A PROGRAM TO ENHANCE THE QUALITY OF IT EDUCATION IN ENGINEERING COLLEGES Certificate in Information Technology (CIT)

Problem statement “India produces about 500, 000 engineering graduates every year. Of these only 25% are readily employable” Observed gaps  Problem solving skills  Communication skills  Ability to map real world problems to programs How do we bridge this gap?

A solution Certificate in Information Technology (CIT) program  A joint initiative by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), Government of India and IIIT-Hyderabad (IIIT-H) To setup a teacher training program which will provide training to mentors who will train and mentor 12,000 students per year in engineering colleges to be industry- ready  “To setup a teacher training program which will provide training to mentors who will train and mentor 12,000 students per year in engineering colleges to be industry- ready”  IIIT-H will design curriculum, prepare digital content, provide teacher training for engineering colleges and support in implementation of the CIT program at the engineering colleges

Program Delivery Content Development Training to faculty Implementing at colleges (training to students)

The Plan Design curriculum Develop content Identify participating engineering colleges Train the nominated faculty members Implement the training for students at the colleges Monitor the program at the implementing colleges

Participating college criteria Engineering colleges interested in participating in the CIT program need to  Sign an MOU with IIIT-H committing to  Provide the required infrastructure  Send 5 faculty members to be trained at IIIT-H each year for three years  Train 150, 300 and 600 students on the CIT program at their college each year respectively

Goals at IIIT-H YearTotal number of mentors trained I50+ II150+ III150+

Goals at the participating colleges By the end of 3 rd year, all the colleges will reach the steady state… … 12,000+ students will be trained per year … with each of the 20+ colleges training 600 students each YearNumber of students trained per engineering college Number of participating engineering colleges Total number of students trained I II III IV

Vision- 12,000 IIIT- H 13 Colleges 23 Colleges 150 Students st year 150 Students rd year2 nd year ,000 +

Certificate in Information Technology (CIT) Computational Thinking OOPs concepts through Java Data structures Linux Soft skills Productivity enhancement tools * 200 hours of engagement for the faculty/students

The Methodology Started with Herbert A. Simon’s research on Learning from Examples Outgrowth of learning research by Roger Schank Studies show:  Only 10% material presented in class is retained by end of class  Only 3% retained by the final exam  Only 1% retained one year later Classes do not and cannot teach skills  Imaging a lecture on how to ride a bicycle Jobs require skills … and that is our focus !!!

Lecture based and LBD – A comparison Lecture based teachingLearning by doing Grading mostly done on knowledge and retention levels Grading done on the application, analysis and the synthesis levels Student to faculty ratio is high.Student to faculty ratio is 10:1. This accounts for personalized mentoring which helps in students’ growth. Students handle multiple courses simultaneously Students work on one course at a time. This helps in immersive learning. Most of the learning is through lectures. Most of the learning is through application.

Content Development Learners’ Profile Curriculum Module Listing ` Design AssessmentsDesign Instructional Activities Learning Objectives

Components Motivation Learning objectives Story line Role Scenario operations Resources Feedback

Data Structures – an example Learning Objectives  Describe various data structures and algorithms  Write programs to implement them  Analyze the efficiency of the algorithms Instructional Activities  Implement mini search engine  Web crawling algorithms  FSM parsing algorithm  Inverted index data structure to store the web data  Search algorithms for page retrieval EQUITEEC-Empower Yourself

Mentoring Personalized grooming  Each mentor is assigned 10 students  Easy identification of areas of improvement in such cases

Mentors 1 st year 2 nd year 50 Students Mentors 100 Students Mentors 200 Students 3 rd year

Progress so far Trained 163 faculty members from 36 engineering colleges Commenced training for additional 75 faculty members from 18 engineering colleges Implemented the CIT program at 12 engineering colleges for 1165 students

Results Competency level gains Adaptability to the LBD methodology Satisfaction with the learning experience Confidence gain

Pilot training program Implementation stream begins 1 st Pilot in August 2 nd Pilot in August-September 2 nd Pilot in August-September 3 rd Pilot in September-October 3 rd Pilot in September-October Training stream Summer training program Dec’08-April’09 May’09-July’09 June’09-Sep’09 Dec’09-April’10 Winter training program Implementatio n stream begins Capture learning and apply

Future work Include advanced courses in the CIT program Reduce duration of the training program for faculty Develop a framework for mapping the implementation calendar Conduct impact studies of the CIT program on students employability