Envisioning of CEC’s objectives and goals and realigning in the context of HE policies on ICT & e-learning 16 th November, 2011 Pradeep Kaul Senior Consultant,

Envisioning of CEC’s objectives and goals and realigning in the context of HE policies on ICT &

e-learning

16th November , 2011

Pradeep KaulSenior Consultant, NME-ICT, MHRDFormer Jt. Dir (Tec) [email protected]

at

India Habitat Centre, New Delhi

Views expressed in this presentation are of the author.

NATIONAL MISSION ON

EDUCATION,

THROUGH

INFORMATION

COMMUNICATION

TECHNOLOGY (ICT)

NME

I CT

2009

The

Mission Document on

NME-ICT

is available at

www.sakshat.ac.in

The Mission document has 48 Objectives

MHRD, Govt. of India, has initiated a massive programme of utilising ICT for spread of e-learning in the country, under the banner "National Mission on Education through ICT" (NME-ICT). An amount of Rs.4612 Crore is to be incurred during the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-12).

The Mission was launched on February 3, 2009 by the Hon’ble HRM at Tirupati, wherein all the Vice-chancellors, Directors of premier institutions and other dignities were invited to attend the function.

NME-ICT

The Mission aims to generate e-content, video programmes and content, suitably seen on Net, DTH, IPTV, etc.

The content will be generated for complete Under Graduate/Post Graduate subjects in hundreds of courses that are currently taught in colleges and universities throughout the country.

High quality e-content production in almost every subject /course / discipline, for the target groups has already been initiated by hundreds of colleges, universities, institutions of higher learning across the Country.

CONTENT GENERATION

Development of e-Content by IIT’s titled, National Programme of Technology enhanced Learning (NPTEL) Phase II and III will be part of the content generation activity. 120 courses on Web+ 120 Video Courses in Phase-I. Phase II, 1020 Video courses for 24 disciplines of engineers UG, PG & Management are being added.CEC is developing e-Content in 19 and 68 subjects of UG in phase I and II respectivelyUGC shall produce Post Grad., e-Content in 77 SubjectsTERI University is developing PG Programme in environmental sciences Development of Content in Regional Language.

About 1800 Crores are for on Content Generation.

CONTENT GENERATION

Provision of e-books, e-journalsThe Mission shall make available: (a) textbooks, reference books, research journals, learning material and software that may be used for educational and training purpose etc., (b) high quality reading material, reference material, research papers, educational software, for use by Indian learners, free of cost, in digitized form.

Right now for College students 74,000 e-books from 297 publishers, 3700 e-Journals are available to 1,08,729 students associated to 1,512 Institutions. Similarly for University students more than 7,500 e-Journals to students associated to 297 Institutions are available from INFLIBNET & IIT Delhi

Full text e-Thesis numbering 2224 is available.

Development of Access Devices

Experimentation and development of ultra low cost low power consuming access devices/ laptops (Android 2.2) for a wider coverage of learners & their field trials. A 7” LCCD numbering 10, 000 pieces and costing about Rs. 2250/- was launched on 5th October, 2011 by the HRM

Provision of 220 million PC in 22000 Institutions of Higher Learning at 50% subsidy shall be made available to students of Higher education.

Development of Language Converter and Translation Tool Kit:

Creation of Bi-lingual Corpora and Development of Machine Aided Translation Engines, English to Tamil/ Hindi

Development of Vocational Education modules and use of Haptic devices for education and training

Develop software interfaces for Linear Haptic device – Hacksaw, File, Table saw, Planar, Jigsaw, Band-saw

Development of Low Cost mobile Robots- Robotica for Education

Other Developmental Projects

The village community network technology development and pilot out plan for low cost opportunity communication network for rural areas of India.

Library Automation & Resource Sharing network

Development of an Indian sign language recognition system for hearing impaired students of India

Other Developmental Projects

Interactivity and problem solving approach would be addressed through “Talk to a Teacher” component, where availability of teachers to take the questions of learners shall be ensured appropriately.

NME-ICT would simultaneously extend computer infrastructure and connectivity to over 22000 colleges in the country including each of the departments of 450 universities/deemed universities and institutions of national importance on a single point rental basis.

The scheme shall not discriminate between Institutions in Govt and Private sectors.

CONTENT DESSIMINATION

2000 nodes for 1 Gbps connectivity (equivalent to 2000 number of 512 kbps VPN endpoint) at each of the 100 Central Institutions / premier institutions to be connected through BSNL Internet + VPN Plan.

15-20 nodes of 10 Mbps connectivity at each of the 22,000 Institutions of Higher Learning connected through BSNL Internet + VPN Plan.

•As on Sept, 1, 2011, 375B+10M Universities and 12435+194 Colleges have been connected

CONNECTIVITY (Net)

Tools for setting up of Virtual labs for quality enhancement are being developed, so that the learners in distance education system and remotely located & backward areas can reap the benefit of quality and relevant education, through ICT mode.

