textile & Management, Coimbatore (Ministry of Textile) • Department of Personal and Training ( Training Division), New Delhi (Min.of personnel, Public Grievances and pensions) • Institute of Industrial Management for Safety, Health & Environment.

Bhopal • NIIT Limited, New Delhi • BSE Training Institute Limited, Mumbai • Everonn Education Limited, Chennai • Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, Mumbai • Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, Delhi Note: The above list is as on 31st March, 2011 by Centre for Corporate Education, Training and Consultancy (CCETC).

cates/degrees on successful completion of the academic programmes. The academic programmes on offer are varied

and contemporary in nature. In order to fulfil the demand of corporate education, IGNOU has set up a Centre for Cor-

higher education

Four stage Quality approach • Need Analysis: Assess the corporate needs and by clarifying and analysing needs, frame the objectives and prepare groundwork of the programmes.

• Method/Process Development: Once the objectives are set, methodology is created to develop the programme with the help of university’s resources. It may be organising academic programmes, training curriculum, consultancy or any research work.

• Delivery: Based on meticulous programmes, the centre delivers quality service in the requisite form, both in ODL and face-to-face programmes.

• Measurement: It regularly monitors to improve the standards of programme and to measure the success of the programmes.

porate Education, Training and Consultancy (CCETC).

CCETC is a unique initiative to ensure corporate excellence at workplace. The Centre has been created with the sole purpose of developing skills and knowledge in the corporate sector (both public and private sector). It facilitates industry-institution collaborations to meet the demand of skilled workforce in the country. CCETC on behalf of the university has entered into a number of MOUs with various Government and private organisations, educational institutions and research organisations.

Also currently, discussions are on with few more organisations like CSIR, NABARD etc. to offer collaborative programmes. These collaborations aim to develop, enhance knowledge and integrate with professional capabilities and practices. CCETC has an interdisciplinary approach to suit the corporate needs. The Centre provides customised curriculum development and global standards of self-learning study materials, carries out scientific evaluation, and takes multi-media approach in trans-disciplinary systems of corporate education.

Corporate education entails an educational strategy, broader than training.

The centre follows a four-stage quality approach, feedback being the constant activity at every stage.

CCETC is offering more than eighty collaborative programmes at various levels like masters/bachelor/diploma/ certificate. Amongst them it is offering

around twenty MBA programmes in collaborative mode and also directly. Different platforms are used like physical class room, VSAT, on the job training, distance mode, e-learning for offering the programmes. To cater the demands of MBA degree as mentioned in the beginning, CCETC has taken the lead in offering MBA programmes in several areas.

Each collaboration has uniqueness and each MBA programme offered by the centre has different objectives. Almost all collaborators have come with new strategies for imparting the academic programme which in turn will produce quality graduates, who can cope up and survive in the turbulent scenarios.

The university plays a major role in all activities of the collaboration like advertisement, admission, conduct of classes, examination and declaration of result. For all the MBA programmes, entry is very rigorous like graduate with at least 50% marks, qualifying the entrance test, group discussion and personal interview.

After the student is admitted utmost care is taken for conduct of classes, internal assessment, industry visit, and most importantly attendance in case of face to face programmes. Almost all the MBA programmes have an added advantage of developing soft skills and communication skills of the students as these two skills play a pivotal role in employability. Placement assistance is provided by almost all the companies, which is noteworthy.

Corporate education is the umbrella under which all the initiatives related to imparting knowledge, skill and ability are undertaken by corporate houses These are some of the areas which are explored by CCETC and utilized the scope of collaboration and corporatisation to bridge the skill gap. Although the centre is at infancy stage yet it is able to move forward with the ever changing demands of corporate world. With this pace, it will certainly make IGNOU’s reach wider and deeper. \\ Author

Dr. Nayantara Padhi Assistant Professor of Management at Centre for Corporate Education, Training and Consultancy, IGNOU, New Delhi

digitalLEARNING / May 2011

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interview international perspective

Sally Goggin, Director Education, British Council India & Sri Lanka, in conversation with Sheena Joseph, details out the various strands of the UK India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) and its achievements during the past five years

Collaborations: The Main Focus of UKEIRI Could you provide us with a brief background of the UK India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI)?

UK India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) was initiated at a meeting between the Indian Prime Minster Dr Manmohan Singh and the then Prime Minster of UK, Mr Tony Blair. The aim was to strengthen and re-affirm the historical linkages that both the countries have shared in diverse areas. Started in

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April 2006, the main objective of UKIERI has been to enhance educational links between India and the UK. UKIERI has been successful in covering all segments of the education sector by working with universities, colleges, schools and technical institutions.

After the completion of the first five years, both governments have confirmed funding for UKIERI and the programme aims to now deliver systemic change by reaching out to larger numbers.

The School Partnership Strand of the UKIERI has been contributing significantly towards creating a life-long relationship amongst young people in UK and India. Can you provide details of your K12 initiatives?

UKIERI’s cluster school partnership programme has played an instrumental role in promoting the understanding among schools in India and UK. Interaction and cultural exchanges have strengthened

international perspective

school leadership and have equipped school principals, head teachers, faculty members, administrators and students for life in a global society and work in a global economy.

UKIERI has been working with private and government aided schools in India. We have reached out to more than 127 state funded schools and 148 private schools. The exchange of ideas and values between teachers of schools in India and UK have added value to their learning outcomes and have also provided for good and enriching student learning experiences.

What are the highlights of the higher education initiatives of UKIERI? UKIERI has got an extension of another 5 years and there will be focus on a number of areas in higher education including leadership and related areas that can help build relationships between both the countries.

The aim has always been to promote collaboration and mutual exchange between higher educational institutes in UK and India through research initiatives and focus on areas in economic, educational and technical interest to both countries. The Collaborative Programme Delivery (CPD) strand of UKIERI was set out to facilitate the development and delivery of UK degrees and professional qualifications in India through institutional partnerships.

Over the 5 years of the programme from 2006-2011, UKIERI funding was allocated to 27 separate collaborations, engaging 20 different universities in the UK with 23 partner institutes in India.

