8/4/2019 Updated Guidelines for New Remote Centers

1/3

Guidelines for Institutes wishing to become Remote Centers for IIT Bombay

Introduction

An important initiative has been taken by IIT Bombay to work with Engineering Colleges in the country

to enhance the teaching skills of faculty colleagues in core Engineering and Science subjects, under theproject, Empowerment of Students/Teachers through Synchronous & Asynchronous Instruction.This initiative is a part of the National Mission on Education through ICT, supported by MHRD. Under

this project, IIT Bombay conducts two-week ISTE workshops through a blended mode of engagement.This approach envisages setting up Remote Centers across the county. About 30 to 40 participants cometo a Remote Center assigned to them. Using a number of such remote centers, a large number of teacherscan participate in these workshops. Operating virtual class-room technology, lectures are transmitted live

from IIT to all remote centers. Lab and tutorial sessions are conducted locally at each remote center. Inthis fashion, some 1000 teachers can benefit from each workshop, conducted at 30 odd remote centers.We have already conducted 5 workshops at 77 remote centers since Dec. 2009*; we propose to conduct 3more by the end of 2011, and 2 in the summer of 2012**.

Remote Center (RC)

Successful conduct of a workshop depends not only on the faculty from IIT teaching the subject, but alsoupon the arrangements and facilities made available at each Remote Centre (RC). This requires that eachRC should nominate a Center coordinator, who will primarily be responsible for taking care of commonlogistics arrangements such as classroom, audio-visual equipment, and arrangements for stay and food for

participating teachers. Additionally, each subject specific workshop will require another faculty memberto be nominated as the workshop coordinator for that subject. The workshop coordinator will beresponsible for liaison with IIT Bombay faculty for that subject, and will conduct the lab and tutorialsessions at that RC.

The institute wishing to become a RC should appoint a Remote Center Coordinator, and a WorkshopCoordinator.

Orientation program for workshop - coordinators

A five-day Coordinatorsorientation workshop is held in IIT Bombay, at least two months before themain workshop. The 5-day workshop is conducted to provide a complete orientation to the prospective

workshop coordinators, on the methodology to be followed in this project. This includes the method ofdelivery of live lectures through the AVIEW mechanism of interaction with participants, and the localconduct of tutorials and labs. The participants are also asked to provide the syllabi of their universities.Since the final contents are meant to be adopted by most colleges across the country, this workshop

finalizes the following for the selected subject:

Definition of common syllabus to be covered.

Graded coverage from simple to difficult levels, for each topic and subtopic.

Nature of tutorials and lab sessions, keeping the above gradation and the typical examination

pattern in mind, but leading to the typical advanced levels reached in such subject teaching at thetop institutions of the world.

Discussion of laboratory environment and the experiments to be conducted.

8/4/2019 Updated Guidelines for New Remote Centers

2/3

Use of the learning management system, audio-visual equipment, editing tools.

Other logistic details for conducting the main workshop.

During the main workshop, the participating teachers attend live lectures given by IIT faculty, at a remotecenter close to their own college, and also attend tutorial and lab sessions conducted in the same centers.

These Coordinators then act as Workshop Coordinators liaising between the participants at their RemoteCenters, and IIT Bombay. The Workshop Coordinator at every center supervises the conduct of tutorialsand Labs. All the lectures and tutorial sessions are video recorded. The final edited audio-visual contents,along with other course material will be released under Open Source. These contents can be freely used

later by all teachers and students.

IIT Bombay provides complete funding for the conduct of the main workshop at the Remote

Centers.

Requirements to become a Remote Center

The institute wishing to become a remote center for IIT Bombay for the workshops described

above, needs to have the following facilities.

It should be centrally located with a number of engineering colleges in the area, so as toattract a large number of participants.

It should be well equipped to conduct the workshop through the internet, for a minimum of 30participants.

The workshop will be transmitted using the AVIEW software which will require the equipmentand bandwidth described in Annexure I.

A large classroom with the following facilities, for a minimum of 30 participants:

Overhead projector with large screen connected to a PC.

Internet connection with min. 256 kbps sustained bandwidth in the lab.

UPS to sustain PC/Projector.

Wall mount to locate base station for clickers-receivers appliances, with

Internet connection and Power supply.

A laboratory for conducting experiments for a given subject, with a minimum capacity of 30(subject wise details will be furnished in Coordinators workshop)

Lodging and boarding facilities for participants, either in hostel or in a place near the campus.This is not mandatory, especially if the Remote Center is in a large city with many local

participants.

The institute should appoint a faculty member to be the coordinator for the remote center, to be in charge

of

(a) Class room arrangements, audio visual equipments handling, and coordination of all operation for

smooth conduct of interactive sessions.

(b) Logistics arrangements and supervision of lodging /boarding of participants.

8/4/2019 Updated Guidelines for New Remote Centers

3/3

(c) Handling of final accounts.

If any Institute/college wishes to become a remote center for the first time, it should compulsorilysend us in writing the approval and commitment of Director/HOD of their institute/College forconducting the workshop.

*Details of workshops conducted since Dec. 2009:

Effective Teaching/Learning of Computer Programming (Dec. 2009 and June-July 2010)

Database Management (Dec. 2010)

Thermodynamics in Mechanical Engineering (June 2011)

Basic Electronics (June-July 2011)

**Forthcoming workshops:

Software Development Techniques for Teachers of Engineering and Science Institutes

(November-December 2011, spread over 5 weekends)

Solar Photovoltaics (12-22 Dec. 2011)

Heat Transfer (Dec. 2011; dates yet to be decided)

Embedded Systems (Summer 2012)

Computational Fluid Dynamics (Summer 2012)

Annexure I

Internet Bandwidth (Compulsory & Important) : Minimum 1Mbps stable internet connection with

one public IP address is required and it should be connected to the classroom's computer which will beused for A-VIEW transmission. This 1Mbps line should not be shared to other computers.

(During the transmission through A-VIEW, you will require minimum 512kbps download and 256 kbpsupload bandwidth.)

A-VIEW software/hardware requirements (These are also compulsory)

Personal computer with minimum 2GB RAM.

(It should have Windows XP or Windows 7 operating system)

Video camera/handy-cam with tripod. (Web-cam is not acceptable)

To connect video camera/handy-cam to PC (any one of the following)

USB video capture device (If video camera/handy-cam has composite signal out)

USB/ PCI IEEE1394 Firewire device (If video camera/handy-cam has DV signal out)

At least one professional wired or wireless mike/microphone

(Headphone's mic or podium mike will not work efficiently for large audience)

Audio amplifier with two good speakers that can pass the sound clearly to whole audience .

Cables and connectors for video and audio devices, (Cables & connectors may be different fordifferent equipment models)

Installation package of A-VIEW Classroom.