He remembered Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘Nai Talim’ started in Wardha in 1937 that stressed on the need to make the native language as the necessary mandate in schools, along with free compulsory education to students. He further glorified the linguistic diversity of the country and how it symbolises our strength and cultural unity.

He recalled the principles of Mahatma Gandhi, how he gave importance to all languages and people’s sensitivity to their native language and also how he equated mother tongue with Swaraj. The vice president also asserted on the fact that Indian languages played a crucial part in bridging the gap between overseas Indians and motherland India.

He also recommended universities’ language departments to support and preserve the thread of linguistic unity and improve dialogue between Indian languages and universities’ language departments.

The post Venkaiah Naidu: New education policy in accordance with Mahatma Gandhi’s ethos appeared first on Higher Education Plus.

In conversation with Om Narayan, Head- Enterprise Business Solutions and Academia Relations, Mytat

How is Mytat aiming to contribute to workforce transformation in rural India? Have you started any initiatives?

India has very vast and diverse geography as well as population. India presented some of the world’s best education initiatives and outputs, however, resource crunch and accessibility to the training/ workforce transformation resources are still the major issues. To add, scarcity of credible internship opportunities even after being mandated by relevant bodies like MoHRD, NSDC, MoRD, MoUD, and bodies like AICTE, DGT, NSDC, poses a big challenge in the career path of youths. A huge struggle to gain applied knowledge for students has been observed. The issue of students failing to secure a job even after campus selections or internships led to the genesis of thought to build Mytat back in 2015. Mytat has been in beta use for the past 2-3 years and so far, has reached out to 50,000 candidates across India and helped placed over 1700 students. Recently, we have signed partnerships in Rajasthan with various higher education institutions and will be reaching out to 50,000 candidates in the next one year.

MYTAT has been developed to help students to identify their skill gaps, practice employability related assessments as per industry standards and join live and current theme/technology / problem-based projects that are mentored by industry experienced professionals with a pre and post skill assessment process.

We followed this approach for helping students in the rural rungs of the country earlier however, as the same problem is observed with candidates in urban cities as well, we are reaching out to students across demographics at one go.

How technology can help revive the traditional skill assessment/ SWOT analysis for students?

Traditional assessments were limited to a set of aptitude, functional tests or personality assessment and with a very limited fresher intake. With technological advancement, organizations have started focusing on a 360-degree talent assessment approach, thus, witnessing a shift in the recruitment/ talent acquisition process. A candidate is now being tested basis a series of assessments that are an amalgamation of aptitude, psychometric, coding/technical/non-technical, soft skills, MCQs, Subjective, simulation-based or hackathons, communication skill test– audio, and written etc. Employers use these assessments to take a view on each candidature to determine their long association and success potential in that role.

With technology disrupting the traditional assessments methods, students can benefit not only from skill acquisition initiatives but would also receive insight into their competitiveness in the talent market. This understanding helps him/her make an informed career decision.

How technology can be used to enhance the employability of students, making the platform accessible and scalable across India?

We all are aware that organizations are concentrated in limited cities and so are the professionals. It is impossible to burden organizations to enable students with credible project exposure. Therefore – it is now a necessity to ensure that such opportunities are accessible online during their education or training period, under a professional mentor.

With repetitive project exposure students not only get familiarised with technology but also acclimatise themselves to the process of problem-solving, teamwork and interpersonal relations. Therefore, it is a complete transitional experience for them while they are still on campus.

Technological learning and skill assessment platforms are the way forward. With low-cost data packages, basic laptop and mobile phones. Simple device agnostics, platforms are putting efforts to become scalable while providing easy access to students even in the rural rungs of India.

What are some of the USPs of Mytat and Lrnable vis-a-vis benefits to users?

Mytat has been in a unique position playing a critical role of connecting academia, students and industry. MYTAT’s robust AI/ML-powered assessment engine is being used by the top employer brands across the country.