What have been the major activities under the professional and skills strand of UKIERI? The Professional and Technical Skills strand of UKIERI has sought to promote linkages and partnerships between UK and Indian Further Education Centres of Excellence to develop collaborative projects, exchanges and work placements.

The major focus areas have been Financial Skills sectors which include banking and insurance, Creative Industry including fashion, textiles, film/television and

After the completion of the first five years, both governments in India and UK have confirmed funding for UKIERI and the programme aims to now deliver systemic change by reaching out to larger numbers animation and Petrochemical.

We have facilitated 14 links till now between further education institutes in India and the UK against a target of 6 as set up in 2006. All these partnerships were formed through the process of expression of interest, pre bid workshop and project manager’s workshop. The corporate sector has also contributed funding and in-kind support like strategic expertise, representation on project steering committee and staff engagement on the professional and technical skills strand.

What are the future plans on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between MHRD, GoI and British High Commissioner for the India-UK Higher Education Leadership Development programme?

The endeavor for the programme was to contribute to the development of Higher Education (HE) leadership in India and the UK by forming working partnerships between Higher Education leaders. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the programme was signed between the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India and the British High Commission.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) on behalf of Indian universities was the implementing agency in India and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (LFHE) on behalf of UK universities was the implementing agency in UK for the programme. UKIERI has been responsible for the overall management of the programme. The programme has garnered an extremely positive response from participants of both India and the UK higher education Institutes and has completed two phases by 2010. A number of workshops were organised to bring together these senior

leaders to engage, deliberate and discuss the issues of Higher Education in the two countries. These regular interactions have resulted into long term collaborative partnerships.

Could you provide us details of the partnering agencies of UKIERI? The UKIERI programme is a partnership programme that brings together diverse range of stakeholders and institutions in both countries. The programme garnered funding and support from the UK Government including the devolved authorities of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. The Indian Ministry of Science and Technology supported the Research strand of the programme with joint call for bids from year 2007.

Some of the other key organisations that have supported UKIERI have included the University Grants Commission of India, Planning Commission of India, UK Commission for Employment and SkillsUK, Quality Assurance Authority- UK, National Assessment and Accreditation Council of India and Universities of UK. UKIERI also actively engaged with Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), and Ministry of Labour and Employment (MOLE) in implementing various sub activities and events across the programme strands.

In the corporate sector, Shell, GlaxoSmithKline and BAE Systems have been associated with the initiative as Corporate Champions along with BP which extended support to UKIERI as a Corporate Champion for three years, from 2006-2009 and continued to be actively engaged with the schools strand . KPMG too was associated with UKIERI as the keystone partner for Financial Services Skills Exchange, from 2006-2009, on the professional and technical skills strand. \\ digitalLEARNING / may 2011

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event report

Indian Education Congress 2011 Inaugration of Indian Education Congress 2011 witnessed experts’ convergence for deliberation on the regulatory issues and latest trends in the business of education

By Pragya Gupta, digital LEARNING Bureau

S

ome of the top policy makers, educationists and corporate houses came together at the Indian Education Congress 2011, the National Convention on the Business of Education, for interactions and knowledge sharing on various topics related to the best practices, regulatory issues and future trends in the education field. The event, which was organized by Franchise India and presented by S. Chand Group with KPMG as the knowledge partner, was focused on discovering the pulse of education business in the country.

Today, education sector in India is experiencing radical changes due to the introduction of new technologies and the globalization of education business.

Commenting further, Gaurav Marya, President, Franchise India said, “The Government’s education expenditure as a percentage of GDP is about 5% and the consumption trends predict that the urban Indian is spending 9% of his wallet on education while the rural consumer spends only 6%. In view of huge requirements of infrastructure and manpower in the field, even if the Government takes up the supply challenge, the time frame will exceed the youthfulness of our population.

The Indian Education Congress is an initiative by Franchise India that recognizes the need to think more boldly and broadly on how to strengthen and expand our existing initiatives within the realm of the growing Indian education sector.”

The key speakers at the Congress included Sudhir Kapur (Chairman, CII SubCommittee on Education), Dilip Chenoy (Chairman, National Skill Development Corporation), Prof. VN Rajasekharan Pillai (Vice Chancellor, IGNOU), Barry

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O’Callaghan (Chairman, EMPGI), Ashok Ganguly (Former Chairman, CBSE), Rajesh Gopal (President-Education, Technopak Advisors Pvt. Ltd.), Lokesh Mehra (Director-Education, Microsoft), R. C. M. Reddy (Managing Director, IL&FS), Poonam Agarwal (Head–International Education, NCERT) and Shantanu Prakash (Chairman, Educomp). Every aspect of education as an enterprise, including global outlook of the education sector, innovations in education delivery, technology as a key driver of education in 21st century, funding education: role of private equity and banks, legal due diligence and compliance, private-public partnerships, the evolving K12 landscape and the transforming scenario of vocational education, was discussed at length at the event.

The importance of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in the education sector was discussed at length at the Congress. According to CBSE’s Former Chairman Ashok Ganguly, “In India, the

condition of primary education sector is quite well as there are plenty of options available. However, the efficiency of the secondary education is very low. In the next 3-5 years, we need double the number of secondary schools than we have now. There is an urgent need for an increase in financing for senior secondary schools. Government alone cannot fulfil the needs. Hence private funding is required.”

During the Congress, S. Chand Group officially announced its joint venture deal with the K-12 education publishing company, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to form a company named ‘S. Chand Harcourt India Pvt. Ltd.’ Dr. Ashok Chouhan of Amity University was given the Lifetime Achievement Award for Higher Education and Educomp’s Shantanu Prakash won the Best Entrepreneur of the Year Award. IGNOU got the award for Excellence in Distance Learning Education. \\

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Tele-education

Grab Success with Tele-Education

Ever since Dr APJ Abdul Kalam took up the initiative of promoting Tele-Education, IGNOU has been one of the key institutions, which relates students to success and offers them worldwide recognition through its courses

By Jaydeep Saha

I

ndia is certainly making some big time advancement in the field of education business and the evidence of the same is the launch of tele-education project. This project was recommended at the time of the visit of former president of India Dr. Abdul Kalam to Johannesburg in the month of September 2004.

