With online teaching becoming the order of the day, the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Sri City conducted a five-day programme to train 160 faculty members from 22 IIITs across India on ensuring a smooth switch-over to the new mode.
The programme aimed at letting the participants explore teaching principles as per Bloom’s taxonomy and design learning spaces in four quadrant approach, design lesson utilising the instructional technology resources and integrate it into the teaching environment and explore online Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), Open Educational Resource (OER) and other digital tools for the purpose.
Rakesh Ranjan, Additional Secretary with the Union Ministry of HRD, in his inaugural address, saw a great potential in the plethora of powerful and innovative digital devices and tools in improving educational outcomes. He requested the teachers to ensure that the content and communication reached out to all students, even in the remotest part of the country. Mr. Ranjan also emphasised on ensuring variety in content and delivery options of educational products, given the students’ changing attention span.
NITTTR (Chennai) Chairman V.S.S. Kumar said the 21st century learning required global classroom and ‘not necessarily within the confines of four walls’. IIIT Sri City Director G. Kannabiran explained how the pandemic situation had thrust a new option of online teaching on the academic fraternity, for which the institute had created high-quality e-content.
IIIT Sri City Chittoor, as the Secretariat of IIIT Coordination Forum, took the lead in conducting the programme along with IIITDM Kancheepuram.