ISTE SHORT TERM TRAINING PROGRAM (STTP)

ISTE STTP on Technical Communication was conducted by IITB during 8th October 2015 - 5th December 2015 at Dronacharya Group of Institutions, Greater Noida.

DGI - Greater Noida is the Remote Center - RC No 1316 for the online workshops conducted by Indian Institute of Technology - Bombay and Kharagpur. These classes are done under the prestigious project of Ministry of Human Resource Development - Government of India to Train and Teach Teachers under the National Mission of Education through Information and Communication Technology. As Information and Communication Technology can play a pivotal role in the future education system, this project is very ambitious and targets to train 10 Lakhs Engineering teachers all over India.

National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NME - ICT): Under this project all the colleges, institutes and universities are being provided with high speed data connectivity so that high quality e-content could be reached to the teachers and students of educational organizations.

As it was targeted to the Engineering faculty, Technical Communication plays a very important role in their lives. All the classroom teachings and take a ways are technical in nature, hence the way to deliver them in a conducive environment is very important. Imbibing this was the main motive of this workshop.

Total of 43 faculties from various colleges like DGI - GN, JSS Noida, Accman Institute of Technology - GN, KEC - GZB, SD college of Engineering, Shree Shyam College, Aishwarya college of Education - Jodhpur participated in the workshop.

The teaching faculties from IITB involved in the workshop were -

1. Prof. P Sunthar (Coordinator), Chemical Engineering

2. Prof. M P Gururajan, Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science

3. Prof. Leena Jha, Sailesh J Mehta School of Management

4. Prof. Ambarish Kunwar, Bio-sciences and Bioengineering

5. Prof. Sahana Murthy, Education Technology

6. Prof. Ashish Pandey, Sailesh J Mehta School of Management

7. Prof. Prita Pant, Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science

8. Prof. D Parthasarathy, Humanities and Social Sciences

9. Prof. Sachin Patwardhan, Chemical Engineering

10. Prof. Virendra Sethi, Environmental Science and Engineering

The course content was divided into two segments -

1. Online Component: 8 Oct to 11 Nov 2015 (5 weeks) in which a set of lectures and assignments was posted every week and the participants were expected to attempt the component at any time of the day from any computer with Internet access.

2. Face-to-face workshop: 30 Nov to 5 Dec 2015 (6 days) The schedule of the workshop was 9:30 am to 4:30 pm Monday to Saturday.

The face to face workshop started on Nov 30th 2015 at 09:30 AM with the opening note from Prof. Sunthar- The Program Coordinator. He outlined the facts behind the workshop and introduced everyone associated with the program.

The Day 1 of the workshop was towards the explanation of Scientific Technology. He gave a case study in form of a Research Paper and asked all the remote centers to give their opinion about the same. This was very thoroughly discussed during the course of the day.

On Day 2 of the workshop, Prof. Sunthar gave a reading assignment. He gave a research paper on ‘Semantic congruity affects numerical judgments similarly in monkeys and humans’. He explained the full experiment thoroughly and the basis on which the conclusions were drawn. All the remote centers were asked to read the abstract of the research paper and rewrite the abstract in their own words. This was then discussed with all the remote centers all over India and the feedback was given regarding the same by Prof. Sunthar. This was all covered in the process of Reading and Abstract writing exercise on Day 2.

On Day 3 Prof. Gururajan took the audience through the concept of ‘Elevator Pitch’. This is basically done to introduce a new person with a new concept of Research and to teach him/her how to present an idea within 2 mins to someone.

On Day 4 Prof. Ambarish Kunwar took us on determining the role of an Author in Research paper. He gave live scenarios to determine the role of the author. Furthermore there were sessions on Presentation skills by Prof. Virender Sethi. This was the most informative session as this was concerned about the delivery style of the lectures.

Mr. R. Hariharan - ISTE - Projects Coordinator visited the Campus to take the feedback about these ongoing ISTE STTPs. He took the feedback one by one and closely monitored the same. Furthermore, he also shared the future aspirations and ambitions of this project and added the take a ways we will have in the upcoming sessions.

On day 5 Prof. Sahana Murthy and Prof. Ashish Pandey gave an assignment which they called as, ‘Raising the Ticket’. In this assignment all the participants were made to write about themselves. They also asked all the participants to prepare a PPT on any research topic and shrink that in 5 slides. This was to be presented to all the participants. The participants also did another activity on that day called, ‘Mind the Map’ given by Prof. Prita Pant and Prof. D Parthasarathy. In this activity the participants were made to draw all the pictorial things that come to their mind after hearing to any topic. All these graphical presentations were uploaded on the IITB Moodle.

Day 6 was again very interesting with Prof. Leena Jha and Prof. Sachin Patwardhan taking sessions about Group Discussions, Interview etiquettes, Gender Diversity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and at workplace. Prof. Leena Jha explained about why at times the students feel comfortable learning through one faculty ad not through others.

All these sessions were very interactive and main motive of all the lectures was to include all the faculty members of all over India to be conversing with IITB faculty.

The final session of this workshop and the valedictory session was on Dec 5th.