The Government of Mauritius had sealed a pact for the same in March 2006 with New Delhi-based Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL) to introduce this project. Owing to this, the residents of Mauritius can now have access to the three centres such as teleeducation, tele-medicine, and Very Very Important Person (VVIP) Node.

About 4500 students all over Africa are benefiting from tele-education. They are enrolling in the bachelor’s or master’s degree courses of the premier universities in India. The courses that can

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be done under this project include – Diploma in HIV/Aids and Family Welfare from the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU); Bachelor in Business Administration from University of Madras; and MBA in International Business, Bachelor in Finance and Investment Analysis and Masters in Finance and Control from Amity University.

In 2008, IGNOU signed an agreement with Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL) to begin its tele-education programme. Now, it has been able to reach students in Ethiopia, Malawi, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Somalia, Rwanda, Senegal, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Benin and Botswana.

The project is funded by the Indian government with a budgeted cost of Rs.5.43 billion ($117 million).Through tele-education, five African Regional Leading Universities were planned to be

linked to the hub to provide access to the 53 Remote Virtual Classes spread over 53 countries. The connection was also strategised to be established through VSAT (forward/ Return/downlink 512kbps / uplink 2mbps) or 2mbbs broadband.

About seven Indian universities were planned to be linked to the Hub in Africa via IPLC where India would be in-charge of the Tele-Education LMS portal consisting of Tele-Education delivery system software of the university. The software would be integrated with the digital library solutions, content management KMS (Knowledge Management System) and e-Learning solutions to be used by the universities as a package.

The portal has been designed to help students to access information related to education centres, courses and universities in India. To facilitate the live virtual classroom trainings, seven Indian uni-

Tele-education

versities have been equipped with the parallel Tele-Education system and have connections to the TCIL’s central data centre. Further, the remote terminal facilitates to use the internet via the VSAT connectivity.

Under the Tele-Education network, sessions are first conducted live and then, captured in a knowledge management system to allow offline access.

Not only this, the content management software under this project has flexibility, scalability and easy configuration process. It has been so created that the universities in Africa gets to build and produce their own local content to meet the requirements of the local people.

Regular Tele-Medicine and Tele-Education services have already been started on this network. At present, the TeleMedicine consultations are regularly being conducted from Super-Specialty Hospitals from India to the African countries on need basis.

Moreover, regular Continued Medical Education (CME) sessions have been started with effect from 22nd April, 2009 from 11 Indian Super-Specialty Hospitals. So far 654 CME sessions have been conducted on this network.

Regarding Tele-Education services from India, more than 2000 students from Africa have been enrolled in 5 different top ranking universities in India in various disciplines like MBA, Master in Finance Control, PG Diploma in IT, M.Sc. in IT and Bachelor in Finance and Investment Analysis and many others. Regular Tele-Education live sessions are being conducted from India and students have shown great interest in the courses.

In 2010, a live example of the benefits came to the fore when Francis Mbangwa, a Kenyan farmer in his late 20s, revolved around crops and fertiliser. He would eagerly wait for the harvest season, sometimes face a severe financial crunch because of a bad crop.

However, Francis is a marketing manager in a leading corporate firm in Kenya now. The turnaround happened when Francis decided to pursue his bachelor’s degree from IGNOU as it came at the right time in Africa. It was through IGNOU that he got a glimpse of the Indian education system.

TCIL has established the Network with a Data Center in TCIL Bhawan, New Delhi that acts as a gateway to the Hub Station in Dakar for connectivity of Indian institutions on the African side. \\ digitalLEARNING / MAY 2011

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news

INTERNATIONAL

IGNOU focuses on Nepal’s duet education system To integrate existing two education systems in Nepal, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has focussed on Kathmandu’s potentials to take up new special initiatives. “The open education will be highly beneficial in the country like Nepal characterised by low literary rate and remote geography,” at a programme organised by IGNOU here recently, Executive Chief of International Centre for Academy, Amit Giri said. He further said a new system has been introduced under which people having no time to attend college everyday could fulfil one’s academic pursuit remaining at home.

Indian gems win Gates Scholarship at Cambridge Altogether four Indians have won the esteemed Gates Scholarship for post-graduate studies at the Cambridge University.

Sukrit Silas from Delhi will study Ph.D. in Pathology as would Bangalore-born Divya Venkatesh. Raghu Mahajan from Chandigarh will do Part Three of the Mathematical Tripos and hopes to go on to do a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics while Anand Shrivastava, a product of IIT Madras, will study M.Phil. in Economics. The university, describing them as the “world’s most brilliant students”, said they were selected from among the several thousands from 29 countries who applied for the scholarship set up in 2000. It enables academically gifted postgraduates with a strong interest in social leadership and responsibility to study at Cambridge.

Wharton business school plans to spread wings in India One of the world’s top business schools, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania is all set to expand its wings to India in the next one-and-half years.

The globally acclaimed business school will zero in on either Mumbai or Delhi for the expansion. “Our students are already coming to India. The difficulty is that the world does not know Wharton is in India,” says Dean Thomas Robertson.

Wharton, has various points of presence in India - healthcare institute with ISB, study trips of the executive MBA student faculty to India and executive education programmes.

Wharton’s focus is on India and China, two of the fastest growing economies.

Over the past two decades, Wharton has positioned itself as a global school.

Close to 40 per cent of its students and 35 per cent of faculty are international.

India to assist Sri Lanka in VTC set up With a tide of technological development sweeping across all shores of education in almost all parts of India, vocational training has been a major part of it which is also developing and spreading its wings across. With the assistance of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Skills Development, Government of India, few more vocational training centres (VTC) are set to be established in the north and the east of the country

as well as in Nuwara Eliya. The Ministry said a feasibility study had been conducted by the Hindustan Machine Tool International Institute and they hoped to establish the vocational centres within this year.

