BRAINSTORMING SESSION ON VIRTUAL LAB

Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD) organized a brain storming session on Virtual Lab on 7th October 2015. Virtual Lab is an initiative of Ministry of Human Resource Department under National Mission on Education through ICT. Dr. Sarika Agarwal, Asst. Professor of Electronics and Communication Engineering Department from Dronacharya Group of Institutions, Greater Noida attended the session.

The session started by Prof. Ranjan Bose of Electrical Department, IIT Delhi by delivering a presentation on “Role and Responsibilities of Nodal center” and invited the suggestions from Virtual lab Co-coordinators for improvement in Virtual Lab.

He further pointed out that Virtual Labs not only involve the participating institutes developing the labs but also several colleges that are using the material and experiments from Virtual Labs as part of their curriculum. He presented the background, progress, issues, and status of the project:

Objectives of Virtual Labs: The objectives of the Virtual Labs project are to provide the country's engineering colleges with high-quality content, access through a common web interface, and connect physical laboratory equipment with remote users.

Structure of Virtual Labs: Each virtual lab consists of a user - friendly web front-end, with a back-end simulation engine running on a server or a system doing actual measurement of data on a real experiment.

Scope of Virtual Labs: Labs cover UG, PG, and research levels, covering a total of nine disciplines in engineering and science.

In next session, Virtual lab Coordinators shared their experiences about Vlab with the help of Presentation and discussed “How Vlab is beneficial for their students”. Dr. Sarika Agarwal, briefed about the Virtual Lab Vcampus website and its advantages for the students.

Further Mr. Kaushik from Virtual Lab, IIT Delhi discussed the proposal to appoint regional center among Nodal center and invited the suggestions about the parameters /criteria on which selection of Regional center can be done. All participants gave their valuable suggestions and discussed the role of Regional Center. It included:

1. No. of workshop to be organized by Regional Center

2. Financial issues

3. How many Colleges must be covered by one Regional Center etc.

Overall the session was interactive and ended with Vote of thanks by Mr. Kaushik.