A Special Interaction on Online Education was organized by CSL for DigitalEd with top officials of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

The objective was to introduce DigitalEd’s online learning platform, Mobius, to the officials of AICTE as well as discuss how DigitalEd could make the online learning eco-system of STEM education more impactful.

The interaction was held on 27 June, 2019 at AICTE headquarters in New Delhi.

Meeting Chair

Dr. M.P. Poonia – Vice-Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education

AICTE Team

1. Prof. Rajive Kumar - Adviser-I, Policy & Academic Planning Bureau
2. Dr. Neetu Bhagat - Deputy Director, Policy & Academic Planning Bureau
3. Sh. N.K. Bhandari - Consultant, Policy & Academic Planning Bureau
4. Lt. Col. Kailash Bansal - Director, Skill Development Cell
5. Dr. Uma Raghunathan - Director Research, Institutional and Faculty Development Bureau
6. Sh. Anand Kumar- Deputy Director, PMSSS - Jammu & Kashmir Cell
7. Sh. Manoj Singh - Assistant Director, Policy & Academic Planning Bureau
8. Dr. Bhupendra Goswami - Project Officer, Approval Bureau
9. Dr. K. Elangovan - AID-MIC

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) is the statutory body and a national-level council for technical education, under Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development.

AICTE is responsible for the proper planning and coordinated development of technical education and management education system in India. The AICTE accredits postgraduate and graduate programs under specific categories at Indian institutions as per its charter.

DigitalEd Team

1. Mr. Andrew Rourke - Director, Teaching Solutions, Waterloo, Canada
2. Mr. Chris Banks - Senior Technical Support Analyst, Australia office
3. Ms. Stefanie Winkler - Senior Member Content Team Vienna Office, Professor in TU Wein (Vienna University of technology)
4. Mr. Avik Dutta - Country Representative, India.

DigitalEd™ is a spin-off of Maplesoft™, and was formed to bring greater focus to Maplesoft’s online education product line. DigitalEd products have been used by academic institutions around the world since 2003. It is on a mission to transform online education and empower educators to make learning better for everyone.

DigitalEd online education solutions are designed especially for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses. With Maple™, the world-leading math software from Maplesoft™, providing the mathematical power, DigitalEd products are uniquely positioned to provide effective tools for online math-based education.

Centre for Strategy and Leadership Team

1. Sh. Vikas Sharma - Director & Chief Executive
2. Sh. Sumanto Mukherjee - Executive Director
3. Ms. Masha Mukherjee - Executive Director

Centre for Strategy and Leadership (CSL) is a special initiative focused on Sustainable Social and Economic Development of the people of India. CSL work towards developing synergies through close cooperation and collaboration of key stakeholder partners in Government, Public and Private Enterprises, and, Citizen Groups.

Course of the Interaction

The interaction began with a welcome address by Prof. Rajive Kumar in which he expressed gratitude to DigitalEd for coming all the way from Canada to interact with AICTE and to CSL for organizing the interaction.

He then gave an informative talk on the mandate of AICTE and the extensive work it is doing in the field of technical education. He spoke about the recent initiatives of AICTE to help in orienting students so that they can better adjust to the rigours of higher technical education. He also talked about the innovative measures AICTE has taken to train the trainers so that they remain updated.

Dr. M.P. Poonia talked about some of the recent achievements of AICTE in further developing technical education in India as well as making it more inclusive. He also pointed out some of the major challenges in technical education in the country. He gave special emphasis on attracting more female students towards technical education and highlighted some of the steps AICTE has taken to help meet that goal.

Next to speak was Mr. Vikas Sharma who expressed his desire to leverage competencies and technological innovations of other nations, particularly Canada, to help revamp technical education in India. He pointed out that innovative solutions such as the Mobius platform have a great potential is India and that numerous Universities across the globe have already adopted it to the great benefit of their students.

Mr. Andrew Rourke then made a detailed presentation on the mental process of learning. He talked about how online education and blended teaching is advantageous in modern teaching and learning systems leading to better academic performance. He also spoke about how DigitalEd, through Mobius, harnesses the cognitive inclinations of students to improve understanding and retention. He went on to cite examples of various Higher Education Institutions which have used Mobius to modernize their teaching and learning pedagogy.

This was followed by the demonstration of the content authoring tools of Mobius as well as its inbuilt analytics by Ms. Stephani Winkler.

Thereafter Mr. Chris Banks demonstrated the various content delivery mediums, interactive learning features available through Mobius. He also talked about the high customizability of the platform.

Discussion

The talks and presentations were followed by a discussion and QnA session which revolved around the following points.

1. How can Mobius be customised for the Indian education system.
2. Using Mobius for Training of Trainers programmes
3. Implementation of offline content delivery
4. How Mobius could be integrated into existing platforms like SWAYAM

Way Forward

AICTE has asked the DigitalEd to send in their technical team to check the compatibility of Mobius with present software utilized by AICTE.