Research Projects

Development of Web based Teaching materials (Engineering) for Undergraduate and Post-Graduate Laboratory

This project is being executed at the School of Education Technology under the UGC Scheme “University with Potential for Excellence”. The project sets out to design and develop web based instructional material for engineering laboratory and also conduct research in the area of Virtual Laboratory with the aim to improve the general awareness of the engineering students from different disciplines about the laboratory experiments that they perform at the University. The modules developed will be integrated with the Digital Library repository of the Jadavpur University.

Objectives:

To develop and disseminate the Web based Teaching materials (Engineering) for Undergraduate and Post Graduate Laboratory for the students of engineering at large in several phases.
Research in the area of virtual Laboratory.

In order to disseminate the Web based Teaching materials, a website is being developed, which provides the students with various tools for learning, including:

Textual content explaining theoretical concepts behind the experiments
Video lectures elucidating the theoretical concepts and the procedure to perform the experiments
Video demonstration of laboratory experiments/workshop modules
Animated demonstration or interactive simulations encouraging students to explore and learn how to perform the experiments
Guidelines for generation of reports after performing the experiment, including sample graphs plotted using data from the simulation
FAQ about each experiment providing additional analytical inputs

Each experiment is considered as a module that has been categorized under the broad heads, based on the engineering discipline to which the experiment belongs, such as

Electrical Engineering Laboratory
Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering Laboratory, and so on.

This project is a collaborative effort between the teachers at the university, who are acting as knowledge resource persons providing all necessary resources and guidelines for the modules, with education technologists and multimedia technicians at the School of Education Technology who transform these materials provided by the resource persons into web based form.

Another aspect of the project is to conduct research in the area of Virtual Laboratory. This includes the development of methodology of one virtual laboratory experiment, consisting of the following activities:

Development of prototype development for a smart system board
Development of web user interface
Development of signal/power conversion for one laboratory

WEBOPT project

The WEBOPT project sets out to create a network of research scientists and develop an integrated optimisation software environment to be used as web enabled products and services. The target groups are made up of academic researchers in leading technical and management institutes, faculty of regional technical colleges, SME suppliers of software tools, practitioners within the IT and management teams of public and private sector industries. The aim is to acquire research results from European, American as well as Indian projects and use optimisation as an analytical engine in a number of industrial sectors. Prototype applications covering portfolio planning, supply chain management, agricultural and energy planning will be developed as proofs of concept. To support the dissemination of knowledge and to gain wide adoption of the project results, seminars for exchange of research information and workshops for professional development and skills transfer are planned. The project has duration of 24 months.

RiskPlan Project

The RiskPlan project sets out to develop human resources in the Asian and the European Union (EU) partner countries with a view to transfer skills, expertise, knowledge and the best practices from EU in risk based planning in particular and decision making under uncertainty in general. The target groups comprise academic researchers, faculty members and research students, industrial practitioners and technical executives working in private and public sectors. We aim to create educational modules that will be delivered through classroom settings, electronic media and online learning. Seminars and workshops would be organized to get the feed back from professional bodies, the industrial practitioners and planning executives. The partnership is composed of a UK based research centre on Risk, a department of Statistics and Decision Sciences from Austria and two leading Universities in Asia - one in India and one in Bangladesh.

Objectives:

To develop in an effective manner, human resources in two Asian countries with skill and expertise in the areas of perception, measurement and management of risks. The aim is also to capture EU's best practices in planning and decision making under certain conditions. These objectives will be achieved:

by developing post graduate courses on the topic of risk modeling and risk management.

by preparing training materials for continuous professional development courses and workshops.

by creating supporting courseware which are web enabled and suitably designed for blended learning.

by interacting with professional bodies and seeking accreditation.

and by participating in the development of regulatory requirements and standards.

Digital Distance Education:

In 2003 MCIT provided funds to SET to set up Multi-modal Digital Distance Education project.

The project is mainly aimed at development of courseware in CD-ROM & Web formats by using multimedia, training of resource persons to develop IT Enabled course materials, setting up the network for dissemination in association with suitable partners and to evolve appropriate Courseware Engineering methodologies for making available quality courseware at reasonable cost and short time span and hence removing the major obstacle to distance education deployment.

To meet the above goal, the Multi-modal Digital Distance Education initiative of the School of Education Technology envisages to demonstrate the feasibility of the above concepts by setting up of the infrastructure, trained manpower and actually instituting an economically viable, academically sound and scaleable Distance Education Program for IT and other critical technologies. The methodology would also be extended to supplement the conventional class-room teaching with IT Enabled Quality Improvement Programme for the emerging areas as well as for awareness programmes in the socially relevant areas.

The project has the following components
·    Development of courseware in CD-ROM & Web formats. Multimedia would be used to
     enrich such course.
·    Training of resource persons to develop IT Enabled course materials.
·    Setting up the network for dissemination in association with suitable partners.
·    Administering such courses and collecting field experience.
·    Making available the software, tools, techniques & expertise for other institutions wishing
     to set up Digital Distance Education facilities.
·    To demonstrate economic viability of the model.

MTDRC (Multimedia Training & Development Resource Centre):

In 1996 MHRD/AICTE identified School of Education Technology(SET) as one of the nodal centres for Nationally coordinated project in Education Technology. As an appreciation to the activities of SET, the Department of Electronics now Ministry of Information Technology, Govt. of India established "Multimedia Training & Development Resource Centre" (MTDRC) at SET, Jadavpur University in 1998.

The objectives of this National centre are

·    Development of standardised curricular structure along with necessary
     course materials for training in Multimedia.
·    Organise short courses on Multimedia Content Creation.
·    Development of subject specific Multimedia CBTs.
·    Research and Development in Multimedia Content Creation Process.
·    Development of methodology for productivity tools and customised templates.
·    Franchising training to selected organisations.
·    Creating and maintaining a multimedia object library and a local repository.
·    Providing consultancy.

MTDRC, SET, JU offered number of 5-week full-time or 25 week part-time career oriented courses on "Multimedia Development Technology" to graduates of any discipline. The programme was highly attractive to the students. The Multimedia products developed by the students during their project work have been highly appreciated by the experts. Most of the students have found jobs or are acting as entrepreneurs. To spread the training to the wider audience, School of Education Technology (SET) appointed 22 Franchisees distributed throughout the East and North-East region of India. The Franchisee Organisations are Zee Interactive Learning Systems Ltd., Brainware Consultancy Pvt. Ltd. and Vidyasagar College for Women. The Multimedia Training & Development Resource Centre (MTDRC), SET provided the Franchisee Organisations with Instruction Material in printed form as well as in Electronic format, Quiz suit, Teacher's manual, Presentation material in Powerpoint format and Lab tutorials.

MTDRC, SET has developed an authoring tool "Ekalabbya" for use in Teaching in Absentia format. MTDRC, SET has also developed a number of Multimedia products, of which, a CD on "Nritya Manjari" for teaching Bharat Nattyam Dance, is worth mentioning, School is continuing research in the direction of teaching-learning process and use of new technology for imparting training. The current research activities are geared towards implementing Courseware Engineering & Digital Distance Education in certain IT areas as well as courses of social relevance.