A Year of Expansion
2021 was a year filled with challenges with students unable to return to campuses and instruction continuing in online mode. We had to adapt. One word to encapsulate the year 2021 would be an all-around expansion, – in the scope and ambit of activities of the Foundation and anticipating that in 2022 we will restart activities with a bang.
Measuring Progress
Expanding Our Foot Print
We began 2021 with our footprint at 4 institutions – IIT Bombay, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Hyderabad and PREC, a rural engineering college near Nashik. By the end of the year, we had more than doubled our footprint to 10 institutions, adding IIT Jammu, BITS Pilani, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, Nirma Univesity, Ahmedabad, IIT Madras and SAI University, Chennai to our fold.
Doubling Our Programmes
Last year, the Foundation had 4 ongoing programmes – Tinkerers’ Lab (TL), Maker Bhavan – our makerspace at IIT Gandhinagar, Invention Factory and the Leadership Development Initiative. Moving into 2022, we doubled those numbers as well, adding Collaborative Classrooms, Learning Engineering through Activity Program (LEAP), Young Researcher Fellowships and launched our Centre for Essential Skills. A little bit more about some of these programs is shared below
New Programs
Collaborative Classrooms
Collaborative Classrooms & Experiential Learning Lab is developed with an idea that the traditional model of students facing a blackboard and teacher is not ideal for all kinds of collaborative leaning that leads to better education. As a pilot, faculty from the Department of Electrical Engineering, at IIT Bombay was funded to develop facilities where students are clustered in groups and the teacher is more of a mentor than a lecturer. The department is currently working to convert 15 of their existing courses and teach in Active Learning mode using these facilities.
Centre for Essential Skills
Centre for Essential Skills (CES) was created to impart foundational skills that go beyond technical domain expertise.These skills, also known as soft skills are universally acknowledged as essential for success in the 21st Century workforce. CES will offer 10 courses across the domain of communication,interpersonal life skills and cognitive learning skills like Critical Thinking,Problem Solving, Decision Making and Applied Financial Skills. The course content is developed by Active Learning Sciences whose founder, Dr Stephen M Kosslyn is widely regarded as the world’s best thinker and disruptors of “active learning” pedagogy. The first of these courses in communication have already been rolled out at IIT Gandhinagar.
LEAP
Learning Engineering Through Activity Programme
LEAP is spearheaded by Prof. Tim Gonsalves, founding director of IIT-Mandi and also on our advisory board, with an aim to help tier 2 engineering institutions across India evolve their own project-based learning programs. In 2022, the LEAP team will train faculty at host institutions to conduct semester-long engineering and building projects for first/second year B Tech students across 14 colleges.
Adding Breadth to Tinkerers’ Labs (TL)
In 2021, taking a leaf from Stanford and MIT, we added engineering discipline-specific Tinkerers’ Labs (TL). For instance, we added Tinkerers’ Lab (called Experiential Classroom) in the EE department and TL in the Chemical Engineering department at IIT Bombay. Most of the TLs so far had been built with funds raised from friends and family via the Foundation. In this instance, of Chemical Engineering TL, we requested co-sponsoring from Industry. Special thanks to Kirat Patel, Sameer Katdare and Leja Harriangadi who helped us develop the blueprint and got Alkyl Amines Chemical Ltd to fund this one at IITB as well as an additional one at the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai.
Deepening Faculty Engagement
There is greater engagement with faculty at partner institutions that makes us hopeful that project-based learning and active learning pedagogy is gaining traction. More and more faculty members are offering courses in learning by doing mode. To cite a few examples:
Intensifying Our Fundraising Efforts
CSR Support for Our Programmes
We expanded our fundraising efforts to India by foraying into seeking funding support from Corporate CSR. Our gratitude to Alkyl Amines Chemicals Ltd. and United Phosphorus Ltd. for funding 3 new Tinkerers’ Labs at host institutions. Serendipitously both are from the Chemical Industry and with some help from you, we hope to engage companies from other industries as partners.
Hemant always says “We are in a race with ourselves to reform engineering and science education to take full advantage of our demographic dividend and take India to the forefront of technology-rich nations. The first step in this direction is to improve the caliber of graduating students from all engineering and science colleges, including top-tier ones. I thank you all for your continued support in our efforts to contribute to this cause.”
