In India today, 40 million children complete high school every year. This, despite the 56% dropout rate, wherein many children who enroll, don’t complete their school education.

The Government of India is pushing for a zero dropout rate. It wants to ensure that every child who enrolls in school, graduates.

The Centre for Advanced Research in Educational Technologies (AmritaCREATE) at the Amritapuri campus is at the forefront of the effort to ensure that millions of Indian children have the opportunity to receive a school education.

Recently the Center joined hands with 21 institutions from 12 different countries including USA, UK, Germany, Brazil, Russia and China to promote education and social innovation.

Led by Carnegie Mellon University, as part of the Hewlett Packard Catalyst initiative, the consortium will explore innovative approaches and strategies to improving basic education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Other universities participating besides Amrita are Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Ecole Centrale De Lyon, France; National Research Irkutsk State Technical University, Russia; and North-West University, Gauteng, South Africa.

Amrita is the only Indian partner.
The consortium will use emerging technologies to develop case studies and learning experiences that promote creative thinking, open-ended problem-solving and cross-cultural collaboration.
Amrita will provide leading edge technology for collaborative learning. Simulation labs and rich media content, using a cloud model, will be made available.
Students, especially in rural India and those belonging to lower socio-economic classes will greatly benefit. HP tablets will be provided to students to access the learning resources. The HP grant of technological aid, professional support and financial contribution is estimated at $150,000.

The project will also allow the collection of a large amount of learning data for measurement analysis.

“We hope that our findings from the measurement study coupled with experiences from our engagement with international partner universities will help develop an effective tool that can be deployed across hundreds of primary and secondary schools who do not have access to state-of-the art tools and technologies,” stated Prof. Raghu Raman, Director, AmritaCREATE.
June 30, 2011

School of Engineering, Amritapuri