IIT to connect 2,000 engineering colleges through EDUSAT

2008 witnessed a new chapter in India's endeavors towards distance learning as Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) successfully launched the live telecast programs of its courses through ISRO's educational satellite, EDUSAT. Hundreds of students across the country attended the session by just sitting in their respective colleges.

IIT-B has already set up 50 Student Interactive Terminals (SIT) in the country. The premier technological institute is now planning to attract many more students to its programs by connecting the facility to over 2,000 engineering colleges across the country. Students of these colleges would be able to study the same course just as their counterparts in IIT Mumbai.

"The most important thing about this programme is that these courses are transmitted free of cost to the colleges with the help of free bandwidth provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation," Professor Kannan Moudgalya told reporters.

"We began this programme from January 2 with 12 courses, out of the 500 courses offered in IIT Mumbai through EDUSAT for undergraduates and postgraduates. We will be transmitting five additional courses through WEBCAST," he added.

Prof Moudgalya also clarified that the quality of teaching through EDUSAT is same as what IIT students study in the campus. But IIT will neither hold exams, nor do any evaluation or give grades for the students from remote locations, he added.

The main objective of this programme is to help engineering students in the remotest places to receive quality education at par with the IIT standard. They can get absolute benefit from the IITsyllabus and standard and also interact with IIT professors and students live and offline.

Batch'82 gifts Rs 4 crore to IIT Bangalore

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) has received a value Rs. 4 crore from the 1982 batch students as a special New Year gift. The alumni handed over a cheque of the same to the premier technological institute on Sunday.

The corpus will be utilized to bring in more talent into the faculty. Besides, with the interest earned on the corpus each year, 25 incoming faculty members at IIT-B will be offered a bonus of Rs 1 lakh for the next three years.

The batch had decided to raise Rs 6 crore in all, planned to mobilize the remaining Rs 2 crore and give it to IIT-B for its Legacy Project in 2008. Every year, the Legacy Project sees alumni celebrating its silver jubilee reunion by pledging to take up a project for the Institute.

This initiative was announced earlier this year at a New York alumni meet when director Ashok Misra and senior faculty members including Deepak Phatak, professor at IIT's Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, visited the US to drum-up enthusiasm among NRI ex-students for the ongoing IIT-B golden jubilee celebrations.

While disclosing the fact IIT-B Director said, "the institute has been coming up with various measures to retain and attract faculty. The idea behind offering Rs 3 lakh to faculty members is to make their life a little more comfortable when they join the institute, said a member of the alumni. This money can be utilised to buy some furniture or a car. The money is given to make them feel comfortable till they settle down and then start getting consultancy projects,'' added Misra.

IITs reduce number of credits to give flexibility to students

Students of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) - Delhi, Mumbai and Roorkee, now have a reason to smile in this New Year as the three institutes have reduced the minimum number of credits from 350 to 250 in four years that are essential to become a graduate.

Similar efforts are also being taken by the two other IITs - Kharagpur and Madras for granting the same flexibility to students. However, IIT Guwahati and Kanpur have no such plans in near future.

The main idea behind the plan is to - "break out of the rigidity of courses and curriculum, to ensure graduates are prepared for the demands of a new global economy and, in some ways, to ensure IITs still attract and retain India's brightest students who might be wooed by foreign universities and more open educational philosophies".

"The BTech (bachelor of technology, the graduate degree awarded by IITs) education has so far been quite straitjacketed, but now we are making efforts to address that," said Deepak Phatak, a senior faculty member at IIT Bombay. "This change in the course format will provide students some flexibility and freedom to structure their education," he added.

IIT Bombay has reduced the total number of mandatory credits that a student requires to complete his/her degree, from 350 in four years to 250 in four years. Also, students who opt to do the full 350 credits in their chosen fields will be awarded an honours degree when they graduate.

The flexibility in credits would help students use the extra time to pursue research or study another area of interest. With this decision, the students will not only have the freedom to use their time to participate in events hosted by the institute, such as campus festivals and the like but also get a degree that reflects the major specialization as well the minor studies.

IITs are among the best technological universities in the world offering highest standard of technical education in India. Each year, more than 60,000 students sit for the IIT-JEE test to gain admission to any of the seven IITs, out of which only about 4,000 make the entry.

It is worth noting that an increasing number of students are discarding the test due to its rigid academic structure. The recent move is expected to attract those students who are heading abroad for pursuing technical education in search of more flexibility.

Kharagpur IIT planning campus at Kolkata

Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur plans to open its second campus for undergraduate and postgraduate courses at Rajarhat, Koltata from the 2008 academic session. It will admit 600 students to begin with but the number swell to 2,500 in the subsequent four years.”

According to the institute director S K Dube 10 acres of land has been acquired and construction will start just after Durga Puja.

The Kolkata campus will offer most of the disciplines available at the Kharagpur campus but their number will be decided later. The city campus will run advanced research and development programmes and accommodate trainees for various short-term modules. The Ministry of Human Resource Development has released Rs 25 crore for building the IIT’s Rajarhat campus, Dr Dube said.

Announcing the date of the 52nd convocation of IIT Kharagpur, the chairman, Board of Governors of IIT Kharagpur, Mr Sanjeev Goenka, said that a host of research projects had been lined up for execution over the next two years. The institute earned Rs 52 crore from research projects last year. Defining the revenue targeted for this financial year, Mr Goenka said: “We can calculate the worth of research projects but it is not easy to estimate the revenue that they can generate. This year, though, we will earn more than Rs 52 crore. The target for this year is Rs 100 crore.”

The director of IIT, Kharagpur, Prof SK Dube, said the institute accepted 171 research projects worth Rs 41.70 crore last year.
The institute was already busy with projects worth more than Rs 300 crore, he said. “The institute has earned 25 patents, out of which, two are US patents. This year, IIT, Kharagpur has filed 24 fresh applications,” Prof Dube said.

The IIT plans to raise the student intake at its Kharagpur campus from the current 7,000 to 10,000 over the next few years. It is also deploying an extensive policy for retaining its faculty members. The institute had absorbed around 51 new members of the faculty this year, Prof Dube said.