1 Prof. Mangala Sunder 2. Prof. A. K. Bakshi 3. Prof. C. G. Mahajan 4. Mr. Pradeep Verma 5. Prof. Kannan Moudgalya

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1 Minutes of the Third Meeting of the Standing Committee, National Mission on Education through ICT Date: March 28, 2009, Venue: Conference Room, Rm 112, C Wing, First Floor, MHRD, Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi The third meeting of the Standing Committee for carrying out the National Mission on education through ICT constituted by the Chairman, Project Approval Board, was held in the Conference room 112, C Wing, Shastri Bhavan on 28 th March, Shri. N. K. Sinha, Joint Secretary, Distance Education presided over the meeting and welcomed all the members. The following members attended the meeting: 1. Prof. Y. N. Singh, IIT Kanpur 2. Mr. Pradeep Verma, TERI 3. Prof. Kushal Sen, IIT Delhi 4. Dr. Bandhopadhyay, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University 5. Prof. K. Mangala Sunder, IIT Madras 6. Prof. A. K. Bakshi, Uniersity of Delhi 7. Prof. C. G. Mahajan, IIISER Mohali 8. Prof. Kannan Moudhgalya, IIT Bombay 9. Dr. Uma Kanjilal, IGNOU 10. Prof. Jahid H. Khan, Director, Jamia Millia, New Delhi 11. Prof. P. Venkat Rangan, Amrita University 12. Shri K. C. Pandita, BEL 13. Prof. Karmeshu, JNU Shri. Sinha welcomed everyone and explained to the members briefly the objectives and the role of the standing committee as perceived by the Project Approval Board of the National Mission. The Minutes of the Second meeting of the standing committee on March 25 th was approved. In continuation of the previous meeting, the standing committee discussed the following proposals short listed by various experts: 1. Benchmarking of Information and communication technology modules in Physics and Chemistry from IIT Kanpur. Committee Members for monitoring the activities under this proposal 1 Prof. Mangala Sunder 2. Prof. A. K. Bakshi 3. Prof. C. G. Mahajan 4. Mr. Pradeep Verma 5. Prof. Kannan Moudgalya A sum of Rs crore is recommended. This project is at the core of UG, PG teaching and curriculum development and has proposed to provide content along with a large number of interactions through wiki format and also the development of a

2 large number of simulations in Physics and Chemistry. New interactions will be developed and FAQs will be generated with a large number of experts to provide course contents suitable for institutions all across India. The PIs have earlier developed course materials for selected subjects as part of the Chattisgarh-IIT Kanpur online teaching programme(synchronous and supplemented using the web) and have the expertise and collaboration of other faculty in the departments of physics and chemistry. They propose to build the peer and student interactions with additional contribution from others to enable different levels of students to use the course contents to benefit them at their own levels. Therefore funding as suggested above is recommended. 2. Development of an Indian sign language recognition system for hearing impaired students of India from IIT Guwahati. A sum of Rs crore is recommended to run a pilot. Committee Members for monitoring the activities under this proposal: 1. Mr. Pradeep Verma 2. Dr. Nandhini 3. Prof. Venkat Rangan 4. Prof. Jahid Khan 5. Prof. Kushal Sen Automatic sign language recognition platforms for hearing impaired students are not available in India and the development of the software proposed by IIT Guwahati The PI has earlier developed different methods to recognize dynamic hand gestures with (1) local hand motion only where only the fingers and the palm move without any movement of the whole hand, (2) global motion only where the hand as a whole moves in space to make different gestures, and (3) both local and global motions where the fingers and palm create different hand poses as the arm traverses along a trajectory in space. The committee felt that it is extremely important activity aimed at tools for helping physically challenged students and is a trend setter. Even internationally, such activities are few and far between and both the planning commission and human resources development programme emphasizes the need to be inclusive with respect to physically challenged. The project is well written and the quantum of funding asked is also reasonable. 3. Text transcription of technical video lectures and creation of searchable video index, metadata and online quizzes from IIT Madras. A sum of Rs crore is recommended. 1. Prof. S. V. Raghavan 2. Prof. N. Balakrishnan 3. Prof. Kannan Moudgalya 4. Prof. Venkat Rangan 5. Prof. Kushal Sen