Our assessment platforms help students to understand their employability and skill gaps. Students can further benefit from the self-paced and gamified learning backed by the inbuilt assessments to gauge their progress. The platform provides access to unlimited practice assessments with unique features of tracking previous scores, mistakes and practising further. These are necessary to acquire the desired technical, soft and new-age skills which are a pre-requisite to be job-ready nowadays. Students on the Mytat platform can also take the advantage of getting connected to the industry through internships or working on projects and learn real-time.

For educational institutions, MYTAT can help, gamify their curriculum and learning assessments. This will help raise students’ performance in the same class; section topic may be used for FDP delayering insights and growth. Mytat will also ease the struggle to facilitate credible internship and placements for these institutions.

On the other hand, corporates will get students who would understand processes and technologies, complementing them with good interpersonal skills and therefore presenting a better human resource tapping/retention opportunity which would indirectly save cost hiring and training cost, adding to the corporates’ overall profitability.

Once a candidate gets hired, Lrnable will further use the insights of MYTAT hiring assessments as development initiative input, facilitating timely learning interventions workshops while gauging the effectiveness of programs and continue to support employees at each career stage.

Thus, organisations with a handy skill matrix can take important business decisions at any given time.

The post Traditional assessments were limited to a set of aptitude: Om Narayan appeared first on Higher Education Plus.

In conversation with Varun Kohli, Co-Founder, Coding Blocks

1. What is your perspective of coding and the importance of teaching programming?

Coding is the most desired skill of the 21st century. Considered as one of the highest paying and stable careers, traditionally Coding was opted by many students at College level. There exists a general perception that coding is the forte of the ‘Gifted learners’ and cannot be taken up by average students.

Before anything else, we need to address what is Coding and how does one start learning it. Well, simply put, Coding is a way to make software and hardware act upon your instructions. There is a particular way to do this and learning that way is learning to code. It is naturally logical in nature, and hence learning to code teaches good logical ability to learners. In addition, it teaches how to solve a problem by breaking its complexity to a simpler structure and making deductions from it.

2. What are the advantages of programming?

Coding is a boon for students as it will help them enhance logical thinking and problem solving from an earlier stage. Coding and programming are game changers in the education system. We will see a new generation that will be using analytical thinking to solve problems. In India, it is the perfect time to teach the children about new age learning which will help them tremendously both in the jobs sector as well as in Entrepreneurship.

3. What is the current status of programming in India?

Programming in India is typically opted by students at the higher education level- colleges, universities and the like. Even here, the syllabus of universities or colleges are in urgent need of an overhaul as the current syllabi presents a big challenge to students who need extra hand holding to make sure they are able to clear the placement drives of good tech companies. The key to success is to be aligned with the industry needs at all times. Students need to brace themselves with latest tech stacks and keep practicing Coding problems on a regular basis. Participation in community and Open Source are also good means to stay aligned.

4. What can be done to make the situation better? How will it help the IT industry?

Students need to understand that what they learn in college might not be enough and they need to keep themselves aligned with the needs of the IT industry. Practice is the key to success and learning the latest stacks is always beneficial.

The Covid pandemic has evolved the IT industry and it is now functioning well in the Remote working scenario. Well trained, industry aligned students will help the IT industry align easily to Remote protocol and will help students in bagging better opportunities and packages.

5. Tell us more about Coding Blocks Junior- a new initiative offering free courses in coding?

Coding Blocks Junior is one of the first initiatives in India to provide free Coding courses in Visual programming, Python, Web development and Robotics to school students across India and abroad.

Coding Blocks Junior has superb mentors, well researched content and all programs on Coding Blocks Junior are Certificate programs. There is no fee for doing the course from Coding Blocks Junior.

Coding Blocks Junior is the long awaited dream of our founder, Manmohan Gupta, an IIT Delhi alumni who believes that Coding should be imparted to all students at the school level.

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In conversation with Dr.Mukesh Kwatra, Founder, Smiling Tree

What is the roadmap ahead for Smiling Tree?

Smiling Tree, over the last nine years has carried out hundreds of plantation drives, anti-plastic drives and spreading awareness to protect the environment. The sapling planted in 2012 is now a grown-up plant. And we together strive to make the plant grow into a giant tree.

