Engineering education in India - the role of ICT

Abstract

Naturally, the fundamental purpose of engineering education is to impart relevant skills and knowledge to those people who are interested in gaining either a general awareness of the subject or who wish to become professional engineers and/or academic researchers.1 This paper discusses engineering education in India and the impact that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is having and is likely to have in the future. Steps should now be taken by institute administrations to provide: * Non-stop operation of centralised server systems, gateway and the network components irrespective of power-supply interruptions. * Gateway/servers area with the necessary router, firewall, proxy, secondary DNS systems and network management system. * Central server systems providing accessible archival facilities for open source software for a variety of systems and applications. * Digital library facilities and access for students from both the institute and their homes; * At least one EDUSAT interactive classroom. * A video-conferencing facility that is capable of inter-operating with any international video-conferencing system.

Headnote

Engineering education in India has witnessed a major change over the past few years. Substantial increase in the demand for high-quality education has led to the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies for extending the outreach of education. This paper presents a review of some of these technology-enhanced initiatives already taken up by the government of India, as well as by some of the leading institutions in the country. Important developments include the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), the use of an educational satellite called the EDUSAT and various other approaches such as the use of 'virtual classrooms' and 'virtual laboratories'. The paper goes on to discuss some of the problem areas in the present mode of dissemination and deployment; some possible future trends and modalities are also outlined. These include blending collaborative learning with interactive technology-enhanced learning initiatives and finding ways of providing support for learners' queries.

Introduction

In its very broadest sense, the discipline of engineering is concerned with that body of theory and practice that is relevant to the design and construction of real-world artefacts arising from human endeavour. Successful engineering activity requires a wide range of skills and knowledge. Because the corpus of documented material relating to engineering is now so large, sub-domains of the subject usually have to be considered - for example, electrical, mechanical, civil, bio-medical, and so on. Naturally, the fundamental purpose of engineering education is to impart relevant skills and knowledge to those people who are interested in gaining either a general awareness of the subject or who wish to become professional engineers and/or academic researchers.1 This paper discusses engineering education in India and the impact that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is having and is likely to have in the future.

In the 'post-independence era', engineering education in India gained impetus, with the establishment of the five Indian Institutes of Technology (UTs) in different parts of the country. In order to gain entry to the UT system students were, and still are, selected through a very tough entrance examination (called the 'Joint Entrance Examination' - JEE). The mode of teaching in these institutions has been predominantly oriented towards the 'chalk and talk' method or the 'lecture mode' in direct face-to-face classroom teaching.

However, the scenario of engineering education in India has undergone a huge change over the last few years. Today, more than 300,000 students try for the JEE every year, and more than 500,000 students also try for various other entrance tests for other engineering institutions. Social empowerment and increased awareness regarding benefits of education are the major factors that have contributed towards the increase in the demand for higher education, including engineering education, amongst the populace.

Existing institutions within India are not geared to cater for such a huge demand for engineering education in the country and identifying some alternative solution has become one of the most important problems that needs to be solved (Joshi, 1998).

The phenomenal progress of information and communication technologies in general, in the past decade, also offers unprecedented opportunities for resource material generation, implementation and educational design. It has enabled us to explore educational implementation and outreach issues that were beyond the realm of possibility in past decades.

An amalgamation of the educational situation in the country and the opportunities presented by ICT has prompted the use of ICT, initially to extend the outreach of quality education and deal with the increase in the demand for engineering education in the country (Bhattacharya, 2003). As teachers, educators and policy makers, it is our responsibility to visualise, formulate and implement a system that could provide quality education to all who ask for it.

Technology-enhanced educational initiatives

The Government of India (as well as some of the IITs) has already initiated very enthusiastic efforts to tackle this issue through the deployment of appropriate technology. Some of the important activities and developments that have been undertaken are briefly described and discussed in this section.

Dissemination of resource materials by individual institutions

Some of the leading engineering institutions in the country have been producing video-based instructional material in areas of engineering, science and management under the aegis of the 'Technology Enhanced Learning Programme'. These are usually full-semester courses in specific areas by some of the most eminent faculty in the field. The material is used by engineering colleges around the country and abroad for the education of both students and teachers. They are also used for training purposes by industry and Research and Development laboratories - as well as by individuals.

