ISTE Coordinators Workshop on Computer Networking

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 six-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. 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. 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 second workshop on these lines will be conducted for the subject Computer Networking. This will be a four week workshop, and will be conducted for over 10,000 teachers, in the months of June/July 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 Networking 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 Networks subject, to be covered by the blended model are:

• Introduction, history and Layering
• Physical Layer: Theory, Encoding techniques
• Link Layer: Framing, Error detection and recovery, Reliability, Multiple Access, Ethernet, Token Ring, Switching
• Network Layer: Addressing, Routing, IP
• Transport Layer: Reliability and Congestion Control
• Application Layer: DNS, Web/HTTP, Email, FTP, Peer-to-peer systems

Teaching Faculty

Prof. Kameswari Chebrolu,
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay
http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/silmaril/chebrolu/doku.php

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 Networks at least three to four times at a comparable level (similar syllabus). The coordinators could belong to either Computer Science, Electrical or IT departments, but the course will be taught from a systems perspective (more geared towards Computer Science). The workshop faculty prefers that the workshop coordinators be from engineering college. It is preferable if the coordinators have some prior experience in using networking tools (like tcpdump, wireshark, linux networking commands), network simulator (NS2) and socket programming. 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.

Duration and Venue

The duration of the workshop is two weeks. One week of equivalent work is to be done online from 4th April to 04th May 2014, from their own places of work/homes.

One week of face to face interaction from 05th to 9th May, 2014, to be conducted in 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.

How to Apply

Those wishing to attend this course should register online at www.it.iitb.ac.in/nmeict
Due to limited seats, only one registration from each remote center is allowed. 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 3rd April 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 T10KT project of IIT Bombay. Live recording of the course and other created content 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)