Brilliant Talk by Dr. Bibek Debroy.

Enjoyed the scholarly, candid, and extempore talk by the brilliant economist, who has deep interests in Sanskrit & Scriptures.

He kept to the 60-minute time precisely and answered the nearly dozen questions candidly.

After a long time, listening to an hour-long talk with no slides was an experience!

State of the Learning Blogs

So, where does one go to find interesting content online about Learning and eLearning? Why not start with blogs? What are the most intersting blogs in this space? We have created a Blogroll that will make your discovery easier. Check out our blogroll!


In 2006, Articulate (the company) created one such list - titled the "The 19 Best Elearning Blogs" . Let us see how these blogs fare today:

1. The Rapid eLearning Blog: Authored by Tom Kuhlmann, this blog has not just survived but has grown tremendously in popularity (47000 readers!). Definitely an authority in this space.

2. Tony Karrer’s eLearning Technology: This is also a very active blog. Tony Karrer has compiled a nice list of postings as a guide for first time visitors - a great place to start for anyone new to eLearning.

3. Harold Jarche: Very Active. Focused more on learning for professionals.

4. Learning TRENDS by Elliott Masie: This blog is quite active as well. However, the blog seems to be more focused on Learning theories and approaches - may not be interesting to the "Aam admi", so to say.

5. Internet Time Blog: Authored by Jay Cross, this blog has several interesting postings on "Informal Learning".

6. Dave Mozealous: Named after another authority in the space, this blog is a good read for anyone who wants to keep in touch with some of the latest technologies in the area.

7. elearningpost: This blog seems to have drifted beyond eLearning and seems to be talking about a broad range of topics in technology. You may have to be patient if you want to find a good, relevant post on Learning.

8. Online Learning Update: To some extent, a newscast on happenings in the Learning space. Focused on US (like most of the other blogs in the list) - so, many of the posts may not resonate with the Indian audience.

9. George Siemens’ elearnspace: A very interesting blog looking at a broad variety of topics related to learning. A must read!

10. Some other blogs to look at:
      Connectivism Blog:
      Breakthrough eLearning:
      Jenna Sweeney’s Corporate Training & e-Learning Blog:
      Robin Good’s MasterViews International:
      Mobilemind:
      Indezine PowerPoint Blog:
      Learning Circuits Blog:
      Corporate eLearning Development:
      E-Learning Queen:
     Stephen’s Web.

Happy reading

Top New Year Resolutions of Students I Spoke To...

So the New Year Eve partying is now over. Today is 1 January 2010. Some of you would have started your day with a newfound enthusiasm, a joy of living, and an irresistable urge to transform the world. Some of you would have woken up with the fruits of last evening's partying - headache, bleary-eyed...

Whatever, many of you would be either making those inevitable resolutions for the year or would be reconsidering some of them that you made last evening in a brief surge of enthusiasm. Here are a few of the top three New Year Resolutions of Students I spoke to...

1. Not bunking classes
2. Go to bed early, and wake up early
3. Stay on the Internet a little longer doing something other than mindless surfing

I did listen to a couple of whacky ones too. One resolved to do cross-dressing at least once in 2010 to get over certain inhibitions. Another resolved to text one joke every day to all his friends

Well, I am not much a New Year Resolution making person. It would be interesting to see how the resolutions of my students at IIITB take shape in the next 364 days! For all those who have made resolutions with utmost serious intent, I offer my best wishes!

On the Last Day of 2009...

On the last day of 2009, I am wondering what would a typical student who is about graduate in May-June 2010 be thinking about.

Partying and welcoming the New Year
Making resolutions that are unlikely to last the first week of Jan 2010
Hoping to land a nice job as soon as possible
...
...

One student told me that he is not going to think about placement, jobs, career, etc. on New Year's eve. The logic is that he has been thinking and agonizing about this during the entire 2009, and now wants to forget the trauma for just one evening.

I just reflect on the supply-demand situation for entry level programmers, and I wonder whether the students have thought about this at all. In May-June 2010, we would have 500,000 engineering graduates (out of about 725,000 candidates) and about 10,000 graduates with MCA degrees (not sure about this number). From all industry reports, I gather that there are about 100,000 entry level positions available. Even if we just assume that 40% of these graduates are interested in these positions, there is a serious gap between supply and demand.

The companies are likely to raise the bar and try to recruit only those with significant competencies.

If I were looking for an entry level job in 2010, I would be thinking seriously about how to develop, hone and sharpen my competencies in problem solving, programming and communication skills.

Well, dear students, part hard this evening. Forget the trauma of 2009. Look forward to a great 2010 not just through wishful-thinking, but with the intention of transforming yourself to be among the top folks in your batch so that the supply-demand gap does not leave you behind!

Happy New Year!

Should the CAT 2009 Hiccups Slow Down Adoption of Computer-Based Assessments in India?

Several months ago, the adoption of computer-based assessments for the highly popular CAT examinations in India was welcomed enthusiastically by many. There were also many who were skeptical, apprehensive and even virulently opposed to the move. The CAT 2009 hiccups during the last two weeks only enabled the strengthening the views of the skeptics and the naysayers. I empathize with the candidates who went through a traumatic experience. I also empathize with the IIMs that attracted a huge amount of negative publicity. I am sure that the IIMs will work out a plan deal with the affected candidates.

But would the CAT 2009 hiccups slow down the adoption of computer-based assessments in India? Of course, there will be a number of institutions that would succumb to a knee jerk reaction and place their initiatives for adopting computer-based assessments in the back burner. In my view, this would not seriously slow down the process of adoption in the medium and long run. The more important question is “Should the CAT 2009 hiccups slow down the adoption of computer-based assessments in India?”