At IIT Kharagpur itself, more than 100 full-semester video courses of the institute in various areas of technical education have been digitised and stored in a bank of servers. All the lectures in these courses are now available at 256 kbps (kilo-bits per second) using the Microsoft Windows streaming method of 'Advanced Streaming Format' (ASF) and also in Video-CD quality on the internal local area network (LAN) at IIT Kharagpur. Video lectures that are stored on a central server can be accessed at any time and in any place within the intranet through 'Unicast' technology. This allows multiple users to operate them at any point of time - in a 'stopstart-pause' mode.

Initially, the courses were disseminated to other institutions by means of video CDs and DVDs. However, at present, the mode of dissemination is being changed to 'Video-On-Demand' (VOD). This involves loading the requisite courses on to a Hard-Disk-Drive (HDD) and then transferring them on to the central server of an institute, so that multiple users can access these courses through their LAN. This mode of dissemination also allows almost maintenance-free archiving of the courses and access by multiple users at any point of time.

Virtual classroom at the Centre for Educational Technology, IIT Kharagpur

Initial trials have been carried out successfully in tutorial classes for the course on 'Networks Signals & Systems' at the undergraduate level. With a valid computer identification number, students can join a live tutorial classroom through the institute LAN connection (Ray & Bhattacharya, 2000). This allows students to pose questions and see and hear the responses of their teacher. In this type of tutorial, students can interactively participate in the class from their halls of residence through the campus LAN. It uses one-way (classroom to students) video and two-way audio/text transmission. As in a face-to-face classroom, students are able to see and hear the teacher and also participate interactively by asking questions and receiving clarifications (through both audio and text). The use of multicast technology allows all users to share information with all other members of the group. If the system administrator allows, any number of 'whisper' or 'private chat' groups (one-to-one interaction between students) may also be allowed. This software is now fully operational on the campus network and if sufficient bandwidth is available (above 256 kbps) it can be used through the Internet or cable modern also. It could also be used for conferences, workshops and any other interactive mode of learning.

Virtual Laboratory

The on-going 'Virtual Laboratory' project is aimed at reproducing the hands-on laboratory experience of selected courses very closely, on computer screens - through advanced modelling and simulation techniques. Ten experiments from the first- and second-year Electrical Engineering laboratory are now available in the Web-enabled client-server mode. This tool allows a student to simulate and conduct experiments on a computer. Simulation of electronic circuits, waveform generators, analysers, breadboards, electronic devices, components and interconnection facilities required for carrying out many experiments at the second/third-year level of the undergraduate programmes in Electrical, Electronics and Computer Science disciplines.

National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)

In India, at present there are more than 1500 engineering institutions, predominantly dealing with undergraduate education in various fields of engineering. Unfortunately, however, mostly due to lack of faculty, the quality of education imparted in many of these institutions is not of the requisite quality. As a result, every year sees a new batch of engineering graduates who lack the necessary skills in spite of their education, and who are effectively unemployable. So, although the phenomenal increase in organisations and industries create a demand for skilled graduates, the education system falls far short of producing properly skilled and educated human resources. This results in a paradoxical situation of vast unemployment in spite of available jobs in various sectors.

In an attempt to overcome this problem and make quality education available to all students (free of charge), the Government of India has launched a National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). The programme is primarily aimed at uplifting the standard of engineering education in the country to a uniform level.

The first phase of the programme, which has just ended, has focused on developing high-quality resource material in the form of Web-based and video-based courses in core areas of several engineering, science and humanities disciplines that are common to all engineering institutions in the country. These courses were initially meant to be used as 'teacher-education' material intended to provide teachers with requisite knowledge in various areas of undergraduate education. The view was that as all teachers became more knowledgeable through the use of these materials, the quality of education they imparted to their students would also be of a higher standard. The material could also be used as 'support/reference material' for students in different streams of engineering education. In the initial phase of the project, 120 video-based courses and 120 webbased courses in six main streams (Electrical, Computer Science, Mechanical, Civil, Electronics, Humanities & Core Sciences) have been completed.

The Web-based courses have already been launched through a central server in IIT Madras and are already being used widely by large numbers of people. An unexpected result has been the very wide usage of these courses by industry personnel for training and knowledge updating of their employees.

Because the bandwidth requirement of video-based courses is much higher than that needed for simpler transmissions, it has not been possible to provide access to these courses through a central server. A feasible alternate path may be the use of VOD technology through internal LAN systems of individual institutions, which of course presumes the existence of LANs in all institutions. Video courses would thus also be available to all engineering institutions as soon as these implementation problems are resolved.

In the second phase, the NPTEL programme intends to develop more video-based and Webbased courses - mostly on elective subjects. It will also focus on the effective implementation and support issues of the resource materials.

