ISTE WORKSHOP

Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur conducted A two-week ISTE workshop on “Introduction to Design Algorithms” at Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon from 25th May, 2015 to 30th May, 2015. The Workshop was conducted under National Mission on Education through ICT sponsored by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India. This is an important initiative that has been taken by IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur to work with Engineering Colleges of India to enhance the teaching skills in core Engineering and Science subjects under Train Ten Thousand Teachers programme(T10KT).

Participating teachers attend live lectures at remote centres close to their own college, and also attend tutorial and lab sessions conducted in the same centres. The lecture transmission and live interaction took place in distance mode using A-VIEW technology through internet at the selected remote centres across the country. Faculty coordinators were appointed at each remote centre to handle the technology infrastructure and other operational logistics. Additionally, for each workshop there Faculties assigned as Workshop Coordinator for that subject, who helped in conducting laboratories and tutorials at each centre.

The workshop was successfully conducted by Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon (Remote Center Id: 1299) under the guidance of Prof. (Dr.) Jitender Kumar, Remote Centre Coordinator, and Mr. Chain Singh, Workshop Coordinator.

The key focus of the workshop was to develop a methodology to teach a first course of Algorithm Design, share experiences that how algorithms design is taught, creating material that will form a large repository of pedagogical material.

Day 1:

Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Director IIT Kharagpur, Prof. Partha Pratim Das, Prof. Pallab Dasgupta, Department of Computer Science, IIT Kharagpur, Prof Raja Datta (Principal Investigator) Department of Electronics & Electrical Communication Engineering, and Prof. Prabir Kumar Biswas, Co-Principal Investigator inaugurated the Workshop. The topics included:

1. Overview of Algorithm Design by Prof. Partha Pratim Chakarabarti.

2. Elements of Algorithm Analysis by Prof. Partha Pratim Das.

Mr. Chain Singh (Workshop Coordinator), conclude the day’s discussions.

Day 2:

On 26th May 2015 session started with Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti. The technical session was based on basic design method, where topics based on algorithms related to data structuring were discussed along with various new topics like design methods.

Day 3:

On 27th May 2015 session started by Prof. Partha Pratim Das’s explanation about Data structuring followed by searching and sorting. Smt. Smriti Irani from Union MHRD Minister joined the session and interacted with the Remote centers from IIT Kharagpur. In the next session Prof. Pallab Dasgupta lectured on Basic Graph Algorithms.

Day 4:

On 28th May 2015, Prof. Partha Pratim Das and Prof. Pallab Dasgupta took session on Matrix and String Problem and Basic Graph Algorithms . An offline quiz contest was held for participants and was monitored by invigilators from IIT Kharagpur online.

Day 5:

On 29th May 2015, Prof. Pallab Dasgupta delivered lecture on Combinatorial Optimization, NP-Completeness, Approximation, Randomization. In the next session Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti explained about Combinatorial Optimization.

Day 6:

On 30th May 2015, Prof. Pallab Dasgupta explained topics such as NP-Completeness, Approximation, Randomization. After that there was a joint interaction session taken by Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, , Prof. Partha Pratim Das and Prof. Pallab Dasgupta. Finally feedback on the workshop was taken from selected Remote Centres.

The workshop ended with a valediction ceremony. The main aim of this workshop was to encourage the participants to incorporate in their teaching the various methods and knowledge discussed during the workshop. All the participants were awarded with a participation certificates by Prof. (Dr.) Jitender Kumar, Academic Administrator, to encourage the involvement of the participants.