Envisioning CEC’s Objectives and Goals:
Realigning in the Context of Higher
Education Policies on ICT and E-Learning
Brainstorming Workshop in New Delhi,
November 16-17, 2011
Notes by
K. Mangala Sunder
Department of Chemistry
IIT Madras, Chennai
mangal@iitm.ac.in
CEC’s Role in Higher Education Using ICT
• Alignment with National Mission on Education Through ICT
• Redefine the current role as a support facility to the University
• Provide much-needed technology support to the parent University -Web Studio in IIT Madras was created for supporting IT needs and
introducing cultural changes in teaching and education in IITM.
• Provide centres of activity where new educational paradigms are
created by collaboration
• Be a University technology centre for online and open support to
colleges in and around and affiliated to the University
CEC’s Role in Higher Education Using ICT:
E-learning, knowledge management and knowledge
dissemination
• CEC may provide learning Management system facilities to the University
• CEC may enable student social learning network activities and be the creator of
focused learning circles
• CEC may enable University online examination and open educational tools
• CEC may develop / implement simple collaborative online tools for learning
• CEC may encourage implementation of best e-learning models developed
world-wide and encourage faculty to lead their educational portfolio with
support –
• Open Learning Initiative of Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh is a very
well-known model in educational pedagogy which uses cognitive learning
models and class-room experiences to develop highly interactive educational
modules.
• Quadrants of learning can be integrated and not left as independent elements.
CEC’s Role in Higher Education Using ICT:
Infrastructure and Development
CEC Will need to realign and reassert its role as the communicator—already in its name!
EMRC1
EMRC2
EMRC3
University IT
Environment for
contents
enabled and
managed by
EMRC3
Cloud Computing
facility
CEC’s Role in Higher Education Using ICT:
Infrastructure and Development
CEC will need IT Resource persons on project/ contract mode.
May tender partnerships with designers (private companies, individuals,
Open and Online Universities outside of India where such technical expertise
is already available) for designing new social networking platforms
One technical Consultant in each centre for evolving a master plan for IT
services enablement in each University
Two or three project associates and groups of postgraduate / final year
graduate students in the University campus for creating web-enabled
environment.
Identify faculty from the campus who are IT savvy and who would volunteer
for creating new pedagogical designed courseware; experts in pedagogy like
Prof. A. K. Ray can be approached for faculty training.
CEC’s Role in Higher Education Using ICT:
Bringing Higher Education Focus groups and Community together
• CEC’s decisive role in supplementing and augmenting higher education
through tools and techniques can be formulated more specifically by
studying the MIT model of faculty-driven, industry-sponsored-incubating
agencies created in the University, for IT development centre managed
by the Office of Academic Computing of MIT, Cambridge, USA, for
example.
• CEC’s role in community engagement for higher education can be driven
by a consortium of learned individuals identified by the UGC itself– Social
partners and faculty from affiliating institutions have a decisive role in
determining community driven research projects using IT in a local
community. The EMRCs will also have a local context for their presence.
Their role as IT enablers will extend to the community at large.
These are some of my thoughts I have articulated largely
from my participation in NPTEL and NMEICT in the last
few years. I think CEC should elevate itself to a different
plane and be seen as the centre for all communications in
education.
Thank you.