From a pedagogical point of view, mere access to learning resources is not sufficient for effective learning. Constant support in the form of interaction with faculty and peers, as well as frequent formative and summative evaluation, is an essential part of a learning experience. The experience gained from the first phase of the programme also indicates that 'support issues' are a major area that needs to be addressed and planned for. Learners indicated a strong need to interact with mentors for clarifying doubts and queries that arise while going through prepared course material. Attending to these queries from hundreds of learners across the country needs a very large group of knowledgeable and committed teachers - as well as a well-planned and organised methodology of interaction. Keeping in mind the current paucity of teachers within the education system, one of the approaches being considered is to use the services of retired faculty as mentors for providing the necessary support for learners. This aspect needs to be worked out in greater detail and put in place in the second phase of the project.

The second phase of the project also aims at addressing the underlying pedagogic issues in this mode of distance learning, as well as effectiveness parameters in such a model.

Educational satellite (EDUSAT)

India was one of the first countries to launch a satellite dedicated to the dissemination of education in the country at all levels of the curriculum - Primary, secondary, Tertiary, Technical, Vocational - and any other areas. This satellite, named 'EDUSAT', could also allow live video conferencing in order to support student-teacher interaction, tutorials and problem-solving sessions. The satellite was launched in 2004 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO, 2004).

EDUSAT services include:

* Education-on-demand.

* Education to home.

* Web-browsing through proxy server.

The satellite provides one national beam and five regional beams covering the Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western and Central areas of the country, respectively.

Main hubs are located in all state capitals, with sub-hubs in other towns and cities. There are many 'Satellite Interaction Terminals' (known as SITs) available for down-linking and limited up-linking of interaction. These can be used to create an 'Active Classroom' where there is a capability for 'live interaction' with sub-hub/hubs. This allows 'audio/video interactions', 'file transfer' and 'voice mail'.

Use of the 'Receive-Only Terminals' (referred to as ROTs) results in a 'Passive Classroom' equipped for receiving 'broadcast signals' from sub-hub/hub to download educational material.

In the initial phase, EDUSAT was used predominantly for widening the outreach of educational programmes already available at leading educational institutes. A detailed plan of using EDUSAT to help improve the engineering education scenario in the country has been worked out. This plan involves:

* Conducting postgraduate-level programmes (PG diploma, MS, MTech etc.).

* Conducting short-term courses, for teachers of other engineering institutes as well as for training of industry professionals.

* Organising interactive seminars with participation from selected partner organisations.

EDUSAT could also be used for conducting interviews by the training/placement facilities of institutes and facilitating institute-industry interaction for both students and teachers.

Objectives and action plans pertaining to the effective utilisation of EDUSAT need to be spelt out, guided and monitored - both globally as well as at individual institute levels. The primary focus should be on:

* Supporting teachers rather than replacing them. The role of teachers could change to that of resource material producers as well as a mentors and facilitators.

* Enhancing the capabilities of teachers by taking over the dissemination of resource material, increasing outreach, aiding interaction across larger groups of students and greater geographical distances.

* Promoting synchronous and asynchronous learning for students using both offline and online interaction for students through two-way audio and video.

To allow effective increase in outreach, the EDUSAT service would also have to support 'Administrative Facilities' for:

* Online admissions.

* Online examinations.

* Distribution of course materials.

* Bulletins and schedules.

* Video conferencing between special nodes.

* Distributed network.

* Multiple, independent and simultaneous networks.

Utilisation of EDUSAT in the present education structure

In an effort to cope with the burgeoning demand (from a fast growing economy, academia and industry) for highly trained human resources in different domains, an effort was made by launching an 'Open Education Grid Consortium'. In order to achieve this, a regional broadband network and EDUSAT backbone network were used to connect individual institutions to resource centres (like the NPTEL server), computational servers and programme support and coordination centres - so as to initiate the beginning of a potential 'virtual campus'.

Some 'State Education Grids' like the 'Kerala Education Grid' have already started utilising the potential of the EDUSAT to establish a 'Country-wide Educational Services Network' that would link institutions of Higher Education through a collaborative knowledge network to educational servers over the Internet. Initially, the grid facilities are available within the state of Kerala. Courses taught in the participating institutions would be available on the network along with teacher support for queries, examinations and even providing a portal for experimental/ mathematical calculations.

The consortium, with EDUSAT as the backbone, already provides services such as:

(1) Quality Internet access.

