Seventh IDEA Webinar - New Paradigms of Education in the era of ChatGPT

 ABOUT IDEA

Indian Distance Education Association (IDEA) is the leading national professional body of academicians, policymakers, administrators and all other stakeholders of distance and open learning institutions. Members are drawn from National and state Open Universities and Conventional Dual Mode Universities offering courses in ODL, Agriculture Universities, Extended Educational Institutions and other Academic Institutions. IDEA’s annual conferences provide a platform for academia, professionals, policymakers, distance educators, activists and others interested in Open and Distance Learning to meet, exchange views, and share research findings related to ODL. IDEA has also been working for the growth, development and research of ODL over the years. IDEA has attracted international attention and participation. IDEA has organised ten Vice-Chancellors and Directors Round Table Conferences and has brought out Newsletters entitled OPEN IDEAS to act as a communicative instrument between the members, DE functionaries and institutions. Till date, IDEA in association with different Institutions organized 24 National / International Conferences throughout the country. IDEA has also initiated monthly Webinars.

Objectives of Monthly Webinar

To remain engaged with the current/latest developments in the field of ODL and its development.

To appraise the policy makers/stakeholders about the potential of ODL in reaching the unreached and increasing the GER.

To get the benefits of expert lectures from the practitioners in the field of ODL.

To understand the perspectives of ODL from different angles.

Previous Monthly Webinars

1. "National Education Policy - 2020 with special reference to ODL and Digitisation of Education” - Prof. CRK Murthy, IGNOU, New Delhi (January 2023)
2. “Education at Crossroads with special reference to ODL” - Prof. M. Aslam, Former VC, IGNOU, New Delhi (February 2023)
3. “Bridging the 'Gap' in Higher Education: Case of International Collaboration”- Prof. K. Seetharama Rao, Vice Chancellor, BRAOU, Hyderabad (March, 2023)
4. “Transformational Innovations in Distance Education” - Prof. Mohan B. Menon, Former Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Wawasan Open University, Malaysia (April, 2023)
5. "Generative AI and Implications for Open Online and Distance Education" - Dr. Ramesh Sharma, Director, HRDC, Dr Ambedkar University,  Delhi (May, 2023)
6. "Quality Assurance in Blended and Online Learning" - Prof. V. Venkaiah, former Vice Chancellor, Krishna University, Machlipatnam (June, 2023)

Webinar No. 07: New Paradigms of Education in the era of ChatGPT

Date, Day and Time: Day: Tuesday, Date: 25.07.2023 Time: 11.00 am

Guest Speaker: Prof. M. M. Pant, former Pro-Vice Chancellor, IGNOU, New Delhi

Professor MM Pant is intimately connected with the IIT system, having got his PhD in Computational Physics from IIT Roorkee, having been a faculty for about a decade at IIT Kanpur and a member of the Board of Management at IIT Delhi for 6 years. He has also been part of the biggest distance-learning University in India the IGNOU. He has been an observer and practitioner of Technology transforming education. 

He has been a Pro-Vice Chancellor, at Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and faculty at IIT, Kanpur, MLNR Engineering College, Allahabad now Prayagraj and Visiting Faculty, University of Western Ontario, Canada. 

His current interests are cognition, AI in education and creating awareness of Quantum Technologies.

Prof. Pant’s current mission is to develop a new educational paradigm that will help achieve Goal 4 of UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals, by fostering self-learning and the deployment of Artificial Intelligence and allied technologies, which he calls “ The 5th education revolution”. 

For more information about him visit mmpant.net and for the programs offered him visit mmpant.com 

Prof. P. V. Suresh:

Dr.P.V.Suresh (pvsuresh@ignou.ac.in) is Professor and currently Director of School of Computers and Information Sciences, Indira Gandhi National Open University. IGNOU is a NAAC A++ accredited University. He has done MTech in Computer Science and PhD in Computer Science & Technology. He developed the first portal for IGNOU . He was member of Joint Coordination Committees with Nokia and Ericcson. He played active role in the implementation of MOU with Nokia wherein multilingual SMS support was provided to students of English Language Programme. He also took the initiative of implementation of SMS Alerts Service at IGNOU which connected its millions of students with IGNOU Headquarters at New Delhi and Regional Centers across the Country. He also took the initiative of first LIVE webcast of IGNOU Convocation in collaboration with NIC. He published papers in SCOPUS indexed International Journals as well as presented papers in International Conferences. He was associated with Universities in India and abroad. He was also associated with AICTE and other bodies. He was also trained in eLearning technologies for 6 weeks in University of Colombo which was mostly sponsored by JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency). He also acted as resource person for topics in eLearning, Data Mining , Machine learning apart from other areas in ICT. He is also Course Coordinator of MOOC titled “Web based Technologies and Multimedia Applications” on SWAYAM. Till date , a total of more than 20000 students enrolled to it. Currently, in addition to his duties as Director, He is also coordinating research activities of the department. He was also principal investigator of IGNOU-COL (Commonwealth of Learning) project through which OER based courses in the areas of Mobile architecture , and iOS are developed. His research papers attracted travel grants. He presented research papers in Conferences in India and abroad. He also made academic visits to Countries in Asia and Europe. He visited Cambridge and Oxford Universities as part of his tour in UK. He guided Doctoral research in areas of Software Engineering. Currently, he is guiding Doctoral Research in Data Mining, Machine Learning and Cloud Computing.