A big number of like minded green warriors are involved with the Smiling Tree. Together the aim is to keep on planting trees, spreading awareness about environmental sustainability, making people aware of harms and alternatives to plastic in daily lives, how to lead an eco-friendly life, educating children at a young age about the above causes, educating the farmer community of India about the climate smart way of agriculture, and so on. Smiling Tre…

How does your work benefit society?

This question can be answered by any person living in a polluted environment, especially people living in places like Delhi, which is one of the most polluted cities of the world.

Who doesn’t want to breathe in clean air, who doesn’t want a pollution free environment, who doesn’t want to save his or her generations from the disastrous effects of climate change, who doesn’t want to have a chemical free food diet, who doesn’t want that the natural resources are always available in abundance?

Smiling Tree’s efforts are to make all the above things positively possible for the society.

How did you become interested in Environmental work?

Well, the credit goes surely to my son Nirbhay, who ignited the spark through his green initiative Smiling Tree.

I, like most of us, was so engrossed in my daily routines, busy life and was oblivious of how we humans are blindfolded to the depleting resources around and degradation of Earth.

I realized that a huge effort is required and that made me study more and more, how and what is to be done to take care of our environment and make Earth a better place. I do understand that what I am doing would be like a drop in the ocean, but as Mother Teresa said, ‘Even the ocean would be less without that missing drop’!

How Development and growing forestation can go hand in hand?

Development can go hand with forestation or more aptly described, with Nature. This is possible if the stairs leading to development are in conjunction with the environment, that’s exactly what we call is “Sustainable Development”. It implies meeting the needs of the present using the natural resources, without compromising the ability and availability of the resources for future generations to meet their needs. If there is a lack of coordination between these two factors, it would be an unsustainable approach and as a result we harm the environment.

How can we teach children environmental protection from a young age?

This is something I have been strongly advocating for quite some time. Children are the future, and that is precisely the reason why they need to be educated at a tender age so that they grow up to lead a sustainable and eco-friendly life.

There should be a compulsory Environment class in the curriculum in schools, with interesting kids’ friendly activities to involve them and evolve them. In fact, at junior levels, a monthly activity should be planned with parents as accomplices. The idea is to make it a family endeavour. If the child carries forward what he does at school, at home too, then that would surely make a strong foundation.

As an environmentalist which area you are more concerned about?

This is hard to answer. To a true environmentalist, any issue which is harmful for the environment, is of concern. More or less is not to be considered.

Myself and Smiling Tree strives and will keep on striving for the Environment benefit at large. Be it climate change, deforestation, unsustainable use of natural resources, use of plastics, gas emissions, fossil fuels burning, or any other issues, all are of concern.

We aim to make our Earth green and will always give our best for that.

When was the smiling tree launched? What was the idea behind the launch of the smiling tree?

‘SMILING TREE’ is a green initiative started by my son Nirbhay Kwatra in 2012. He was at that moment a 10-year Modern School student who had a savor for our home, our planet, Earth. His vision was to seek and garner support of people from all walks of life to form a significant ‘green collective’ and plant trees in abundance besides spreading awareness to inculcate habits of using clean, renewable energy in our daily lives and furthering green cover.

As a momentous ‘first step’ a ‘SMILING TREE GO GREEN WALK’ was organized on the 15th of January,2012 at Lodi Gardens, Delhi. The event was a great success thanks to an overwhelming and ardent response from the masses. People from all age groups were not only inquisitive about the cause but were very ‘appreciative’ too. They were surprised to notice a young ten-year-old kid having such awareness and zest for a clean and green environment.

I have been supporting Nirbhay throughout and now as he is busy with his studies and career development, I have taken over the initiative to carry on the good work.

In one statement, what message do you have to the coming generation?

The following verses from one of my poems would be my message for coming generations –

Let’s reinvent our lives or Earth will pause,

We will adapt and adopt, it’s a green cause.

Sustainable living and deforestation tamed,

May the Earth know that we have changed.