(2) Quality IT Infrastructure for e-learning.

(3) Quality Web-accessible resources.

(4) Quality content in the courses.

(5) Quality educational encyclopaedia (Edupedia) services.

(6) Opportunities for teachers' education.

(7) Supplementary education for students.

Satellite-based programme at HT Bombay

The Indian Institute of Technology at Bombay has set up the 'Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology' (KReSIT) - funded by an alumni. In this programme, IIT Bombay faculty teach students of some other institutes directly through a satellite linking facility. Students and teachers can interact through two-way video and audio links from distant locations.

IIT Bombay already has 15 remote destinations (hubs) connected through satellite. It has offered more than 60 semester-long and short-term Continuing Education courses. About 6000 students have taken these courses since the inception of the satellite transmission unit (STU). This project at IIT Bombay is now striving to extend its activities further so as to include:

* Construction of more state-of-the-art classroom-cum-studio units and scaling up transmission around all primary hubs (100 locations).

* Recording of lectures for circulation to other engineering institutes and training of tutors for remote hubs.

* Availability of Web-based course material in the form of semester-wide as well as shortterm courses for industries and educational institutes.

Off-campus distance education programme

Another programme that was a huge success from the pedagogical point of view needs to be mentioned here. This was the 'Electronically Networked Lifelong-Learning' (E1Net-3L) Programme at IIT Kharagpur - an initiative by our alumni (Bhattacharya & Ray, 1998). It was based on a three-tier implementation model and an academic model of 'Collaborative Learning Through Tutored Video Instruction' (TVI) (Gibbons, 1986). Pedagogically important aspects of education - including active learning, human attention span, interaction between peers, vocalisation and prompt resolution of queries - made the programme an immense success with more than 12,000 students going through it (Stone, 1987).

The ElNet-3L programme adopted a modular structure where learning took place through collaborative group learning in specially appointed study centres - through the TVI mode. This was also complemented by support material in the form of quiz, tutorials and lecture notes in the print format. To ensure proper implementation of the course, a three-tier model was adopted, where the academic expertise was provided by IIT Kharagpur, the administrative responsibility lay with a private enterprise - called DACP (P) Ltd - and the actual setting up of the centres was carried out by individual private franchisees. Courses were designed, developed and recorded by faculty in consultation with educational technologists at IIT Kharagpur. Small groups of students (six to eight) watched the lectures in the Collaborative Group Learning Format in specially appointed study centres. The students were assisted by a 'local tutor' - whose role was primarily to encourage the students to resolve their own queries. This resulted in active participation by the students and shifted the onus of learning from teacher to student. Direct interaction with the faculty concerned at IIT Kharagpur was also possible through fax/email facilities at the centre. This facility was used for resolving questions - which remained unanswered even after the inter-group discussion. After completion of the course, examinations were held in established examination centres, with question papers being set by IIT faculty as well as answer scripts being evaluated at IIT Kharagpur.

Problem areas in present technology-enhanced learning (TEL) initiatives

Each of the educational initiatives and programmes seeks to address the same issues of providing high-quality education for all - but, unfortunately, they do have their shortcomings.

Resource material generation is unequivocally a very important part of any such effort. However, in reality, when the brunt of the effort falls on the IITs and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) faculty (on top of their regular activities of research, teaching, consultancy, etc.) they often become overloaded. The quality of the material produced could therefore be affected due to this pressure - as could the quality of teaching and research in their own institutions.

In order to be effective, resource material needs to be created keeping in mind various pedagogical and instructional design aspects (Strange, 1997). Adequate mentor support, peer group interaction, frequent formative evaluation, prompt feedback, attention span, chunking and collaborative learning are all inherent aspects of 'learning'.

Dissemination of the materials also needs to be looked into carefully. Requirements of high-bandwidth networks, Internet access in users' institutions, installation of intranet within institutions and VOD set-ups for multi-user access of video courses are a prerequisite for the proper dissemination of material.

Models for dissemination also need to be self-sufficient and cannot continuously depend on the government or any external agency for financial support. Such models need to be based on both educational principles as well as economic viability to be self-sustaining and effective.

Direct teaching through satellite links, though allowing direct, real-time interaction with teachers, and providing 'next-to-real-life' classroom experience, is not scalable in terms of numbers.

