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Deepak B Phatak,
Professor, Dept. of Computer Sc. and Engg.
IIT Bombay, India
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Born on 2nd April 1948,
Dr. Deepak B. Phatak obtained his Bachelor’s degree
in Electrical Engineering from SGSITS Indore in 1969, and
his M. Tech. and Ph. D. from IIT Bombay. He has been serving
with IIT Bombay since 1971. He headed the CSE department from
1991 to 1994. He was the first Dean of Resources of the Institute
from 1995 to 1998. He was the founding head of The Kanwal
Rekhi School of IT from 1998 to 2002. He briefly served as
head of S. J. Mehta School of Management from 2004 to 2005.
He was appointed ‘Subrao M. Nilekani’ Chair Professor
in January 2000. His research areas are Databases, Information
Systems, IT enabled Education, and IT strategy planning. He
has guided 7 Ph. D. scholars, over 170 M. Tech. students,
and has authored over 50 publications. He currently serves
as a professor in the department of Computer Science and Engineering.
In 1999, he started
an IT incubator to foster innovation through start-up companies.
He also started the country’s first interactive distance
learning program using VSATs in 2000. Using the experience
gained in that initiative, he worked for 3 years on a national
mission project to train 1000 teachers at one time, in several
core engineering subjects, through a series of ISTE workshops
conducted using ICT. His efforts succeeded in training over
20,000 teachers from engineering colleges in the country.
He is currently executing the scaled up version termed T10KT
(Train 10,000 Teachers at a time). 1,00,000 teachers have
already been trained, and the aim is to train another 50,000
teachers within a year.
He set up the Affordable
Solutions Lab (ASL) at IIT Bombay in 2000, to develop low
cost technology solutions. He is regarded as the pioneer of
smart card usage for financial transactions in India. Through
ASL, he popularized use of thin clients in India. He developed
low cost clicker devices for use in class rooms, and Open
Source multimedia tools for e-
learning. In March 2012, he was given the responsibility of
executing the prestigious Aakash project. 1,00,000 low cost
tablet computers were deployed for engineering education under
this project. Aakash-2 tablet computers are recognized as
the lowest cost educational tablets globally. These mission
projects are funded and supported by the National Mission
on Education through ICT, MHRD.
Since 2012, he has been
working on MOOCs (Maasive Open Online Courses), which have
immense potential as an inexpensive mechanism for offering
quality education online, to a very large number of learners.
He was instrumental in a tie up between IIT Bombay and edX,
with the result that IIT Bombay courses are now available
to thousands of global learners. He realized that MOOCs will
be increasingly adopted in various blended forms, and are
likely to lead to positive disruptive changes in the educational
systems globally. A blended model suggested by him is being
considered for adoption in higher education system. He is
currently working on a project to adopt the open source edX
platform software for Indian needs, such that the modified
platform can be used for education as also for vocational
training in the country. This platform is used to offer courses
from IITBombayX
Dr. Phatak has helped
several institutes and universities to set up educational
programs. He spent the academic year 1983-84 in his alma mater
at Indore for this purpose. He has served as Chairman of the
national board of IT education and research, of All India
Council of Technical Education. He has been an Open Source
evangelist in India, and has pioneered several initiatives
to popularize FOSS usage. In 2003, he took sabbatical leave
to tour across the country to learn about the status and problems
of engineering education in smaller colleges. He visited over
60 engineering colleges, interacting with students and teachers.
He discovered the enormous talent that exists in small places.
Realizing that such students and teachers need guidance and
mentoring, he started the “Ekalavya project” in
IIT Bombay. It helps build collaborating communities across
educational institutions in India. He has been an adviser
to many organizations on issues related to Information Technology,
particularly in financial sector. He has helped PSUs and advised
Central and State Government departments on various IT projects.
He has served on several boards.
He received the “Excellence
in Teaching” award of IIT Bombay in 2009, and the IIT
Bombay Industrial Impact Research Award in 2010. He was elected
Fellow of the Computer Society of India (CSI) in 1999, and
Fellow of the IETE in 2000. He was listed amongst fifty most
influential Indians by Business Week in 2009. He was conferred
Life Time Achievement Awards by Skoch Foundation in 2003,
by Data Quest in 2008, and by ‘Dewang Mehta Business
School Awards’ in 2010. He was conferred ‘PadmaShri’
by Govt. of India in April 2013. He was conferred the Life
Time Achievement award by IIT Bombay, in August 2014.
