ISTE Coordinators Workshop on Computer Programming

Introduction

Over 5 years ago, we started conducting ISTE workshops for empowering teachers of engineering colleges. We first scaled up to engage 1,000 teachers at a time, in subject specific training workshops of two week duration. In 2013 we scaled this program further, to train up to 10,000 teachers at a time (T10KT), using 337 established remote centers across India. IIT Kharagpur is our partner Institution. Together, we have a mandate through a funded project from the National Mission on Education using ICT (NME-ICT) of MHRD, to train 1,50,000 teachers in 15 such workshops.

Since December 2009, we have conducted several two-week ISTE workshops on various engineering subjects. We have reached out to more than 55,000 teachers and helped them to enhance their teaching skills in these subjects.

In order to run these workshops at selected remote centers, we invite expert faculty from various remote centers to a five-day Coordinators training workshop which is held in IIT Bombay, typically two months before the main workshop. These faculty members then act as Workshop Coordinators during the main training workshop to be conducted later for 10,000 teachers, during which, the Coordinators supervise the conduct of tutorials and Labs at their Centers. They liaise between the participants at their Remote Centers and IIT Bombay, from where the interactive lectures are transmitted live. All the lectures and tutorial sessions are recorded. The final edited audio-visual content, along with other course material, are to be released in Open Source. The content can be freely used later by all teachers, students and other learners

IIT Bombay is launching Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to global learners from July 2014, in partnership with edX. To help enhance the quality of engineering education multi-fold in India, IIT Bombay plans to offer a blended MOOCs model to students of Engineering Colleges in India. A paper on the proposed model is available at http://www.it.iitb.ac.in/nmeict/pdfs/MOOCs.pdf

To train teachers for adopting the use of MOOCs in general, and to empower them to use the blended model in particular, it has been decided to run some of the T10KT workshops, partially using the MOOCs approach. The first workshop on these lines will be conducted for the subject "Computer Programming". This will be a four week workshop, and will be conducted for over 10,000 teachers, in the months of May/June 2014. The participating teachers will complete the equivalent of two week full-time work online, spread over 6 physical weeks. They will then assemble at the selected RCs (Remote Centers), for a week of face to face interaction, discussions, and tutorial sessions, and will then complete a team assignment. This team assignment will be equivalent of one week full-time work, and will have to be completed online, within 3 physical weeks after completion of the main face to face portion of the workshop.

"Computer Programming" is the subject chosen for the main workshop, to be run under this new model of T10KT workshops.

Course content

The content for the computer programming subject, to be covered by the blended MOOC later are:

• Algorithms
• Elements of C/C++ programming languages
• Basic data types
• Sequential and conditional execution
• Iterative solutions
• Arrays, matrices, and their applications Functions
• Basics of Sorting and searching
• Elements of string processing
• Introduction to pointers
• Software Engineering concepts
• Pointers
• Structures
• File processing
• Handling graphics
• Introduction to Object Oriented Programming
• Classes and Methods, C++ Standard Library

Teaching Faculty

Prof. Deepak B. Phatak
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay
http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~dbp

Who Should Attend

The workshop is required to be attended by faculty colleagues, who are willing to be prospective Workshop coordinators for the main workshop to be held in summer.

It is mandatory that the prospective coordinators should have taught Computer Programming at least two to three times at a comparable level. He/she should be familiar with the syllabi and examination pattern of their own college or university. It is also preferable that they should have at least 3 years of teaching experience with some experience in conduct or participation in ISTE, QIP, or similar workshops.
After attending this orientation workshop, the coordinators go back to their respective RCs, and start preparing the lab set-up and local logistics. In the main workshop conducted later, the interactive lectures are handled by IIT Bombay faculty but the local tutorials and labs are handled exclusively by the local coordinators. Since the coordinators have themselves done these earlier, the conduct of labs and tutorials is done, as it would have been done at IIT Bombay.

Duration and Venue

The duration of the workshop is two weeks. One week of equivalent work is to be done online from 16 March to 19 April, from their own places of work/homes.
One week of face to face interaction from 21 April to 26 April, 2014, is to be conducted in IIT Bombay.
Venue: VMCC Auditorium, VMCC Bldg, IIT Bombay.

Criteria for Certification

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Course Fee

workshop is funded by the National Mission on Education through ICT (MHRD, Government of India), there is no course fee for participation. Travel fare reimbursement will be made for up to A/C 2-tier or lowest return airfare, as per GOI entitlement. Please click here to know more about the travel allowance.

How to Apply

We will start the registration shortly. The interested coordinators are requested to download the permission letter format and keep it ready for the online registration which will be opened shortly in the near future.

Some Remote Centers have been made inactive, because of issues relating to conduct of workshops. Faculty from these centers will be allowed to register for this workshop only after the issues are settled, with IIT Bombay.
Please find the link for the inactive centers here

Confirmation of registration will be sent by email. Enrollment will be strictly online. Multiple registrations from a Remote Center are not allowed. We will consider only the officially nominated participant as the Workshop Coordinator. Last date for online registration is 10th March 2014

Accommodation

Shared Guest House accommodation with standard boarding will be provided free to the participants depending on availability.

Note

Please note that this workshop is conducted under the Train 10,000 Teachers program of IIT Bombay. Live recording of the course and other created contents would be released under Open Source, through a portal. The recorded CD/DVD of the course lectures would be available for distribution at cost, to any individual/institution. All participants are required to sign a No Objection certificate for such release of contents contributed by them during and after the workshop. All contributors will be acknowledged.

Address For Communication

Dr Mukta Atrey
Sr. Project Manager
Project T10kT under NMEICT
T10kT Lab
Kanwal Rekhi Bldg. Basement
Dept of Computer Science& Engineering
IIT Bombay
Mumbai 400 076
Phone: 022-2576-4989 (O)