The Rs. 2,670 million project initiated bzy the Ministry will have a contribution of Rs. 2,375 million from the Indian government along with a transfer of knowledge in IT, account

plant repairing and motor mechanics, to name a few.

out of 138 countries, Qatar placed 25th while Bahrain was 30th in the 2010-11 Global Information Technology Report Transformations 2.0. Globally, the top five were Sweden, Singapore, Finland, Switzerland and the US. The report is released annually by the Insead international business school and the World Economic Forum. Bruno Lanvin, Executive Director eLab ISEAD, said, “The UAE’s regional top ranking is recognition of the efforts to seize technology as part of the strategy to move forward. During the past decade, the UAE has taken bold initiatives in developing its ICT infrastructure as well as many services — especially e-government

— the UAE’s current ranking is evidence that these efforts were well placed; it can lead others in the region and beyond to undertake similar efforts. Placing great emphasis on technological change will bode the UAE well, he said, “because it will increase local buy-in, especially from business, for this ICT-lead policy, moving from e-readiness to higher levels of usage is now a major challenge for the Emirates.” The UAE push is encouraging others to do the same, he said, and the “dynamics of GCC will create additional emulation. Qatar moved up five ranks this year, and is now just behind the UAE”, Lanvin said.

UAE leads top-30 ICT users

Three Arab countries — the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain — are ranked among the top 30 countries for harnessing information communication and technology (ICT) to transform society. The UAE ranked 24th

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THE PREMIER GLOBAL PLATFORM FOR E-DEVELOPMENT

interview

Enhancing the quality of education and helping build quality manpower for IT industries, Board of IT Education Standards (BITES), in association with Karnataka technical education institutions, has bridged the industry-academia gap through innovative skill development programmes in IT. In conversation with Rachita Jha, Dr R Natarajan, Chairman, BITES shares his views on the emerging trends of technology in education sector.

Excerpts:

Industry meets Academia via BITES’ IT Junction What are your views on the adoption of IT platforms in Indian education and the content delivery?

India has witnessed massive initiatives in the last few decades both in public and private sector to employ IT platforms for enabling and enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of student learning.

The National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), a project funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), was first

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conceived in 1999. The main objective of NPTEL program is to enhance the quality of engineering education in the country by developing curriculum-based video and web courses. This is being carried out by seven IITs and IISc Bangalore as a collaborative project.

In the first phase of the project, supplementary content for 129 web courses in engineering/science and humanities have been developed. Each course contains materials that can be covered in

depth in 40 or more lecture hours. In addition, 110 courses have been developed in video format, with each course comprising approximately 40 or more one-hour lectures.

In the next phase other premier institutions are also likely to participate in content creation. Also there are several initiatives in the private sector to develop content and offer modular courses employing IT tools, at the school as well as the college levels.

interview

What are the key activity areas outlined by BITES in its vision of fostering successful high quality industry-relevant IT education?

We have developed vision and mission statements for Board of IT Education Standards (BITES) through a workshop involving the participation of industry professionals and academic experts constituting our stakeholders. We aim to serve as a catalyst for nurturing excellence in our IT educational institutions, ensuring employability of our graduates, promoting quality of work of our

Nine Key Activity Areas: Advice on policy Competitions and awards Curriculum development Databases Faculty development Industry-institute interaction Institutional development IT education standards and Leadership development

faculty, strengthening interactions and networking among stakeholders, and enhancing global competitiveness of our IT industry. We have also obtained ISO 9000-2008 certification in order to streamline our activities.

What are the most successful technology platforms in Karnataka that are changing the paradigm of quality education?

Karnataka is an active participant in the TEQIP (Technical Education Quality Improvement Program), a World Bank-assisted national project for quality enhancement in technical education in India. Some proactive institutes, including Visvesvaraya Technological University, which affiliate almost all the technical institutions in the state, have several schemes for faculty development and quality improvement. Several major IT industries in Karnataka like WIPRO Mission 10X Program, Infosys Campus-Connect Program, TCS Sangam Program, also have active industry-institute networking programs.

The Confederation of Indian Industries

lead times and gestation periods in education are long and impact of policy changes can only be felt after implementation of the policies (CII) too has several initiatives for institutional development and employability enhancement, such as Employability Bridge. Technical institutions utilise the NPTEL and EDUSAT programs, both to overcome the faculty shortages and for supplementing classroom learning.

What are the major challenges that BITES faced in its success?

In our mission to offer quality technical skills, one of the key challenges that we face each day is of availability of scarce resources of faculty expertise and experience.

The paucity of faculty is further challenged by their strict academic commitments and their time for taking up skill development programmes. It is very difficult to conduct faculty development programs for teachers during the academic session.

What is the importance of faculty training in IT education programmes and how do you train them in this?

Faculty members are the key to effective and efficient student learning. Their role has, however, undergone a significant change in recent years, as a result of several factors, including the diversity of learning opportunities available to the 21st century learners, the unique characteristics of Gen X learners, the proliferation of IT tools and platforms. The faculty member of today is more a coach or mentor rather than a dispenser of knowledge. The teacher is no longer the sage on the stage, but a guide on the side.

Distance Education will play an important role in making ‘education for all’ a reality. How do you perceive IT as a catalyst for faster realisation of the dream?

From an e-Learning 2.0 perspective, conventional e-learning systems were based on instructional packets that were delivered to students using Internet technologies. The role of the student

comprised learning from the readings and preparing assignments evaluated by the teachers whereas, the new e-learning places increased emphasis on social learning and use of social software such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and virtual worlds. This phenomenon has also been referred to as Long Tail Learning.

How can we have more privateindustry partnerships in vocational education? What is its current scene in Karnataka?

Vocational Education can play a significant role in at least two ways: as a formal qualification conferred by ITIs, or as employability-enhancement programs, which may be conducted by stand-alone finishing schools or provided by the employers as induction or in-service programs. There are a few private Finishing Schools in Karnataka. There are also private agencies offering programs for development of soft skills, which seem to be the major area of employability deficit.

What will be the role and importance of standards-setting in technological education in the coming years? BITES’ mantra to success.

