T
he BITSian is quick to complain. So, when given
even the slightest opportunity to berate someone or
something, you can be sure that he will be upon it faster
than the proverbial shark and the drop of blood. Into this
welcoming atmosphere came the ERP system, something
which has been widely acknowledged by even the most
optimistic and the least sceptical ones among the general
populace to be a dud of matchless proportions. Into the
said welcoming atmosphere with the said all-conquering
software came the new ARCD Dean, Dr. BK Rout.
Surprising one and all, however, the ERP system this
time round managed to pull through with next to no
glitches, putting a smile on the visibly relieved face of Dr.
Rout. However, as is the case with BITS, something was
bound to go wrong, which it did. The English Press Club
managed to interview Dr. Rout in an attempt to seek
some clarification, the upshot of which is recorded
below.
students this time were asked to register twice this
semester, once each by the Legacy and the ERP systems.
The ERP re-registration went smoothly, we were told,
and, truth be told, the quintessential BITSian cribbing
was, for once, lying low. However, Dr. Rout refused to
draw premature conclusions from the apparent success.
Acknowledging that the second registration was much
unlike the traditional registration, what with students
being mailed their section numbers and being threatened
constantly that registrations would be cancelled if the
highly adventurous decided to explore the new territory ,
Dr. Rout felt that there was still some way to go. ‘We
need to stress-test our servers’, he opined, and felt that it
was important for the system to be fine-tuned.
Another matter of much consternation and heartburn to
the BITSian is the system of substituting and adding on
electives. Some general questions that he finds himself
asking include queries on what courses can be substituted
with what, and how allotments are made based on the
availability, or lack of. Also, we were informed that any
elective could be substituted with any elective, provided
all the prerequisites and other such issues like availability
of the required slots in the timetable and so on.
We also sought clarification on the confusion prevalent
among many regarding the exact ambit of the ARCD and
the ID. The Instruction Division, we were told, is
responsible for the general administration of the courses
in general, by deciding the various aspects like the timing,
location and size of the classes. Any queries regarding the
registration process, however, fell under the purview of
the ARCD. Dr Rout however, shed some light on
potential future plans of streamlining the two
departments’ functionalities that run quite hand in hand,
to side-by-side facilities to aid confused students, whose
interest and anxiety incidentally, Dr Rout amusingly
remarks, has spiked to new heights in matters pertaining
to courses and registration.
When asked why the ARCD was being so persistent with
the ERP system, Dr. Rout told us that the system offered
a great deal more flexibility to the instructors than the
Legacy system did. ‘Grades, for instance, can be uploaded
much more easily by the instructor’, he said, ‘They just
have to feed it in.’ Also, the ERP system is expected to
immediately be able to provide the ARCD and thereby
the instructors with a complete list of all students
registered for a course. As a result, the course can assume
full functionality much earlier, he explained. On the
contrary, the Legacy system has a lot more loopholes and
also requires a great deal more of manual involvement, In all, Dr. BK Rout seemed to be a happy man, as he
opening up a greater scope for error, he elaborated.
continued to address the queries of the many disgruntled
When asked about the future prospects of the ERP BITSians lined up at his door. He has every right to be:
system, Dr. Rout was bullish. ‘Of course, we would like it he’s quietened the whines.
to replace the Legacy system eventually’, he said. The
Coding freak, Quiz wiz, Techno-junkie, wannabe Gadget
Guru, Geek - If any of these words aptly describe you or
satiate your appetite for showcasing skills at tech-fests,
then you are one of many who’ve marked the 27th of
March, 2014 on their calendars. The wheels of APOGEE’14 have been set in motion and judging by preliminary glimpses, you might just start reconsidering your
plans to go home/ stay indoors/ not participate this time
around. Word is, it’s the first ever tech fest to sport a 3D
website. Take a bow, DVM.
And then there is Aarohan. This initiative by the CoStAA
body to expand the reach of Apogee has paid off, and in
style. Aarohan is the 2014 add-on to Apogee and is an
event conducted in 2 tiers. The first level was conducted
across schools in many cities and consisted of 2 separate
online contests- Brainiac and Code Voyage. Brainiac is
your usual aptitude-science-math test while Code Voyage
is a coding contest. “The purpose of this exam is to test
aptitude for coding, ability to think clearly and in a concise manner and knowledge of various coding languages…” to quote the website. The top 50 students selected from 42 schools have been invited to witness the
happenings at APOGEE ’14.