About 882 Virtual Lab experiments in first phase are being designed, comprising of a user friendly graphical front-end, working in synchronization with a backend, consisting of a simulation-engine running on a server or actual measurement data or a real experiment.

DEVELOPMENT & REALIZATION of VIRTUAL LABORATORIES

Electronics & Communication, Electrical Engg., Chemical Sciences, Mechanical Eng., Civil Engg., Physical Sciences, Biotechnology, Computer Science and Engg, Chemical Engg.

Virtual Labs will provide students results of an experiment by:i) Remote triggered experimentsii) Measurement basedIII) Modeling / simulations.

Besides this Development of software controlled hardware programming for robotics & other crucial areas.

DEVELOPMENT & REALIZATION of VIRTUAL LABORATORIES

Development of Enterprise Recourse

Package Learning Management System (LMS)

Student behaviour tracking and Visualization

Time table management

Library management system

Asset manag. & tracking system with APIs to interface tracking devices

Project management system

Grant management system

Localization into regional languages

Cloud API, Security framework, Brihaspati-4.

Service upgradation to Chaupal based storage cloud.

Development of Enterprise Recourse

Package Upgrade to OpenID based authentication and

authorisation

Online academic registration system – to be made operational.

Student portfolio management system.

Parent notification and interaction system.

Payroll, taxation and accounting system.

BrihasptiSync – live lecture delivery system.

Brihaspati websites – Content management system

Beside Net, there is a provision to disseminate educational material to digitally deprived students throughout the country: via DTH and EDUSAT.

One EduSAT Satellite Interactive Terminal (SIT) at each of the 22,000 Institutions of Higher Learning.

Provision of 1000 DTH Channels for beaming various educational programmes including IPTv.

This would enable availability of one DTH channel for every subject for every class and in many of the regional Languages.

It is envisaged to have about 40 – 50 transponders from Indian satellites.

CONNECTIVITY DTH

WHAT SHOULD BE THE

PRODUCTION

& DELIVERY METHODOLOGY Of

e-EDUCATION

IN INDIA

(views)

Teaching Methodology

India has acute shortage of Teachers, to have Equity and Access, it is therefore felt that there is a need to deliver Teaching, besides providing tools for Learning to the students. 

Since it is difficult to synchronize the e-learning deliveries with the teaching taking place through conventional methods all over the country, it is proposed that we should reach the students, at their Homes through DTH, besides reaching them at Institutions through IP N/w.

INDIA: 240 Million Homes

Medium Scenario in India

India enjoys 24% & 29% growth in Internet & telephone connectivity respectively. Tele density in India is 52.74%.

Medium (As on March 31, 2010) Installations in Millions

Home Density %

TV Sets (112M C&S + 28M T) 145 60.4

DTH ( TRAI Report)35.6 14.8

PC 90 37.5Broadband ( As on July 2011 report) 12.5

(14%) 5.2

No of wired Telephone lines 34.18Millions

Mobile Subscribers 858.37 Millions

Internet : 20.00 Millions Number of TV Channels: 652

145 m TV – 90 m Pc = 55 m 55 m x 25,000 Rs. = 1375000 m Rs. 137 thousand Crores

and additional monthly recurring expenses on Bandwidth access charges.

Therefore delivery of educational content together, through DTH and IP is not only economic, but can enable half of the population start benefiting from the national Educational Missions, shortly.

It is recommended that the Content Generation should begin together for delivery platforms such as TV & PC.

DTH is Cost Effective

Media Scenario & TranspondersTV Channels mostly use about 8 hours of fresh and repeat programmes and repeat it 3 times a day for global demand of different time zones.

Proposed DTH Channels to have 6-8 hours of live programmes, repeated 4-3 times a day.

As reflected in the Mission Document (NME-ICT) a number of about 1000 DTH Channels shall be launched and each channel shall be devoted to a specific subject. Following DVB-S2 Transmission and H.264 Compression, we require about 2 Transponders initially and about 40 transponders at latter stage.

ISRO shall provide the Transponders

CONTENT MANAGMENT

Pre recorded content on a number of (i) engineeringsubjects is available under NTPL (ii) under graduatesubjects is available with the CEC/UGC and (iii) othersubjects at IGNOU and at other Institutions.

The content s shall be Digitized, Archived, cerateMetadata and Playlist.

Such stored content shall be used to support structuredDissemination along with Live transmission.

The Metadata shall help students to scan through theserver and retrieve a content as per his requirementand make it available to him via Uni-cast thro’ Internet.

Content Requirement

It may further be seen that about 2200-3000 hours of fresh and live programme material shall be required per annum to run a channel.

It is therefore, proposed that 6-8 lectures, of each one hour duration, LIVE by subject experts shall be delivered, per day . Each lecture of 40 minutes of duration and followed by 20 minutes of interactive session.

The questions can be asked by using any of the communication modes such as mobile, landline, video conferencing, SMS, e-mail, fax etc.