The post Development can go hand with forestation: Dr.Mukesh Kwatra appeared first on Higher Education Plus.

Prabhat Kumar

1. How did YIF change your life?

Having farming family background, studied in government school and college, YIF changed my life in following ways – improved my soft skills and inculcated critical thinking approach; exposed me to a global and vibrant global community and taught me to deal with it efficiently; allowed me to explore various subjects to get out of my comfort zone.

2. How should aspiring candidates prepare for the fellowship?

Be yourself. Understand the objective of fellowship and then prepare yourself accordingly. YIF values learning spirit for excellency and you need to answer how this programme will help you to achieve that.

3. What do you currently do?

I am the Founder of SumArth. The organization is trying to establish agriculture as an established profession for the future generation. Currently our focus is on Bihar’s farmers. We are working towards increasing the income of farmers by introducing cash crops in the state.

4. What motivated you to start SumArth?

I belong to a farmers’ family. Since my childhood, I have witnessed the plight of a farmer in Bihar. From my early childhood my family suggested me to do one thing “Never get involve in Agriculture” because they have not witnessed regular cash flow in this sector.

After my engineering, YIF and work experience; I started SumArth to solve the problem of cashflow in Agriculture in Bihar.Today we have 15,000+ farmers in Gaya and we are one of the largest producers of onion and mushroom in Bihar.

Anoop Maurya

1.      How did YIF change your life?

Given that I came from a socio-economically weaker background, it was a bit difficult for me to settle initially. However, YIF opened a whole new world of possibilities for me and broadened my horizon. All the batch mates, faculty and Founders are very empowering. I was the second youngest in my batch and had the opportunity to mingle with people with diverse backgrounds. There were engineers, lawyers, photographers, architects. Being at YIF helped me in understanding which direction my life should take. Being at YIF and getting liberal arts education helped me in imagining and putting down my thoughts on paper. Till today, I have the support from Pramath Raj Sinha, Amit Chandra. Meeting my batch mates and these influential founders is the central point of my answer because when you meet such people, you are inspired.  

2.      How should aspiring candidates prepare for the fellowship?

Anybody aspiring to prepare for YIF should understand that YIF is not a regular programme which has a set criteria. But one should try and spend enough time on application essays. They are self-revealing. You just need to be who you are. Do not shy from showing your true self, being bold and speaking up of your vulnerabilities, strengths, weaknesses. YIF looks for people who have passion for building something. YIF welcomes all kinds of people but what it definitely looks forward to is an unreasonableness in the way you look at the world and how you go about in navigating the tumultuous nature of the world. YIF encourages people to find solutions to problems that can make this world a better place.

3.      What do you currently do?

I am the Founder and President of Bharat Navodaya Abhiyan. BNA is a public service wing of the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas’ alumni network which is a national coalition of over 12 lakhs rural educated Indians. The portal enables, encourages and unites students and alumni of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas to impact and lead 21st century India and the world.

4.      What motivated you to start Bharat Navodaya Abhiyan? What does BNA do?

By the time I graduated, I was sure that I wanted to work with this network of my school of Navodaya Vidyalaya Alumni Network. I realized that this was a huge and powerful network, largely untapped. That’s where the potential and opportunity lied. I wanted to help and serve my people. Gradually, we started Navodaya Scholar Programme, flagship initiative of Bharat Navodaya Abhiyan. This we launched in partnership with the Ministry of Education, GoI. We select top 30-40 high school students from rural communities and work with them for two years. They go through a leadership journey that prepares them for college life etc. The programme gives them 21^st century skills.

The post Understanding the objective of fellowship is important appeared first on Higher Education Plus.

What is view on the upcoming Union budget?

In the upcoming budget, one of the biggest expectations will be funds being made available to digitalise rural education. We are headed towards a huge intellectual loss due to the forced digitalisation of education during the Covid outbreak. The biggest losers have been students in the rural and not so upward areas across the country who lost out or could not get access to the trend of online classes. It is said that almost 80 percent of India’s schools are in its villages.  A majority of these schools are distinctly away from the digitalisation wave. These classrooms are not connected and students have been at a massive loss when it comes to education delivery during the pandemic.