There are reports in the newspapers that the IIMs are being urged to implement a paper-based test for CAT 2009. I sincerely hope that the wise persons at IIM would not choose this retrograde step. To do this would be to acknowledge that the CAT 2009 was a major failure. Worse, there would be sufficient numbers who would interpret this incorrectly as an acknowledgement that there are fundamental weaknesses in the computer-based assessments.

Computer-based assessments are not something new. They have been around for a few decades. While the going has been relatively smooth, there have been sufficient hiccups even though none perhaps received this level of coverage in the media as the CAT 2009. There are no fundamental weaknesses in computer-based assessments that warrant slowing down of adoption or even abandoning them. There might be some technical glitches or some process glitches. But I see no fundamental reason to oppose computer-based assessments.

The voice of logic and reason must prevail over the shrill campaign that has already shown up on the newspapers, the electronic media and the Internet. I am not particularly bothered that the proposed adoption of computer-based assessment by the Karnataka CET would not be this year. There may be several other initiatives that would slow down in the short run. But it would be tragic if the adoption were abandoned entirely.

Instead of dwelling on potential technical or process related difficulties, I look forward to the community at large raise the level of the debate to a higher plane – not necessarily restricted to the CAT examinations.

Computer-based assessments are dominated by the use of multiple-choice questions and their variants. Are assessments predominantly based on multiple-choice questions and their variants sufficient to assess specific competencies that the candidates ought to possess and demonstrate? It is time we stopped secretly gloating over the hiccups of the CAT 2009 and discuss what can be done to raise the quality and appropriateness of computer-based assessments.

Knowing the Top Contributors to Computer Science…

I wrote about “Who are the Role Models of Computer Science & IT Students?” some time ago. I also stated why it is important for learners to know the top contributors in computer science. A good starting point is to know about the Turing Award, the winners of the Turning Award, and their contributions.

You can read about the Turing Award, the winners and their contributions from the website of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). The Turing Award is considered to be the highest award for contributions to computer science. This award has been named in the honor of Alan M Turing, one of the giants of computer science. Many think that the Turing Award is as prestigious as the Nobel Prize!

The 2008 Turing Award went to H Barbara Liskov for contributions to practical and theoretical foundations of programming language and system design, especially related to data abstraction, fault tolerance, and distributed computing. She is the second woman to bag this award. The first woman to win this award was Frances Allen in the year 2006 for her contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques.

The award winner, apart from receiving a prize and citation, also delivers a Turing Award lecture. I wish each student of computer science reads these Turing Award lectures. Many of them are outstanding!

Alan J Perlis was the first to win the Turing Award in 1966 for his influence in the area of advanced programming techniques and compiler construction. His Turing Award paper was on “The Synthesis of Algorithms”. But many of you, I am sure, would enjoy his delightful “Epigrams of Programming”. As a sampler, consider the following epigrams…

Whenever two programmers meet to criticize their programs, both are silent.
We will never run out of things to program as long as there is a single program around.
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.

I urge you to read these epigrams, and I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did!
Two of the Turing Award lectures that I enjoyed are The Humble Programmer by Edsger Dijkstra, and Introductions to Computing Should Be Childs Play by Alan Kay. Look at these swinging titles. The content is even better! The Turing Award site on ACM is a treasure trove!

Reading the Examination Papers of Certain Universities may be Injurious to my Health!

I have collected quite a few of the examination question papers of different courses of CS and IT conducted by some universities in India. I have read these question papers with emotions as varied as amusement, hilarity, sadness, admiration, anger and despair – just to state a few! Let me share a few of these specimens. I am refraining from sharing the absolutely hilarious ones for a future occasion.

This is from one of the large universities in the southern part of India in a course titled “Visual Programming” as part of the BE degree in Information Technology.

a)Write an overview of Windows Programming. (16 marks)
or
b)(i) Write a windows program to create and modify user defined menus. (10 marks)
(ii) How will you modify system menu using windows programming. (6 marks)

At first glance this appears perfectly legitimate and appropriate questions for an assessment. I have several problems with these kinds of questions.

• What does the examiner expect that the students writes in her answer to (a) above as “Overview of Windows Programming” that would fetch 16 marks?
• What constitutes an “overview” of windows programming? If a student provides a synopsis of the set of chapter titles of the prescribed textbook with a one line explanation of what that chapter covers, would that be considered as a correct answer?
• Now imagine that the answer to this question evaluated by not one examiner but several dozens of them. How does one ensure the consistency of the assessment?
• What indeed is the objective of this question (a) above?
• Answer to (a) may elicit a long-winded description. Answer to (b) consists of programs. Do you think that questions (a) and (b) are “equivalent” that a student may be provided with a choice of answering?
• Now read questions in (b). Why are these questions written as one-liners? Laziness? Concern for the trees? Much as I don’t like them, these questions in (b) are decidedly better than (a).

What appalls me is that the course had five other questions of the same type with all the shortcomings I have pointed out. Sample the “highly creative questions” framed with “extreme diligence” by the “experts” in a university for the course on Operating Systems.

Write short notes on the following:
a) Kernel
b) Paged memory management
c) Swapping
d) Device driver
e) File system

Enough said! Reading examination papers of certain universities may be injurious to my health! Of course, there are questions that are hilarious. Laughter, they say, is the best medicine. Perhaps I must share some of these rockers with you all someday!