NETWORK TOPOGRAPHY

 It is proposed to set up technical system comprising of Multiple Star Network Topography by groups of Central Institutions, such as Central Universities Networks, i.e., IIT’s network, NIT’s Network, CEC Network, Agriculture universities network, Management Institution network etc.

 Each of these Central Universities Networks shall derive technical and content support from respective institutions affiliated to it. The Central Institution Network shall generate more than one Channel.

The content of each channel originated by an Affiliated Institution under the Central Institution can reach the Central Institution Network through Fiber or otherwise and beamed as Central Institution channels.

All such signals/channels originating from Central Institutions shall reach MHRD Hub, where from they will be integrated with signals/Channels from other Central Institutions to form Forward Path to be up-linked to DTH, IPTV, DVB-RCS, DVB-H, Streaming, VPN etc or respective delivery system.

SYSTEM NETWORKS

IIM

CentralUniversities

CEC

IIT - Delhi

CENTRAL INST. NETWORK TOPOGRAPHY

n ch

40 ch

20 ch

12ch

1

2 3

40

1

2

3

45

IIT 1

IIT 2

IIT 3

MC 1

MC 2

MC 3

MC 17

NITnCIN

200 Channels

Live & Interactive Teaching End

DTH

IPTV DVB-RCS

DVB - HVPN/Net

PSTN VideoConferencing

Chat, SMS

e-mail ,Fax

NETWORK UNIFICATION

Forward Path

Return Path

MICRO LEVEL PLANNING

In the first instance it is proposal to set up a Central Institution Networks that may launch about 40-60 DTH channels with immediate effect.

It is proposed that CEC, all IIT’s, IIM’s, NIT’s etc institution shall be asked to come up with the ‘DTH Channels. CEC Media Centre may be asked to originate a Channel on the subject on which they are producing complete undergraduate e-content course material.

MICRO LEVEL DELIVERY

A Teaching End comprising of mini-studio shall be set up at each of Institutions. It is proposed 4-6 hours of live lectures (each lecture one hour duration) may be delivered by such Centres.

A recorded programme of about half an hour duration shall be played in between two live sessions.

The signals from each teaching End shall reach the Central Institution through Fiber and having a redundancy line.

Two transponder shall be hired immediately and an Earth Station shall be set up for this in Delhi.

PRODUCTION METHODOLOGY

The subject experts shall be asked to use all convenient aids of delivery material such video clips, animation material, live internet, graphic etc. It is proposed that a White Board having facilities to generate over a click of button all such inputs shall be made available to the subject expert and the selected material passed on to the live stream, to benefit the students watching such programmes.

The Management Technical and Academic activities shall be looked after by the Central Institution. It shall be responsibility of Central Institution to manage generation of content for channels in its network.

MULTI MEDIUM DISSEMINATION

For utilising benefits of multimode reception techniques and for deeper dissemination of educational content, it is desired to propagate on-line simultaneously on TV, terrestrial, satellite, cable, IPTV, web, mobile and even on podcast versions.

Further, create a return paths based on voice, Text, Video conferencing etc., and amalgamate them in order to have real-time interactivity from student community, world over with the Expert/Teacher online to address their difficulties through the use of multi mode and Mediums such as Telephone, Fax, internet, Satellite etc.

Such a Unification of Networks along with return path is envisaged.

Network Unification

Anycast

BRC-HD-700PTZ Camera

Eq. Model is for Reference only

Internet

or a PC

DVD

Network Unification

USB

Set Top Box

THANK YOU

FOR

YOUR KIND ATTENTION

E-mail: [email protected]

About the Author

Pradeep Kaul, born in Srinagar, Kashmir in 1951, an Engineering Graduate (Electro. & Commu.), joined Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Dec. 1972 and served ISRO over 17 years. As on R&D projects developed Broadcast quality Video Camera, Camera Control Unit, Waveform monitor & other equipment during 1980’s at ISRO. Was member Core Team responsible for operations, maintenance & Installation activities, during Satellite Instructions Television Experiment (SITE) in1975-76 and subsequent Satellites used by India during 1975-85. Has over 39 years of experience in the field of R & D, Operations, Training, Maintenance & Management of TV Studios, Satellite & Terrestrial Broadcasting etc. Joined University Grants Commission (UGC) in 1990 as Joint Director (Hw) & served Consortium for Educational Communicational (CEC) an Inter University Centre of UGC, since 1991 till April 2011. Was heading CEC, as its’ Director from Feb. 2000 till Oct. 2003. Was team leader in design, coordination and conduct of first & second “National Talkback Experiment” in India, held during 1991 and 1994. Has been providing technical & managerial guidance to CEC, Educational Media Centers, National & Internal Organisations, including UNESCO, AICT. Member Management committees of a number of organisations of National Repute. Is Member, Broadcast Engineering Society BES (India) and SMPTE (USA) organisations. Has to his credit a number of papers published in leading journals. Has joined as Senior Consultant “NME-ICT ” a flagship Project of MHRD and is a Member “Standing Committee NME-ICT” & Convener DTH Project.