Foundation Program in ICT for Education
19th - 20th August, 2017
A two week AICTE approved Faculty Development Program (FDP) on “Foundation Program in ICT for Education” under Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya National Mission for Teachers and Teaching (PMMMNMTT), MHRD, Govt. of India was organized from 3rd August to 7th September 2017. The Face to Face interaction of FDP was organized at Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon in association with IIT Bombay on 19th - 20th August 2017.
The FDP programme focuses to empower the teachers, lacking skills and compentencies for proper and effective use of ICT in education, to use technology effectively in order to enhance the quality of education. The teaching faculty of this online programme were the experienced faculties of IIT Bombay. Faculty members from various colleges and Schools also Participated in the FDP Program.
Day 1: 19th August 2017
Session 1
Prof. Deepak B. Phatak (Dept. of CSE, IIT Bombay) inaugurated the FDP with his address to all the faculty members from different colleges participating in the program. Participants from different remote centers shared their expectations with Prof. Phatak regarding the program as how it will benefit them in improving quality of education in future using ICT.
Prof. Phatak discussed the need of facilitating hybrid learning so students are able to learn both from face to face interactions as well as by accessing online content in the form of pre recorded lectures or by registering for online courses. Thus, faculty members are required to shift their focus from being information providers to learning facilitators.
Session 2
Prof. P Sunthar (Dept. of Chem Engg, IIT Bombay ) introduced Word Press to the audience and asked participants to choose a target audience (end user) for their webpage. Then, participants were asked to create a user story from user perspective on what information user want to get from webpage and then, they were asked to structure the content of webpage so that it meets the user goals.
Session 3
In the session, A-VIEW software was demonstrated. For the use the software, a group of mentee was assigned a mentor. User id and password was provided to each participant for the Mentee Mentor interaction through video sessions.
Session 4
The last session of the day was the "Lab Session" based on concept of LbDs (Learning-by-doing) activities. Participants were required to complete an assignment based on what they learnt in previous sessions.
Day 2: 20th August 2017
Session 1
The session was named as “Making the best use of FDP”. It was taken by Mr. Jayakrishnan M (IDP in ET, IIT Bombay). The facilitator mainly cleared the doubts of various faculty members of the FDP programme from various Remote Centers across India. The doubts mainly hovered around “A-View”, which was discussed in the third session of the first face-to-face interaction. Many of the faculty participants were still confused about the A-View online interface which is to be used for the mentor-mentee interaction. Mr. Jayakrishnan also discussed the various ways by which the “discussion” forum can be used more effectively. He also cleared doubts regarding the “discussion” forum on IIT Bombay X website. The session continued for 1 hour and 30 minutes The active interaction session with the participant faculties from different remote centers cleared the doubts of faculty members which further paved way for a better understanding of the online usage of ICT and learning experience.
Session 2
The next session was on enhancing the “Visual Presentation Skills” of the faculties. The session was facilitated by Dr. Sameer Sahasrabudhe (Dept. of CSE, IIT Bombay). It was a very useful session as it taught the faculties various presentation skills which is a momentous part of teaching. He utilized the active learning strategy of “Think-Pair-Share” to make the faculties understand the various aspects of visual presentation. He told the concept of “Plan-Execute-Impress” while making presentations. Various other aspects which were covered in the session were structure, colour schemes, typography, visual effects and impress guildelines. The session helped faculties in boosting the presentation skills which everyone can employ in his/her teaching methodology.
Session 3
The next session started with a “Answering Queries” session. Different remote centres across the country raised their queries and cleared their doubts. Main queries of the faculties were regarding the usage of “A-View” in the FDP programme. This session cleared the doubts of the faculties and paved the way of utilizing the FDP programme more efficaciously.
Session 4
The last session was the “Lab Session” which was based on the concept of LbDs (Learning-by-Doing) activities. The lab session consisted of a lab assignment 2 comprising of five questions which were based on what we learnt in the previous sessions. The lab session helped the faculties in reinforcing their concepts.
Overall the face-to-face interaction of the FDP programme was conducive and enriched the knowledge of the facuty members enrolled in the programme.