The MHRD has been pro-active in establishing appropriate regulatory agencies in higher and technical education. Many reforms, now in the offing, would be passed into law through bills pending in the Parliament. In distance education, the regulatory responsibility rests with the Distance Education Council, comprising IGNOU, UGC and AICTE. BITES bring together major players in higher and technical education, with particular reference to IT, including industry, academia and government. Key reasons for our success have been collaboration, engagement, and motivation, with the stakeholders. It is also important to have the leaders from these sectors on the board to engage in constructive dialogue and together work towards a common goal. \\ digitalLEARNING / MAY 2011

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FEATURE

Digital Learning in Management Studies Most top B-schools today, including INSEAD, Kellogg, Wharton, are focusing on handson learning in a bigway. Even companies today emphasise the use of experiential learning in the corporate training setup

By Rajiv Jayaraman

H

arvard Business School (HBS) invented the Master of Business Administration degree (MBA) in 1921. We are now 10 years away from celebrating 100 years of the MBA degree. After having pioneered various pedagogical methods such as case-based learning, HBS recently announced “bold, brave things” that will set the course for the entire field of management education for the next 100 years. From pure lecture based learning to projects to capstone to case studies, we are now seeing an evolution towards hands-on learning methods such as simulations, multimedia case studies and experiential learning tools.

It is indeed nice to see the handson component gaining ground in the management curriculum. In fact, the verb “manage” comes from the Italian word, maneggiare (to handle), which in turn derives from the Latin wordmanus (hand).

Most top B-schools today, including INSEAD, Kellogg, Wharton, are focusing on hands-on learning in a big. Even companies today emphasize the use of experiential learning in the corporate training setting.

The following drivers are likely to provide an impetus to digital learning in the management domain.

Safe Learning Environments Airplane pilots undergo rigorous flight simulator exercises before they are allowed to man an actual aircraft. Doctors

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Removing silos in management education

The need for continuous learning

Status Learning Environments

practice their skills on a cadaver long enough before they are allowed to do the real thing. When stakes are high, when lives are impacted, when actions are irreversible, it is imperative that a learning environment is created where the learners experience reality and experiment with their decisions in a safe manner.

Come to think of it, modern businesses are also high stakes, they also impact lives immensely and the actions of business managers are often irreversible. Doesn’t

it logically follow that business managers should also undergo such a training process in a virtual environment?

Need for Continuous Learning There is a popular folklore about elephants and their mahouts in Kerala. In order to curb the free-roaming instinct of elephants, the mahouts tether a baby tusker to a strong tree with a chain. The baby elephant tries with all his might to

FEATURE

free itself from the shackles. However, it is not yet strong enough to liberate itself.

With all its efforts to break the chain going in vain, the elephant gives up its quest for freedom and stops struggling.

The most amazing part of the story is that the lesson learnt by the baby elephant is etched so deeply in its psyche that even when it grows up to be one of the strongest animals on the planet, it doesn’t try to test its might against the chain. Even when it is tied with a tiny rope to a weak tree, the elephant doesn’t break free. The mighty elephant limits its capabilities because of the lessons of the past.

Many of us, much like the elephant, succumb to the lessons of the past.

Learning new paradigms is only one side of the equation for today’s managers to cope with the onslaught of rapid changes in the business environment. The other essential side is unlearning the old paradigms. Walking around with remnants of concepts, ideas and habits that belong to an older paradigm is a sure-fire recipe to poor performance.

How can managers equip themselves with key skills to cope with the change?

Clearly, paper based case studies from the ‘80s and ‘90s don’t help because there have been so many fundamental transformations in the last few years that these case studies offer very little value in terms of reality.

There is a need for real-time learning systems that help learners unlearn and learn on a continuous basis. The dynamic nature of the multimedia cases, for example, can help the user understand how decisions taken and lessons learnt in the past, that may have been effective at that time may not be valid in the current scenario.

Removing silos in management education

Silos are bad. This message is hammered into an MBA grad’s mind during the program. However, if you pay close attention to how the curriculum is structured in these programs, you would notice that there is a deep silo. Marketing professors don’t interact with Finance professors and professors in the operations department don’t have an idea of what is

From pure lecture based learning to projects to capstone to case studies, we are now seeing an evolution towards handson learning methods such as simulations, multimedia case studies and experiential learning tools taught in the accounting course. Are not silos bad for B-schools and consequently, for the MBAs that go through the system, just as they are for companies? Are B-schools guilty of not doing what they preach? If yes, how can this be rectified?

Management education should be integrated and holistic. Technology based delivery method should be used to highlight the interconnectedness of the management domains and encourage students, for instance, to learn the financial aspects of a marketing campaign, the supply chain consequences of a new product introduction, the HR perspective of a system’s change in an interconnected fashion. This approach is akin to the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software helping to remove organization silos and to integrate the enterprise.

Facebook-isation of Learning Mark Zuckerberg in one of his recent interviews mentioned that education is ripe for Facebook-isation. Learning inherently is a social activity. Students learn as much from the professors as from peers. It is interesting to see how students challenge each other, collaborate and construct meaning collectively.

This form of learning is highly engaging, interactive and durable and produces much better learning experiences compared to traditional forms of learning.

now living in the Web 2.0 era where hyper-interactive multi-way flow of information is the norm (In fact, experts have already started talking about the advent of the Web 3.0 era). Users not only require interaction with the website but the means to share their experiences with the other users of the site. Increasingly, we see this online trend spill over to the way businesses function as well.

Businesses today interact and co-create products and services along with their end users. Given this trend, the key question we need to ask is, isn’t it time that learning also became Web2.0-ised?

The reality, however, is that even today, knowledge is imparted largely in the Web 1.0 style. The instructor assumes the role of an expert and delivers a lecture, with very little interaction between him / her and the students, leave alone interaction between the students. This method of delivery is ripe for disruption. Social learning platforms that help students collectively construct meaning will go a long way in engaging students and elevate the learning.