Possibilities and future trends

Fortunately, with the help of ICT, it is possible to implement many of the pedagogical aspects discussed above much more easily today than in the past (Bhattacharya, 2006). Interactions, both online and off-line, can be carried out through EDUSAT, video conferencing, emails, chat boards, bulletin boards, etc. It is also possible to create 'virtual collaborative groups' between students and teachers. Implementation of the 'Education Grid' on a country-wide scale would go a long way towards increasing the outreach of engineering education in a meaningful manner.

A possible way of supplementing efforts towards resource material generation by faculty of the IITs and IISc could be to ask highly qualified alumni to take part in the 'resource material generation' process as a part-time activity. Alumni could also play a very crucial role in teaching - initially, in IITs, in specialised areas through video conferencing. Such endeavours would not only enrich the knowledge base of students, but would also provide role models and networking for existing students.

Linking some of the institutions through video conferencing in terms of sharing post-graduate courses between them could be a unique way of sharing expertise, overcoming faculty shortages to a certain extent as well as increasing the student-teacher ratio in many specialised courses.

Electronic learning (e-leaming), as it is evolving today, is also projected to be a major and very efficient mode of extending outreach and, at the same time, allowing effective learning (Bhattacharya, 2004). Such e-learning needs to be much more than just an 'e-book' - that is often the fate of many e-courses today. In order to be effective, e-learning needs to cater for individual differences in learning by incorporating various 'paths/tracks' for different types of learner. A judicious use of graphics, animations and simulation needs to be used for lucid explanation of the subject matter. Finally, e-learning courses should incorporate frequent formative evaluation throughout the course to aid students' understanding.

When such e-learning courses are hosted on effective Learning Management Systems (LMS), the managerial aspect of course administration, financial issues and admissions, student records and profiles are taken care of automatically - allowing handling of large numbers of students at a time. An LMS would also be able to track students' progress, identifying problem areas and suggesting remedial measures. It allows manipulation of large question banks to generate multiple question papers, online assessment and can take care of online security issues (Bhattacharya & Ray, 2001).

This would allow both effective learning as well as managing very large numbers of students at a time.

One other enabling factor from the practical point of view consists of putting in place actual infrastructure for accessing technology-mediated resource material. This would have to include internal LANs within each institute for VOD, Internet access bandwidth of 2 Mbps - for every 1000 students. The necessary infrastructure would also include an integrated 'Gateway and Server Systems area' to support the variety of e-leaming, information, collaboration and institutional productivity systems.

Steps should now be taken by institute administrations to provide:

* Non-stop operation of centralised server systems, gateway and the network components irrespective of power-supply interruptions.

* Gateway/servers area with the necessary router, firewall, proxy, secondary DNS systems and network management system.

* Central server systems providing accessible archival facilities for open source software for a variety of systems and applications.

* Digital library facilities and access for students from both the institute and their homes;

* At least one EDUSAT interactive classroom.

* A video-conferencing facility that is capable of inter-operating with any international video-conferencing system.

It seems realistic to expect that, with massive advances in ICT, implementation of infrastructure and hardware facilities, however difficult, would be in place within a reasonable period of time. However, the more daunting task would be to bring about a change in the mindset of the people concerned - the educational policy makers, teachers, students and even parents regarding the benefits of the use of ICT in education.

The usual tendency of most people to resist 'change' comes into play in this area too. A large number of teachers hold on to their belief in the traditional 'chalk and talk' way of teaching. Administrators and policy makers also often consider the 'encroachment' of ICT in education to be a nuisance and almost everyone still feels that any mode of education that is not face to face, such as 'distance education' is a 'poor substitute' for traditional face-to-face classroom education.

Conclusion

The current situation in the area of engineering education in India needs to use ICT to extend the outreach of quality education to meet the requirement for such education within the country. However, mere extension of outreach would not automatically solve the basic need for 'effectiveness' of learning. Once the resource material is available widely, learning principles and instructional design guidelines need to be incorporated within the delivery system to create a complete learning experience for each student - thereby allowing effective learning to take place. A change in the mind-set of teachers and students also needs to be achieved so that ICT-based education is accepted as a viable alternative and not a poor alternative to traditional education systems. Such an effort would need to include as much of the regular experience of students in a face-to-face classroom, including peer-to-peer interaction, prompt replies to students' queries, and even the teacher-student and student-student bonding that often constitutes a very important yet intangible part of an educational experience. It is here that the challenge lies in making ICT-based education a viable and, perhaps, a better option in creating a better and more effective learning system.

Footnote

Note

1. P.G. Barker, On the nature of engineering (personal communication, 21 June 2007).

References

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