An enthusiastic Shubit Minocha, CoStAAn of PCr APOGEE gives us impressive statistics about Aarohan. The
CoStAA body had initially decided to conduct the event
in schools across 12 cities, but the overwhelming response from both volunteers at BITS and schools alike
led to it being conducted across 17 cities. “Schools in
most cities, especially from the South- Hyderabad, Vijaywada, and Vishakhapatnam showed great interest and
willingly held the prelims in their respective labs” says
Shubit. Even though the event had a bleak start, the final
success has left him overjoyed. “By November last year,
more than 20 schools had registered but we were facing
software problems, we hadn’t trained all our student volunteers yet and the proceedings were not picking up
pace.” The winter break however, saw a major turnaround for them and from then on, everything fit in place.
To add to its magnitude, is the partnership with popular
coding site- CodeChef and Phyzok Learning Solutions.
What the school students arriving here will be engaged in
remains undecided, but these are happy prospects for
budding talents.
From next year onwards, the new department DEXA
(Department of External Affairs) would be taking up Aarohan under its wing, and the event is expected to undergo a few changes. ‘Aarohan’ translates to ‘ascendance’ and
one can expect Aarohan to live up to its name, in taking
Pilani’s very own tech fest to greater heights and farther
corners.
...continued from page 1.
LECTURES ON COURSERA
E-Attendance
We first spoke about ‘E-attendance’, which has obviously
caused panic amongst students as it betrays the “noattendance policy” of BITS. Dr. Banerjee tells us that ‘Eattend’ is primarily for analysis purposes, that is, to examine
the correlation between attendance and performance of
students. The project involves two higher degree students
and three first degree students who have designed an app
which works for all phones having Android 2.2 onwards. It
requires one to click a “selfie”, which is then sent to the back
end of the system via Wi-Fi. The facial recognition software
analyses and compares it with the horrendous picture which
was taken on your first day here. Currently the software has
only 88% accuracy and is being worked on to bring this
percentage up to 99%.
The fact that students lie at the very centre of the numerous
technological changes not only in terms of effect, but also in
terms of cause is inspiriting. While initial hesitation to accept
change exists, technology enablement will be beneficial only
if we embrace it and exploit its potential completely.
Flipped Classrooms and Any-Learn: A Tool for Blended
Learning
While most of us were away enjoying our summer holidays, a
few select members of the administration were trying to
contact various organisations to enable the MOOC (Massive
Open Online Course) education system at BITS which as the
name suggests, comprises online courses aimed at unlimited
participation and open access via the internet.
The research had unearthed several models for E-learning:
A website at a basic level offering modularized content,
but not organised courses (for instance, Khan Academy)
the podcast model similar to the podcasts offered by the
CS departments of Stanford, MIT et al which can be
heard at any time
resources which are available to absolutely anyone –
simply courses which exist and were not necessarily
restricted to lectures
MOOCs, which has been found to be the most suitable
model and is going to be used.
Any-Learn is a platform developed by BITS which like any
other MOOC platform, like Coursera, gives the institute the
ability to use blended learning, flipped classrooms or any
other methods of modern pedagogy. ‘Flipped classrooms’
involves students understanding lecture material through
online lectures and only attending tutorials and/or labs to
clarify concepts and to strength their hold on the subject. In
‘Blended Learning’, however, all the conventional methods
of teaching are used, and extra study material, supplementary
lecture material, summary of the lectures etc. are made
available online to enhance learning.
Any-Learn will have in-built learning, management systems,
content delivery systems and computational systems. Its
archival system and all videos will be available under the
BITS-Pilani’s official YouTube channel, but shall be marked
as ‘unlisted’ therein so as to allow access only through the
private links users shall get once they enter via the Any-Learn
MOOC portal. The computational system, which currently
resides on a small cloud which can support 200 users, will in
the future be expanded to a larger cloud. Once it crosses the
testing phase, the institute will have the option of investing
into cloud computing and man-power resources. Currently
there are only four people working on this project.
The Any-Learn program is currently being stress tested with
Dr. Banerjee’s courses. While standard classes and labs are
held, some quizzes, discussions and lecture summaries are
brought to the student through Any-Learn. The aim is to
bring many more courses under blended pedagogy through
Any-Learn by next semester. Meanwhile, Coursera is being
used for testing the ‘flipped classrooms’ philosophy, for
courses like Computer Programming and Microprocessors and
Interfacing.