Clearly digital learning is the way forward for management education. We are likely to witness a lot of innovations happening at B-schools and corporations alike for training a new breed of managers. \\ Author

Web 2.0-isation of management learning Let’s rewind back to the early days of the world-wide-web. If we jog our memories a little, we’d remember that websites in those days served the purpose of disseminating information in a predominantly one-way fashion. This is usually referred to as the Web 1.0 era. We are

Rajiv Jayaraman Founder-CEO of KNOLSKAPE

digitalLEARNING / May 2011

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corporate diary

Technology Enhancing Intelligence, Capabilities Every child is intelligent and effective use of technology can act as a tool to help students to discover and enhance their intelligence and capabilities. As the Director of an education innovations company, Mexus Education Pvt Ltd, creating futuristic technology based model for education Anil Goyal strongly believes that the next big trend in ICT in education will be the paradigm shift from IT hardware and software to edutainment as the mode of education delivery in each classroom in India. In conversation with Rachita Jha shares his passion for innovative use of technology in classrooms What made you start futuristic technology based education business?

If we compare the kind of education that was delivered during the Gurukul times with today, we find that although there were many techniques used in those times the content/information was less.

Today we have the requirements to expose our learners to new areas of expertise, new challenges in higher education and new skill sets. Parents today also want to

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highlight specific abilities in their child and chart out his higher education path accordingly. This is an area, where interactivity through technology has become important, as the teacher now in his/her 40 minutes of classroom interaction has to deliver the best of her learning to student. This can be easily done using an innovative mix of various digital tools such as multimedia, interactive digital content and concept-based stimulators. However, in the overall philosophy of quality educa-

tion delivery, technology can only act as a tool to enhance the multiple intelligence capabilities of millions of school students who go through the daily grind in our education system each day and teachers will always play role of facilitators in connecting the knowledge with the learner.

Please tell us about the journey of educational technology at Mexus?

Initially when we started in 2008, the major thrust area for us was on innova-

corporate diary

tion in education and classrooms. We spent most of our time and resources in understanding the teaching gaps, understanding the many constraints that the teachers face in delivery of curriculum and make it new and innovative.

To ensure that we do not replicate what is already present in the market, we interacted with schools, teachers and students to understand more on the challenges in using the existing array of digital content.

It helped us to get a hands-on understanding on the gaps that exist in the current educational technology scenario. What we observed is a dry presentation of content that is picked up from textbooks, that is windows based or explorer based.

The Howard Gardner theory of multiple intelligences, by far, has been the foundation philosophy of all our educational initiatives and we strongly believe that each child is intelligent – we just have to device innovative tools to bring out the best in our learners. Our educational content should successfully engage the students and teachers in the knowledge sharing experience and digress from the rote system of education.

Teachers - the key to success of technology-driven classrooms are usually reluctant on use of technology. How do we overcome this roadblock?

It is true and we have experienced that teachers are apprehensive on use of technology in curriculum delivery. They are not quite often to view it as an enabler to assist them in their classrooms, owing to conventions.

Even though, in our workshops one would find that on one hand the students are very proactive in adoption and using new learning tools, many of the teachers today continue to be comfortable in the conventional mode of curriculum delivery.

In addition, when introduced in schools, teachers find it difficult to mould themselves and their teaching styles with digital content that is introduced. We have taken this as a challenge and at Mexus, we ensure that the teacher is at the core of all our classroom solu-

tions – by periodic training programmes and user-friendly software with simple instructions and use of devices.

The challenge is always to connect and motivate them to use more of the digital content in schools –and to bridge the gap. We are always progressive on our innovation and software design that has made us successful in making our products more teacher-friendly and effective in classrooms.

Tech tools for 360 degree learning, what are the key elements on this mode of learning?

The main challenge of the teacher today is to engage with the students in 40 minutes and make them understand a concept thoroughly. In our 360 degree model of learning, we have made a string of

fore retained in their memory for a longer time. Our movies are not just hightech animation – it is created on the pedagogy of experiential learning that addresses disconnect that currently exists between what is taught in our books from the real world.

Future of education lies in edutainment, your views on the same?

Initially we were followed the similar stuck solely to digital content but when we found that it is not successful in making learning fun in classrooms, we revised our products line and used technology innovatively as a tool to make curriculum a source of edutainment in classroom – both for the teachers and students alike. We realized that our solutions should help teachers address

Our educational content should successfully engage the students and teachers in the knowledge sharing experience and degress from the rote system of education engagement activities for the teacher with innovative use of technology aids to ensure that the teacher is successful in her deliverable and the students enjoy learning the topic using interactive tools and experiencing the concept.

In an Iken classroom, we begin with a mind map that plays a vital in introducing the concept to the students – it defines the background on the learning concepts that will be taught in the classroom. Mind maps are used worldwide as a retention and learning tool and we aim to bring the same for schools in India. This is followed by a power point presentation on the details of the chapter. A movie based on the topic is then showed to the students - this plays the role of connecting the topic to the real world. The students enjoy learning the concepts through the characters in the movie that take them on a journey related to the topic of the subject as applications in the world that surrounds them. They therefore build an instant connect with the concept and is there-

disparity in aptitude of students while students remain engaged in subject topic through entertaining media like videos and animations. Our philosophy of Edutainment i.e. Education as Entertainment seek to make the education effective and application-based for students to absorb all the knowledge as lifelong learning and not just education for a degree.

Our innovations like talking books and comic series encourage such experiential learning paradigms with sketchy cartoons in simple language that are already attracting attention of all the education fraternity.

The education system in India is in dire need of such unconventional pedagogies of learning like experimental learning, activity based learning through concept simulating games and has incorporated various inputs and research findings gained over a period of time to develop product that explain the academic content through various modes of learning. \\ digitalLEARNING / may 2011

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news

CORPORATE

QDE launches vocational courses in financial study Quantum Dynamics Education, an institute of life skills, has introduced shortterm vocational courses on financial study that will help people understand and upgrade their fundamentals of investment and wealth management in an interesting and engaging way. Spanning

across diverse range of subjects elucidating fundamental concepts on smart investing in Stock Markets, Financial Instruments, Real Estate, Gold and Equities, the nouveau courses are created using the vast experience of experts at Quantum Dynamics Education.

