Pre Service Research Task Force (RTF) & Core Committee (CC) Meet

Background

The Research Task Force (RTF) was formed post the core committee meet in May 2005 at Bangalore. When the RTF met for the first time in August 2005, some issues, like the ways and means of promoting research in ICTE; defining the nature and scope of the RTF; reviewing the research already done on ICTE in Indian Universities; were discussed.

The second convocation of members of RTF was held from 7^th to 9^th December, 2005 at Hotel Sun Grace, Ponda, Goa.

Objective of the Event

	Concretize the scope, role and work of RTF
	Share the developments with Core Committee
	Take appropriate steps to initiate research with RTF members
	Ensure that RTF / CC members take the agenda of mainstreaming ICTE among the academia in the country forward seriously
	Ensure that RTF members take ownership of research and publication on ICTE
	Get the feedback of Core Committee members on the research plans

List of Participants

Meta- Analysis of Research on ICTE

Prof. TKS Lakshmi began the meeting with the preliminary findings of her review of the research in ICTE done in Indian Universities. Prof. Lakshmi had done the meta-analysis to find that very few doctoral level studies have been done on the integration of technology in education in Indian Universities. She felt that most of these studies were trying to measure the impact on students in terms of student achievement, and this was not a true or adequate measure of student learning. She emphasized the need for research to focus on processes rather than products. According to Dr. Vernal a matrix should be created of research done in ICTE – under some pre-determined categories, so as to allow the identification of gap areas.

Prof. Sudhakar said that some action research study needs to be done to show the effectiveness of ICTE in institution building and Intel should give orientation programs to empower TEs in this area. Prof. Goel shared some of the ideas that they had regarding topics of research in ICTE. He emphasized on the need to work on the effectiveness of ICT integration and cautioned that such integration must be understood clearly by the practitioners before researchers can study this process. Prof. Goel emphasized that educationists need to upgrade their technology skills, or else they would always remain dependent on the technicians, who usually find it difficult to understand the learning processes, pedagogy, etc.

Prof. Lakshmi said that it is important for educators to acquire and study pedagogy skills needed to teach through technology. We need to move away from the teacher centric classroom, and become student centric more consciously and more rigorously Prof. Sudhakar said that the Intel program has facilitated the process of creating learner centric environments in the classroom.

Prof. Ramesh Ghanta suggested that we need to develop theoretical concepts in this area, and find out if the existing theories of learning can be enhanced through ICT. Many teachers tend to use technology, especially the presentation mode as a substitute for the blackboard. They are not utilizing the power of technology to inculcate higher order thinking in the pupils. This according to him, is an important area of research.
 

Mr. Anshul Sonak shared that out of a population of 550 million young people of school-going age in India, only 200 million attend formal school. He said the it would take about 20 – 30 years to bring these young people in the school system considering the human and financial resources needed to educate these 300 million children. He wondered if ICT could be used to bring these children into the mainstream of education. The House was greatly enthused by this train of thought. Mr. Anshul Sonak provided an update on the Intel Programs in India and also spoke about the global approach being followed by Intel initiatives. He said that the Intel Pre-service program in India was the biggest in the world, and presented great challenges in terms of scale and diversity. He said Intel was committed to promote student interest in science and maths. He emphasized that Intel’s design lab needs more and more experts every year. The need for doctorates in science and maths subjects is growing at an unprecedented rate. Indian students do tend to have aptitude for these subjects but they need to be encouraged.

Prof. Ghanta said that till date, the integration of technology in education connotes the integration in the classroom processes alone, it is now time to integrate all aspects of a teacher’s work in technology, including assessment, evaluation, databases, question banks. He also said that research in ICTE should not be confined to school subject areas or the teaching methodologies or any of the foundation papers. Rather, it should cover the thrust areas of education like – environment education, value education, health education, etc. where ICT should be used for optimal impact.

Interaction with TEs and STs of GVM College of Education

On the second day of the meet, the RTF members visited the GVM College of Education and interacted with school students, teachers and some of the teacher educators of GVM College of Education. They were happy to meet the students of the GVM School attached to the College. They were also very interested in the E-Learning Module prepared by Dr. Paili. He is dealing with the course on “Action Research”, and he has taken the entire course online; using the services of the tool - Smoodle. The students browse online resources, discuss the topics through an online platform and the results are also declared online. This is an experiment being tried at GVM.

