Nov 26, 2009
E-learning, Amritapuri
Eleltech India 2009, a national seminar on e-learning and e-learning technologies was recently organized in Hyderabad. A team from the Amrita Center for E-learning was invited to attend.
Prof. Kamal Bijlani, Director of the Center, gave a presentation on Collaborative Objects in Distance Education. His talk was among several invited talks of e-learning experts from around the nation.
Hosted by the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU), the seminar was supported by C-DAC and the Government of India’s Dept of Information Technology. Nearly 300 academicians and industry experts participated.
At the seminar, the team was further invited by the Dr. N. Sarat Chandra Babu, Director of C-DAC, Hyderabad, to demo A-View, Amrita’s ground-breaking, new e-learning platform that has been developed in-house.
“We received several questions from participants post the demo,” stated Mr. Bimal S. Kumar, Project Coordinator of A-View. “The four screens that make for a learning experience that comes close to sitting in an actual classroom seemed to intrigue many.”
A-View is already being deployed at several colleges around the nation including the IITs and NITs. IIT Bombay is beginning to use the platform for hosting seminars and courses that can be attended by remote participants also.
“After the demo, a training executive from BSNL, came up to ask us if A-View could also be deployed in their organization,” further shared Mr. Bimal. As India’s largest telecommunication company, BSNL has offices all over India. It would help the organization realize significant cost savings if employees could be trained remotely from one central location, and didn’t have to physically actually go there.
The Amrita team learned a great deal at the conference also. “We were a little surprised to see so many people, all working in different areas of e-learning,” stated Preeja Pradeep, Research Associate, who was part of the Amrita team. “We realized that a lot of people in India are keen to see this technology implemented, so that high-quality learning becomes a reality for all youth in the nation.”
A large part of the seminar was dedicated to the National Project on Technology Enhanced Learning or NPTEL. An MHRD initiative that has funding of about Rs. 400 crore, it has begun to revolutionize higher education in India. Through lectures uploaded on YouTube, students across the nation are able to ‘attend’ classes of IIT professors. Amrita is proud to participate in several of MHRD’s funded e-learning projects, under the umbrella of Amrita Sakshat.