Pearson’s new approach to business education

Everonn Education may bag Rs 15000cr order from NSDC

Textbook learning, with the help of Pearson and Languagelab. com, will be taken to the next level of 3D experience besides interactivity and socialsing.

Market Leader Live transforms the case studies from the bestselling Market Leader Business English series. It provides students around the world with a unique opportunity to use English in the actual situations they are preparing for, allowing them to practice and learn with qualified teach-

ers – and network with each other – in a controlled, business-focused environment.

Stephen Nicholl, Editorial Director, Business English at Pearson said, “We were impressed by Languagelab’s ability to move the Market Leader case studies into an entirely new learning space, which we believe will offer students a level of interaction not seen before in Business English learning.”

Everonn Education is likely to bag order over Rs 15000 crore from NSDC. The order will be executed in next 10 years.

The announcement is likely to take place

soon. NSDC is likely to hold 27 per cent in joint venture and rest will be with Everonn. The company’s current order book stands at around Rs 500 crore. It was trading with volumes of 1,723,830 shares, compared to its five-day average of 464,279 shares, an increase of 271.29 per cent. In the previous trading session, the share closed up 3.62 per cent or Rs 21.35 at Rs 611.75.

MPI puts in Rs 50Cr in MIPS Matrix Partners India has invested Rs 50 crore in the first institutional round of funding of Maharana Infrastructure and Professional Services Private Ltd (MIPS). Matrix, an investment firm with Rs 1,500 crore under management, is the sole investor to participate in this round. This investment marks Matrix’s third deal in the fast-growing education space. The other education portfolio firms include test prep firm FIIT JEE and pre-school chain Tree House.

With this round, Matrix India director Amit Kapoor will join the board of MIPS, a service provider to higher education institutes in northern India. “MIPS has an innovative business model to address the needs of the country’s fast-growing education sector. It is well-positioned to become a dominant player in India with its focus on providing state-of-the-art facilities and high quality, job-oriented training,” said Kapoor. Matrix Partners started in Boston in 1977 as Hellman Ferri Investment Associates.

APMDC to educate tribals as per CSR The Andhra Pradesh state government enterprise, AP Mineral Development Corporation (APMDC) Ltd, has resolved to spend 20 per cent of the amount realised from M/s. Orient Cements towards higher education of tribals in Utnoor agency area of Adilabad district, Andhra Pradesh. Orient Cements is MDC’s joint venture company that extracts limestone in the agency area of Adilabad. Even as a debate rages in the country on finalising the quantum of mining profits to be shared towards corporate social responsibility, a state government enterprise has taken the lead by deciding to spend 20 per cent of the profits towards higher education of tribals in Adilabad. Official sources said the joint venture company had paid Rs 3 crore as royalty to state government and the net profit of the company was around Rs 3 crore. “An amount of Rs 60 lakh has been earmarked to cater to the needs of higher education among tribals in the agency area. The Utnoor Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA) project officer has been entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring higher education to tribals in the area. We have finalised the guidelines of the policy regarding spending 20 per cent of profits in consultation with the tribal welfare commissioner,” said Praveen Prakash, MD, APMDC.priority attention.”

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event report

HP Catalyst Summit 2011:

Enhancing STEM Education With the HP Catalyst’ 2010 initiative, HP built a global network of consortia to explore more effective approaches to STEM education

H

ewlett-Packard (HP) has organised first ever HP Catalyst Summit 2011 from 10th to 13th March,2011 at The Lalit, New Delhi, India bringing together over 100 global education leaders from across 11 countries, Indian policy makers and government representatives. Catalyst initiative is a part of HP’s CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) to address the critical challenges in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education in India and globally.

Co-organised with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), the summit explored topics such as the effective use of tablet PCs for teaching and learning, cloud computing in education and converting textbooks into a social media platforms for conversations and assessment. Agastya International Foundation conducted a hands-on mobile science learning event to families and students.

The summit was an expansion of previously announced education initiatives in India such as the HP Lab-in-Box in 2011 and BASE Sankya Learning Laboratory. By the end of 2011, HP will have invested more than US $10M globally in the Catalyst initiative.

With this initiative, HP built a global network of consortia to explore more effective approaches to STEM education. The goal is to create collaborative “sandboxes” of innovation that will explore what the future where students use their technical and creative ingenuity to address urgent social challenges in their communities and around the world.

The HP Catalyst Initiative funded five

the Education Innovation Challenge Fund is meant to motivate institutions and students to think out-of-the-box for solutions consortia in 2010, each exploring a specific area for making STEM education more effective and relevant. Each consortium received more than $1million in technology, cash and professional services, consists of six member organizations, plus a lead organization selected by HP to facilitate the consortium.

The Multi-Versity has demonstrated new and best practices in online education for STEM students and the professional development of instructional faculty. The long-term goal is to provide students with new learning opportunities from a variety of institutions. This consortium was led by the Sloan Consortium (USA). Pedagogy 3.0 created new models of teacher preparation that will better equip teachers to facilitate powerful 21st century learning experiences for students. This consortium was led by Futurelab (UK) To employing the power of collaborative grid computing, Global Collaboratory consortium enabled students to participate in collaborative problem-solving to address urgent social challenges. This consortium was led by the CSIR Meraka Institute (South Africa). The New Learner engaged formal and informal education institutions as they explored how to build a network of learning opportunities for students. This consortium was by the Agastya International Foundation (India) HP has also announced the plan to

initially invest US$1 million in support of a new Education Innovation Challenge Fund for India, led by a consortium of leading education organizations in India.

The fund will grant public and private (not-for-profit) education institutions the opportunity to pursue novel approaches to STEM learning for the 21st century.

Madhav Chavan, CEO and President of Pratham Education Foundation, Ashok Kamath, Chairman of Akshara Foundation, and Sridhar Rajagopalan, Managing Director of Education Initiatives, are serving in an advisory role as the fund gets established at an independent non-governmental organization (NGO). The goal is to operationalise the fund by August 2011 and encourage other private sector organisations to support and promote innovations in STEM education.