3 NPTEL programme has produced the largest number of openly accessible and high quality video lessons from some of the best faculty in the premier institutions in India. Unlike web based courses, searching and indexing of video lessons is still in infancy and this project proposes to provide the largest possible technical keyword data base along with voice recognitions from Indian professors whose accents are diverse. Hence it is important to generate a text based on the video for easy access and for indexing. The project proposes to develop a full-text transcript of these videos for effective use of the video lecture contents as all of the speakers in this programme so far are nonnative English speakers. to associate spoken words with a clear, unambiguous text which matches one-to-one with the speech. This will lead to creation of world-class text books in more than 100 technical subjects at the same time. This is a welcome development in a country where there are many different dialects and a coherent development of automatic translation programs will be possible only if there is sufficient metadata. The text, annotated with video-time markers and keywords along with full search capability through HTML, XML and other special outputs such as PDF will ensure the fully optimized and truly open video lectures through text search as well as create the necessary database for research in this important area in the Internet era.. will result also in the creation of a large thesaurus in technical education which can be used in future implementations of speech-text translation algorithms Also Indian English is well-known for its rich diversity in pronunciation and it is desirable for the listener Metadata can be created and other standards based on SCORM can be implemented to enable reusability of content between different learning management systems. In addition, the text and the audio tracks also provide easy download option for students with limited bandwidth and thus enable a wide reach of video courses. The contents generated here would be of considerable interest to research community engaged in developing automated speech to text algorithms. Hence, this project is recommended as is. 4. e-content for four courses of the Diploma programme in E-Content Production, offered by the Tamil Nadu open university. A sum of Rs. 28 lakhs is recommended. Prof. K. Mangala Sunder Prof. A. K. Bakshi Prof. C. G. Mahajan Prof. Venkat Rangan The coordinating institute is engaged in running several diploma programmes aimed at benefiting graduates and fresh science and commerce students to acquire ICT skills in a short period of time. The contents proposed to be developed under this programme will directly be useful to students and others engaged in developing e-learning content for the mission. Such people are in short supply. This is skill development and it complements

4 the courses developed under IT and computer science programmes. Hence, this is project is recommended for funding the entire amount to the Institution. 5. e-content Generation for Postgraduate Program in Environmental Science from TERI university. A sum of Rs. 1.5 crore is recommended. 1. Prof. S. C. Saxena 2. Prof. Y. N. singh 3. Dr. Uma Kanjilal 4. Prof. Pami Dua Awareness of environmental issues, global warming and changes to the ecology is extremely important to everyone. TERI university is headed by the Nobel Laureate Dr. Pachuri and has a very strong team of professors, who are fully aware of environmental issues. Therefore, this offer from TERI university to develop a large number of courses in environmental science must be encouraged and nurtured. There are also not many institutions of this caliber in the country. Such courses are also not available in a structured format in the internet. This programme will greatly help all engineering, science and humanities students to learn the key issues of concerning environment. This project proposal is well conceived and appreciated highly by the standing committee. 6. Creation of machine translation tools and resources for English to Dravidian languages from Amrita university. A sum of Rs. 1 crore is recommended. 1. Prof. N. Balakrishnan 2. Prof. K. Mangala Sunder 3. Prof. Prasanna Venkataraman 4. Prof. Kalyan Dutta The entire higher learning space is occupied by English. This leaves a large part of our population to have little or no access to the contents and programmes of technological development. Translation into regional languages will enable and empower bright minds who are otherwise constrained by a lack of appropriate expression in English, and not of ideas. Therefore, a pilot in four regional languages of the states who are in the souther region (where the institute and its partners are all located) is considered appropriate by the Committee. Research is proposed to be done by leading experts from several institutions which are situated in the middle of semi urban and rural areas. Also the leading institution has built considerable expertise on its own in this area so far. The following proposals have been recommended to become the part of the nationally coordinated mission with partners identified as follows: 1. Guwahati university can contact Dr. Y. N. Singh of IIT Kanpur regarding the network connectivity for which they have submitted the proposal. This has already been taken care of by the connectivity part the mission. 2. Advanced international expertise and content delivery on embedded systems, wireless systems and cyber security from IIIT Allahabad, Amrita university and university of Buffalo to partner with NPTEL. 3. Project on open source mathematical software in education from Bhaskaracharya Pratishthana, Pune to partner with IIT Roorkee.

5 4. Establishment and standardization of infrastructural elements in developing and distributing content needed for higher learning from NIT Warangal to partner with NPTEL. 5. ICT enabled high voltage laboratory from NIT Durgapur to partner with IIT Delhi. 6. Development of e-contents in inorganic chemistry for undergraduate first year course from Government autonomous science college, Jabalpur to partner with university of Delhi. 7. ICT and multimedia tools for capture, collaboration and communication in distributed learning environments by IIIT Hyderabad to partner with IIT Bombay. 8. ICT bases Course content development in areas of computer science and engineering by IIIT Hyderabad to partner with NPTEL. The following proposal was only submitted as concept notes and therefore, the standing committee suggested that detailed DPRs to run pilots be made available: Education through ICT from Thapar university. The proposal entitled Teaching through anchored instruction: using ICT in rural schools from IIT Bombay does not come under the purview of the national mission on education through ICT and hence not considered for funding. The meeting ended with a vote of thanks to the Chair.