IIT Delhi director Prof V. Ramgopal Rao shares his thoughts about research institutes connecting with school children and crossing language barriers using digital technology. Edited excerpts:
How can research institutes reach out to school students?
Four years ago, there was a ministry of education initiative—IIT-Professor Assisted Learning (PAL) programme, comprising a series of video lectures by IIT professors to help students prepare for entrance exams like JEE. The focus was on students in remote areas who cannot afford coaching classes due to gender and economic vulnerabilities. This was indeed a major effort by all IITs to help school children at a national level. The latest in IIT-Delhi’s outreach programme is ‘Sci-Tech Spins’ to make children aware of different study and career options before they enter college. Many children usually go by what their senior batches have done. We want to make children realise their interests, and also tell them how different specialisations have evolved over time, so they can make more informed career decisions.
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Has pandemic-induced crisis broken any stereotypes in the education sector?
It has brought about a huge transformation, which would otherwise have taken at least a decade. At IIT-Delhi, we have around 600 courses per semester. With three semesters going online, we have coursework of over 1,000 courses now available in online mode. We have now moved to totally online, out-of-class instruction. However, as we know, optimum learning happens in a hybrid mode. When classes reopen, students can access lectures online, while the physical classes can become more interactive, more discussion-oriented, with more cross-questioning than just listening to lectures. The online lectures can be helpful also for students who are slow learners. At IIT-Delhi, we also used this opportunity to launch an online certificate programme, eVIDYA (enabling Virtual Interactive-learning for Driving Youth Advancement), with five companies in the educational technology space as partners. The programme has become very popular. IIT-Delhi awards the certificates, and we are looking at the idea of individuals accumulating credits under this initiative so they can become eligible for a diploma from IIT-Delhi, or even a degree in the future, using our online learning modules.
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What can research institutes do to breach linguistic and caste barriers?
Language is a big challenge today for students from rural areas. However, technology can offer a solution in the near future. Real-time automated translation services are available for certain languages. In a few years, the facility should be available for multiple Indian languages. The JEE exam is conducted in both English and Hindi, and we get about 100-150 students with a Hindi-medium background every year. In recent years, a lot of scholars from abroad are coming to the IITs and enrolling for a PhD, and many of them are from countries where English is not their first language. We are constantly upgrading our language support initiatives to ensure these students are trained in English. With the advancement of technology, soon we will have gadgets that can translate any language into the student’s preferred language. With a bit of support from the institutions, and with technology playing a far greater role in language processing, language barriers can be overcome to a great extent in the near future.
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