Dr. Phatak believes
that teaching cannot just be one’s profession. It must
be the ‘Dharma’ of a teacher. His dream is to
see a resurgent India, catching up with the world, using ICT
as the spring board.
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Title:
Onslaught of MOOCs - an opportunity for constructive disruption.
Currently,
MOOCs are flourishing as an alternate avenue for learners,
to study subjects of their interests, from well-known professors
of premier Institutions. MOOCs hold promise of a paradigm
shift in teaching-learning methods established over centuries.
They permit self-paced learning. An online discussion-forum
provides interaction between learners, and between learners
and teacher. It permits the instructor to answer specific
questions and to clarify doubts in an asynchronous fashion.
It is now possible for thousands of students to learn a subject
from renowned teachers. Analysis of event logs, a la big data,
will permit capture of learning behavior of students. This
will be important additional parameter for research and practice
in advancing personalized instructions (one of the 14 grand
challenges in engineering, for this century) There are important
concerns with MOOCs, some of which are discussed in one of
my older papers (https://iuceedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/summary-of-talk-d-b-phatak_-blendedmoocs.pdf;
also available at http://www.it.iitb.ac.in/nmeict/pdfs/MOOCs.pdf).
These are: non-recognition of MOOCs marks in the regular university
grades, absence of learning through face-to-face interaction,
and lack of laboratory work for technical courses. The established
university system, although curious about the MOOCs phenomenon,
remains generally aloof. Some universities have ventured to
experiment, but most retain a safe distance, often guarding
their established ways of teaching and assessment. Shortcomings
of the University system are well known, especially in India
with its quaint system of affiliated colleges. Some of these
are: fixed and outdated syllabus, stereotyped examination
system, defined duration of semesters and degree programs.
Teachers in affiliated colleges have no say in either formulation
of the syllabus, or in setting the question papers. They have
the 'autonomy' to teach only to a set pattern. Students focus
primarily on getting best grades. They quickly figure out
that their teachers are toothless tigers as far as exams and
grades are concerned. They often ignore local teaching, throng
coaching classes, and read guide books rather than text books.
The university system is aware of these aberrations, but stays
the chartered course. This is primarily due to its belief
that the employers, and therefore the society at large, will
continue to 'recognize' its degrees and grades as 'essential'
for job prospects, at least for initial filtering by prospective
employers; while MOOCs certificates are not yet so recognized.
Employers may soon figure out that MOOCs certifications are
good enough to judge competencies and knowledge. They will
learn that their employees do not necessarily need conventional
degrees to perform their jobs well, and such independent online
learning and assessment provide an adequate filter for their
recruitment process. Already, the PSUs in India have started
asking for the GATE score of applicants. It is of course in
addition to a valid degree as of today, but things are likely
to change. Whether it will happen in 5 years, 10 years, or
50 years is not known. But when it does, a great disruption
may occur. In any case, if MOOCs wer ever to simply come out
as plausible replacement of conventional education, holistic
education will remain a silent casualty, as we may simply
be replacing one set of inadequacies with another. Rather
than waiting for the market forces to play out this game,
I believe it is possible to develop a blended system, where
the conventional face-to-face education is meaningfully supplemented
by great online courses. Use of flipped classrooms in local
colleges, a collaborative group of large number of teachers
working jointly with MOOCs and classroom engagement, may reintroduce
the emphasis on problem solving, vigorous discussions, and
new ethos in our system. This will significantly enhance the
learning experience and quality of education. I believe the
key for such a blend is to make Institutes start with using
the composite approach, with an agreement to factor the MOOCs
marks earned by the students in the final university grade
obtained in conventional assessment and exams. Once students
know that the grade for a subject depends on both marks, they
will pay attention to both, and hopefully benefit. I am lucky
to have found 50 Institutes in India willing to practice this
model in the coming academic year. I am holding a discussion
meeting with them in Mumbai on 6 June. Three courses (which
we have successfully offered as MOOCs on edX and also on IITBombayX)
are being offered under this blended scheme. A large number
of Indian learners are independently expected to enroll for
these MOOCs for an honour code certificate. Of these some
20,000 students from the 50 institutes Institutes will actually
get a grade for their regular degree course, comprising of
scores from MOOCs and conventional assessment. I am pretty
excited with the prospect.
http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~dbp/
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