Dr. Vijay Kumar is Assistant Provost and Director of Academic Computing at MIT. Through these roles he influences the Institute's strategic focus on educational technology and promotes the effective integration of information technology in MIT education. Vijay provides leadership for units engaged in delivering infrastructure and services to support educational technology activities at MIT: Academic Computing in Information Services and Technology, as well as MIT's Academic Media Production Services (AMPS).

Vijay is the Principal Investigator of O.K.I (Open Knowledge Initiative), an MIT-led collaborative project to develop an open architecture for enterprise educational applications. (www.okiproject.org)

He is a member of the Advisory Committee of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) and a member of the steering committee for I-Campus, the MIT-Microsoft Alliance initiative for educational technology. He is a member of MIT’s Council on Educational Technology. Vijay also serves on the Applications Strategy Council for Interne2 and is a member of the Advisory Board for GELC (the Global Education Learning Community). Vijay is honorary advisor to India’s National Knowledge Commission.

Vijay has extensive engagement with professional organizations and frequently makes presentations s on topics related to the planning, management and application of IT to education.

Vijay's doctorate in Education (Future Studies, focusing on educational computing and planning for technological innovations in education) from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst is preceded by a MS in Industrial Management and a B. Tech. in Chemical Engineering, both from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras.

How did you get interested in a career in education technology?

My introduction to issues in higher education came while I was doing my masters in Industrial Management at IIT Madras. I was interested in applying systems and Operations Research techniques to the issue of resource allocation. I did a thesis on “Systemic planning for higher education administration”. While working on the project I did a lot of research on economic models for higher education which piqued my interest.

Later, I joined the PhD program in Future Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where I focused on educational futures. I could see the tremendous potential that informational technology held in changing the face of education and I decided to choose to engage deeply in education technology.
 
What technologies in your opinion have had the greatest impact on education? How have they transformed education?

I consider email and the Internet  to have had a great impact on teaching and learning. These technologies have helped increased proximity and consequently interaction between the teachers and the learners and amongst the learners themselves. The learners are able to connect directly with the sources of knowledge.  These technologies allowed research and teaching to come close to each other.

In the area of hands-on-experience, simulations have had a huge impact. They make complex concepts easily accessible to students. Products like MIT’s I-Lab enable students to have first hand lab experience using equipment that could never be provided otherwise.

Could you tell us the origin of the Open Courseware Initiative? Why did MIT decide to put effort into giving away its educational content for free?

During the early 90s when the Internet was having a dramatic impact on the world, MIT set up an education technology council to understand how the Internet can be leveraged to support MIT education. To do this we had to clearly understand the core value of MIT education, we recognized that the unique value of the MIT education was derived from the interaction between excellent students and faculty. -

The opportunity and the challenge therefore was to understand how information technology could amplify this value and extend it to other communities not typically served by MIT, The OCW idea, i.e., that the best way to advance the fundamental mission and exploit the Internet would be to put all MIT’s course materials on the Web, open to everyone, and give it away, was, in retrospect, a logical conclusion to the council’s strategic exercise. MIT faculty  was willing to give their content away for this purpose and OCW was born.

OCW content represents a snapshot of all the activities in a course. Therefore, we felt that by sharing our course content with the world, we are providing a window to MIT education. OCW now has become a movement where not just MIT but other Universities as well are sharing their content. In the educational world such sharing of information leads to great benefits for all. OCW gets a lot of hits, and the largest number of hits we get is from India.

You are currently serving as an honorary advisor to the Knowledge Commission in India. Could you tell us about the commission and your involvement in this initiative?

The Prime Minister constituted the National Knowledge Commission to advice him on matters relating to institutions of knowledge production, knowledge use and knowledge dissemination. It is headed by Sam Pitroda. The mandate of the commission is to build excellence in the educational system to meet the knowledge challenges of the 21st century and increase India’s competitive advantage in fields of knowledge

To make India a key player in the knowledge economy we have to provide extensive access to quality educational opportunities. Currently we have a handful of quality educational institutions catering to a small population.

The demographics of India where there is a large percentage of young people, can work to its advantage only if we can provide quality education. This would require a quantum leap in scale and quality of educational opportunity, which the National Knowledge Commission hopes to achieve.

The overall aim is to develop ecology for sustainable transformation of education and research in India.

What are the major challenges facing current educational initiatives in India?

Existing initiatives are lacking in many ways. Other than in leading institutions like the IITs and a few other Universities, there is a real lack of quality educational resources and educational practices. Interactivity between teachers and learners is low.  Hands-on experience and access to laboratories is severely limited.  No one is systematically addressing the needs of teacher training. 

There is not much Intra or Inter-institutional collaboration for teaching or research. The research and the teaching institutions are completely separate. Thus quality research opportunities are not available to students. Providing quality education to a large number of students is a challenge.

Of course these are not all of the major challenges. There are challenges and issues with respect to the structure of higher education systems in India, access and admissions and as well as the quality of the overall academic experience and assessment.

Are there technology based initiatives currently in place aimed at addressing these problems?

Yes. NPTEL, TEQIP, IGNOU, Kerala e-Grid and TIFAC - Mission REACH try to provide various services including Video delivery of courses, access to library resources etc.

Unfortunately their impact is stymied due to dearth of quality resources (content) and lack of infrastructure for delivery

These initiatives (primarily for distance education) are in the periphery of mainstream educational programs and delivery.

What is the status of the network connectivity in India?

Currently very few institutions are connected reliably with good bandwidth provisioning.  They have limited b/w (KPBS to low mbps). Some upgrade efforts are underway, satellite based efforts like EDUSAT offer alternatives for distribution and India has lots of dark fiber but the point is that there is significant need for upgrading the national backbone as well as connectivity between and within institutions.

What do you see as the answer to the problem?

The problem is multifaceted and the answer multi-layered. I believe it requires an entirely different way of looking at the delivery of quality education.  However there are two important elements to consider for a preferred approach going ahead:

 1) The Internet is changing the face of education.
2) India can use it to make optimal use of global educational resources.
Increasing capabilities of high bandwidth networks and open educational resources offer unprecedented opportunities to serve the knowledge needs of diverse communities. They can help amplify interaction among students and teachers and introduce innovative and interactive educational experiences.

Network enabled education has to become central modality for education. With a high bandwidth network, India can leverage resources like OCW, Mednet, I-Labs and other initiatives to provide quality education opportunities to a large population. There is so much talent in India, which allows India to not only use but also to contribute significantly to these resources.

Again I should point out that we have to look at solutions to addressing issues of extensive access and quality have to be approached systemically, looking at not only an enhanced network or global open resources but issues related to user applications, localization and contextualization, support for adoption; pedagogy as well as policy framework for ensuring quality.

While the commission’s idea is laudable, it seems that lot of money and political will is needed implement many of the ideas. Do you think the Knowledge Commission will succeed?

The commission has been established by the Prime Minister. Thus it has support from the top. For any good idea money is never the issue.  Sustainability is. While I am not exactly sure how much impact we will be able to create, I assure you that education is India will be significantly different ten years from now. To retain an edge, we have to succeed, and I feel confident that we will.

We applaud you for your work and hope that you succeed in bringing a radical change to India’s education. Thank you for you time.

Thank you.

|