Prof. Divakar Yadav, Discussant

Dr Divakar Yadav is working as a professor at School of Computer and Information Science, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi. Prior to joining IGNOU, he worked as Associate Professor and Head, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur (HP),  Madan Mohan Malaviya University of Technology (MMMUT), Gorakhpur (UP) and Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida (UP). He has more than 23 Years of teaching and research experience. He did his PDF from University of Carlos-III, Madrid (Spain) in 2011-12, PhD (CSE) in 2010, M.Tech. (IT) from IIIT Allahabad in 2005 and B.Tech. (CSE) from IET Lucknow in 1999. He supervised 10 PhD theses, 31 M.Tech. dissertations and published more than 135 research articles in international journals and conference proceedings of repute. He is a Senior Member, IEEE and ACM, His area of research includes Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Information Retrieval, NLP, Soft-computing.

Organiser: Prof. Mushtaq Ahmed I. Patel

Professor of Education, DDE, MANUU, Hyderabad and Coordinator, Virtual Online Meeting, IDEA

Participants

Prof. D. Harichandan, Vice President, IDEA gave preliminary remark on behalf of IDEA and Dr. J. S. Dorothy thanked all the stakeholders at the end of the programme.

Profile of the Registered Candidates

The IDEA collected a feedback and registration form from the stakeholders. Based on this the data is analysed and presented below,

Diversity of Institutions

A brief summary of the data:

• The majority of participants (53.4%) are from Maulana Azad National Urdu University.
• The next highest number of participants is from Indira Gandhi National Open University (8.2%).
• The remaining participants come from a variety of institutions, with no other institution having more than 2 participants.

Working in ODL Mode

The total number of responses is 75.

• 41 people said yes, they are working in ODL mode, which is 57.7% of the total responses.
• 30 people said no, they are not working in ODL mode, which is 42.3% of the total responses.

Membership of IDEA

The total number of responses is 73.

• 14 people said yes, they are a member of IDEA, which is 19.4% of the total responses.
• 58 people said no, they are not a member of IDEA, which is 80.6% of the total responses.

Desire to be a member of IDEA

The total number of responses is 56.

37 people said yes, they would like to be a member of IDEA, which is 66.1% of the total responses.

15 people said maybe, that is they are not sure whether to be a member of IDEA, which is 26.8% of the total responses.

4 people said no, they would not like to be a member of IDEA, which is 7.1% of the total responses.

Nature of duties in ODL

The total number of responses is 57.

The most common nature of duties in ODL is Full-time, with 24 responses, which is 42.1% of the total responses.

The next highest number of responses are:

Part-time: 19 responses (33.3%)

Retired: 3 responses (5.3%)

Research Scholar: 1 responses (1.8%)

Student: 1 response (1.8%)

NA: 1 response (1.8%)

Exposure with ODL Mode

The total number of responses is 56.

The percentage of people who have been associated with ODL mode for each exposure in years is as follows:

• Less than 5 years: 42.9% (24 responses)
• 5 to 10 years: 19.6% (11 responses)
• 10 to 15 years: 1.8% (1 response)
• 15 years or more: 35.7% (20 responses)

Knowledge about this Webinar

The total number of responses is 71.

The most common way that people came to know about the meeting was through social media including WhatsApp, with 53 responses, which is 74.6% of the total responses.

The next highest number of responses are:

• Email: 23 responses (32.4%)
• Word of mouth: 9 responses (12.7%)
• Other: 6 responses (8.5%)

Observations for previous webinars

The total number of responses is 66.

The most common observation from the previous meeting was positive, with 52 responses, which is 78.8% of the total responses.

The next highest number of responses are:

• Neutral: 13 responses (19.7%)
• Negative: 1 responses (1.5%)

Contribution to the IDEA Webinar

The total number of responses is 68.

Most of the people said they couldn't say how they contribute to the IDEA Webinar, with 29 responses, which is 42.6% of the total responses.

The next highest number of responses are:

As a speaker: 17 responses (25%)

As a discussant: 16 responses (23.5%)

Participant: 13 responses (19.1%)

As a technical expert: 13 responses (19.1%)

As Chairperson: 8 (11.8%)

Programme format

The total number of responses is 67.

The percentage of people who want each type of change is as follows:

Yes, with specific suggestions: 5 (7.5%)

No change: 43 (64.2%)

Not sure: 16 (23.9%)

Not applicable: 3 (4.5%)

Most convenient day for the Webinar

The total number of responses is 68.

The percentage of people who prefer to meet on weekends is 57.4%, while the percentage of people who prefer to meet on weekdays is 38.2%, and some other prefer it on other days.

Most convenient time for the Webinar

The percentage of people who prefer to webinar in the morning is 36.8% (25 responses), while the percentage of people who prefer to webinar in the afternoon is 33.8% (23 responses), and the percentage of people who prefer to meet in the after office hours is 29.4%. (20 responses).

Themes which participants want to listen

• Research methods:
• Relevance of Qualitative Research in ODL
• Application of Higher level statistics in ODL
• Online Assessment techniques and tools in ODL
• Media and ODL; Interaction and Mediation in Open Learning; Future of ODL in India
• AI in education
• NEP 2020 and digital Technology in ODL
• MOOCs preparation
• Open Educational Resources DEB and its functioning
• Future prospects and possibilities in ODL Delivery of Dispatch of SLMs
• Code writing, Artificial intelligence, Chat GPT

List of experts desired to listen

Prof V. Venkaiah

Prof. Sansanwal

Prof. V. S. Prasad

Prof Mushtaq Ahmed I. Patel

Dr. Sanjaya Mishra

Prof. V.S.Prasad"

Prof. Rama Matthew formerly DEAN Education Department,with DU, DELHI. 

Prof. Santosh Panda, IGNOU.

For the latest development and fee details contact President and Secretary General, IDEA.

Prof. K. Murali Manohar, President, IDEA (muralimanohark@yahoo.com

Prof. Romesh Verma, Secretary General, IDEA  (romeshvermajammu@gmail.com)

Report Compiled by

Prof. Mushtaq Ahmed I. Patel,

MANUU, Hyderabad