“HP is committed to empowering students and teachers globally improve the models of STEM education and enable them to address some of the bigger social challenges around the world and in their communities. The Education Innovation Challenge Fund is meant to motivate institutions and students to think out-ofthe-box for solutions and ideas that are both collaborative and creative in furthering STEM education in India,” said Jeannette Weisschuh, Director of Global Education Programs, Office of Global Social Innovation, HP \\ digitalLEARNING / May 2011

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news

BUSINESS

Microsoft Office 365 Public Beta available in India Microsoft has announced the public beta of Microsoft Office 365, the company’s next generation cloud productivity service for businesses of all sizes, in India. Office 365 was introduced in limited beta last year, bringing together Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online in an always-up-to-date cloud service. The public beta allows millions of people in India and across the world to try Office 365 for the first time. Globally, more than 70 per cent of the organisations that signed up for the limited beta were small businesses with fewer than 25 employees.

Aruba Wireless Solutions introduced in IIT

Aruba Networks, the global leader in distributed enterprise networks has announced the successful deployment of ‘Aruba Wireless Solution’ in the academic section and workshops in one of the highly renowned institutions of India- Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Prior to approaching Aruba Networks, IIT Delhi functioned on a wired network, which started to pose as a challenge when it came to safety and cost effectiveness. Aruba Networks provided the institution with a centralized Wireless LAN solution, a centralized management and authentication for AAA servers, which aimed to deliver stability, performance, security and features like Adaptive Radio Management (ARM). “Mobility is the keyword nowadays, as majority of the people have mobile gadgets that need to connect to the Internet through WLAN,” says Shalendra Singh, Country Manager India, Aruba Networks.

P&G’s Shiksha to build 20+ schools all over India Procter & Gamble’s signature CSR Program “Shiksha” has come up with more schools all over India after it was launched a few days back. Shiksha has, so far, impacted lives of 150,000 children till 2010, aims to take number to 200,000 in 2011. By this initiative P&G has given its consumers a simple yet powerful way to participate in build-

ing India’s educational future. Every time a consumer buys P&G products in the month of April, May and June, Shiksha contributes a portion of the proceeds towards children’s education.

Now in its seventh year, Shiksha is back with an even stronger commitment - to take its current impact of 150,000 children to the 200,000 mark. In 2010, Shiksha took initiative in building over 20 schools all across India, supported 100+ existing schools and now aims to build at-least 20 more in the coming year.

Azim Premji Foundation partners with TISS to launch APSE The Azim Premji Foundation has joined hands with Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) to set up the Azim Premji School of Education (APSE). The APSE at TISS Hyderabad will offer Degrees and continuing education programmes and conduct research in the field of education. Under the MoU, Azim Premji Foundation will provide financial support to APSE including for research, programs and infrastructure. Foundation CEO Dileep Ranjekar, who is also Azim Premji University Board of Governors member said, ‘’improving the quality of education must be one of India’s key goals. We think this task needs organisations who have shared vision to collaborate deeply.’’

Intel ICT to boost rural health care services in Abuja As part of its corporate social responsibility efforts, Intel Corporation has decided to launch a pilot electronic health (e-Health) programme in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to address some of the challenges that the nation is facing in healthcare. In early 2009, the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory Millennium Development Goals Unit (FCTMDGU) health officials and Intel Corporation began discussing ways that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) could be used to improve health and healthcare delivery in rural areas. According to the Business Development Manager, Intel Nigeria, David Ibhawoh, the company observed that a large percentage of the people in the country do not have access to health and also where there were any they lacked the specialist, especially dermatologists. Intel with 80 per cent of the world’s market for microprocessors, the brains of personal computers, he said, decided to take healthcare to the communities through mobile health (m-Health) and telemedicine that eventually gave birth to the Mailafiya Health Programme.

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Recognizing Global Innovation & Excellence in Education

SCHOOL EDUCATION :: SKILLS AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION HIGHER EDUCATION GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES :: PRIVATE sector INITIATIVES

13-15 JULY 2011 | the ashok, New Delhi, INDIA join the education platform of the year!

Send your nominations today and be counted!

For nomination forms log on to www.worldeducationsummit.net/awards

Award Categories School Education • Best Innovation in Science Education • Best Innovation in English Education • Best Innovation in Maths Education • Best Global Collaborative Learning Award • Best Special Needs Education Award • Best Innovation in Teaching Pedagogy • Best Social Media in Education • Best Green School Initiative • Best eSchool Award • Best mLearning Initiative • Best Innovation in Open and Distance Learning Higher Education • Best Global Collaborative Learning Award • Best Social Media in Education Award • Best eCampus Award • Best Green Campus Award • Best mLearning Initiative • Best Innovation in Open and Distance Learning • Best Interface between Academia – Industry • Best B-School Proving Global Student Exposure • Best ICT Enabled Business-School • Best Virtual Laboratory for Engineering and Applied Sciences • Best ICT Enabled Engineering College

Organisers

Skills and Vocational Education • Best Vocational and Skills initiative • Best Innovation in Open and Distance Learning in Vocational and Skills Development • Best Public-Private Initiative in Vocational and Skills Training Government Initiative • Best Scheme for Primary/Secondary Education • Best Scheme for Higher Education • Best Scheme for Promoting Overseas Collaboration in Learning • Best Vocational and Skills Initiative Private Sector Initiative • Best Test Preparation Services for Entrance Examinations • Best Use of Assistive Technologies in Education • Best Multi-Media Content for K12 Education • Best Training to Working Professionals • Best Financial Service Providers in Education • Best Technology for Engineering Institutes • Best Technology for Management Institutes • Best Assessment Tool for Measuring Skills • Best m Learning Initiative

Stand out and be counted

nominate now!

Nomination Closes on 26th May, 2011 www.worldeducationsummit.net/awards For further information contact: Sheena Joseph awards@worldeducationsummit.net Mobile +91 – 8860651644 Awards to be announced at the World Education Summit venue between 13-15 July, 2011 at the Ashok, New Delhi Visit www.worldeducationsummit.net/awards

co-organisers

www.worldeducationsummit.net

supporting partner