IIT-B, Amrita Varsity partner to empower engineering teachers

Updated on: Wednesday, December 22, 2010

IIT-Bombay along with Amrita varsity has unveiled an online facility to improve the technology and teaching methodology used by the faculty of engineering colleges across the country.

"Over 1,000 college teachers are participating in the two-week online workshop on 'Database Management Systems' being conducted from IIT, Bombay. This is a unique programme in which technology and methodology is jointly developed by IIT- Bombay and Amrita University," Professor D B Pathak, the brains behind the programme, said.

"It is gratifying to see that my dream to empower thousands of college teachers in core engineering courses has been realised," he said.

These workshops are being held as part of the 'Talk to a Teacher' project headed by IIT-Bombay Professor Kannan Moudgalya, who said, "We are also pioneering the 'Ask a Question' series that allows any student to post their conceptual questions online and get live answers from experts."

IIT-Bombay Director Prof Devang Khakhar said the institute is committed to making a difference in the areas of education and research in the Indian academia through several outreach programmes.

"Over 1,000 college teachers who are participating in the current programme belong to around 500 institutions and have come together at 32 nodal centers across the country. These 32 remote centres are using the A-VIEW (Amrita Virtual Interactive E-Learning World) system developed by Amrita University," Vice-Chancellor Venkat Rangan said.

"A-VIEW is the result of several years of R&D at Amrita and we are pleased that it is being used in India's educational system," he said.

The two-week workshop on database management systems, which concludes tomorrow, is being conducted by Dr Sudarshan, an IIT-Bombay Professor and the author of a widely used textbook on database systems.

Addressing the workshop yesterday, TCS Vice-Chairman S. Ramadorai said, "India's future depends on the capabilities and expertise of its human capital. It is the academic community that can play a transformation role in building this future. This 'first-of-its-kind' online national teacher empowerment programme is a bold step toward building excellence amongst the teaching community."

"This unique operation should be scaled for much wider usage in coming years, spanning all dimensions of Indian education including schools," he said.

Funding for the programme is being provided by the National Mission on Education via Information and Communication Technology (NME-ICT).

Speaking on the occasion, Ministry of Human Resources Development Additional Secretary N K Sinha said, "Our goal is to improve the quality of teachers and make higher education accessible to everyone."

The National Knowledge Commission has determined that the quality of higher education is one of the key factors in India's growth, he said.

IIT-B, Amrita Varsity partner to empower engineering teachers

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