Brainstorming on Developing the Interactive Workshop for Teacher Educators

In this session, the RTF members defined the modalities of the interactive workshop being planned for teacher educators in order to mainstream ICTE as an area of academic research.
The objectives of the workshop were identified as:

	Review the research in ICTE already done in Indian Universities
	Identify what research needs to be done locally (in your university)
	Identify modalities of doing this kind of research
	Develop action plan to conduct this research

The RTF suggested 2 – 1/2 days as the time duration required for the workshop and the expected outcome of workshop was-

	Sharing of experiences and building upon these to derive learnings
	Sharing best practices
	28 well designed research proposals. The proposals would be complete, apart from the literature review.

The success of the workshop would be measured in terms of the number and quality of the research proposals developed and how many of these researches are actually done.

The NAAC - Intel Joint Research Project

This session was followed by a presentation by Dr. K Rama on the joint research project proposed by Intel and NAAC. She said that she was eagerly looking forward to this collaboration with Intel. The study would focus on the sustained professional development in ICTE. The report of this qualitative study to be shared with all Colleges partnering with Intel. She stressed upon the importance of identifying best practices of ICT integration in education and building a repository of learning objects and sharing these online.

Dr. Rama said that in her experience, she had discovered two important things on which NAAC is laying a lot of stress. One is the collating of best practices and the second is building a repository of learning objects. She had found both very challenging in different ways. Identifying best practices is difficult because most colleges try to promote their ordinary / good practices as best practices. NAAC has to ascertain positively only the best practices are included in their list. Regarding building a repository of learning objects, she said that it was very tough to get people to develop / upload content for the websites.

Joint Research project- Intel & Deakin University, Australia

The research session started with a presentation by Ms. Carol Oakley and Mr. Anshul Sonak on the Asia–wide evaluative research that Ms. Oakley is managing for the Deakin University. She emphasized that the research would seek to measure impact of the program largely through qualitative means. The research is flexible, in the sense that it is being localized to suit the needs of all the countries involved.

Sharing Impact Study of the Intel Program – 2005 & Plans for 2006

The day began with a presentation by Dr. Anjlee Prakash on the Impact Survey of 2004, and the discussions focused on making the Impact Study of 2005 better. The CC emphasized the need to make the questionnaire more objective, with closed-ended questions, and keeping the questionnaire focused. Prof. Ramesh Ghanta suggested that better response rates could be obtained if the questionnaires are also mailed to the University Deans, along with the colleges’ principals. Prof. Thakur said that NCTE sends a performance appraisal report (PAR) proformas to all colleges, and since ICT is a thrust area for NCTE also, this data could be used. He said that NCTE would be happy to make this collaboration with Intel. Prof. Ghanta said that Intel could design a small set of questions on ICTE, and these could be added / appended to the Annual Performance Appraisal Report of the Colleges, and the response rate would be higher.

a presentation by Dr. Anjlee Prakash on the Impact Survey of 2004

A New Era Begins: Sharing the Andhra Experience

In the last session, some of the University deans shared their latest innovations and plans for the next year. Prof. Sudhakar discussed the release of the telugu textbook on ICTE (a translation of the Intel curriculum manual), along with his plans for the state review meetings, state advisory committee on ICTE and action research on the integration of ICT in education at the institutional level. Prof. Sudhakar mentioned that technology standards in teacher education would also be developed and implemented in Andhra Pradesh.

The Pioneering Efforts: Sharing Pune University Initiatives

Dr. Sanjeev Sonawane discussed the E-Forum formed by Pune University teacher educators. The teachers are using the e-forum to share their ideas and strategies. He also shared information about the inter-college technology integration contest that has been launched recently. The contest is receiving enthusiastic response from the students. He also discussed the proposed move to publish the Intel curriculum manual as a textbook, which he hoped would materialize in the coming academic session.

Building Bridges: Sharing Goa University Initiatives

Dr. Vernal shared his experiences of the Goa University to take ICTE to in-service refresher courses throughout the state of Goa. This is part of the efforts of his college to deliver subject-wise refreshers to in-service schoolteachers. The experts from his college were trained by a member of the Intel team to provide further training to the district level schoolteachers. This training was also taken to the taluka level teachers using the cascade model. Thus, he was using the pre-service resources to build a great synergy with the in-service teachers. This model of convergence between the pre-service and in-service was well appreciated by the all.

Highlights

	Participation by three apex bodies – NCERT, NCTE, NAAC
	NCTE invited Intel to collaborate to collect baseline data on ICTE in teacher education across the country. NCTE agreed to national level technology standards for teacher education in principle.
	RTF roles and responsibilities outlined clearly and accepted by the group
	Ownership of promoting research well taken up by RTF members
	Details of the TE workshop finalized in detail

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