The digitalisation of the government schools and rural education is a must as there is now a huge divide between urban and rural education due to the privilege of access to digital education, a gap which was larger earlier but now has become larger. It is said that over 260 million students are enrolled in the K12 sector of India. Now imagine that a huge part of this part is in the rural section of the country. Imagine how they would have coped with the absence of any form teaching since the advent of the pandemic. These students have lost a considerable chunk of their education and will continue to do so in the absence of a proper digital infrastructure. There is a definite need for a large fund allocation to provide a robust digital infrastructure to this sector and help them cope with these changing times. The budget will have to allocate funds which will also matter to digitally uplift the teachers in these regions as without proper instructors the students would be at a loss overall. 

There is a definite need for proper fund allocation and also a proper flow plan as to how the implementation of the same will happen. The time is short as these students have already lost out big time and needs an immediate bail out. I hope the Finance Minister pays her due attention to this ticking bomb in the education sector. 

The post Need to concentrate more on education in rural areas: Joyanto Mukherjee appeared first on Higher Education Plus.

What is Mission Karmayogi?

Mission Karmayogi intends to emphasise on capacity building of individual civil servants and institutional capacity building. The mission is being set up to build future ready civil servants, who will have the right attitude, skills and knowledge that will be in line with the vision of New India.

The mission will be steered by the Prime Minister’s HR council that will consist of several national and international experts, who will convene under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister himself, as stated by C Chandramouli, Secretary, Department of Personnel & Training.

Main aim of Mission Karmayogi

The primary chief of Mission Karmayogi is to prepare Indian Civil Servants for the future by permitting them to become more imaginative, ground-breaking, professional, advanced, positive, imaginative, transparent, proactive, active and technology-enabled.

Key features

• Prescribe Annual Capacity Building plan for all departments and services.
• Monitor the implementation of Capacity Building Plan.
• Will ensure efficient service delivery
• Promote Technology-Driven Learning Pedagogy
• Strengthen Common Foundations and remove department silos.
• Set benchmarks in learning for public servants.
• Democratise learning to cover all categories.

How is it beneficial for common man?

Mission Karmayogi will make civil servant more efficient, responsive and accountable to the needs of the citizens by ensuring that the right person with right competencies is at the right position.

The iGOT platform will enable the transition to a role-based HR management & continuous learning. Mission Karmayogi aims to prepare Civil Servants for the future by making them more creative, constructive & innovative through transparency and technology. #CivilService4NewIndia pic.twitter.com/NxGBcAxUGo

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 2, 2020 ” data-wplink-url-error=”true”>“National Program for Civil Services Capacity Building approved in today’s cabinet will radically improve the Human Resource management practices in the Government. It will use scale and state of the art infrastructure to augment the capacity of Civil Servants,” PM Modi tweeted.

How will it be funded?

To cover around 46 lakh central employees, a sum of Rs 510.86 crore will be spent over a period of 5 years from 2020-21 to 2024-25. The expenditure is partly funded by multilateral assistance to the tune of $50 million.

Besides the setting up of the SPV, an appropriate monitoring and evaluation framework will also be put in place for performance evaluation of all users of the iGOT-Karmayogi platform so as to generate a dashboard view of Key Performance Indicators.

The iGOT platform will enable the transition to a role-based HR management & continuous learning. Mission Karmayogi aims to prepare Civil Servants for the future by making them more creative, constructive & innovative through transparency and technol

The iGOT platform will enable the transition to a role-based HR management & continuous learning. Mission Karmayogi aims to prepare Civil Servants for the future by making them more creative, constructive & innovative through transparency and technology. #CivilService4NewIndia

The iGOT platform will enable the transition to a role-based HR management & continuous learning. Mission Karmayogi aims to prepare Civil Servants for the future by making them more creative, constructive & innovative through transparency and technology. #CivilService4NewIndia pic.twitter.com/NxGBcAxUGo

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 2, 2020

AxUGo”>pic.twitter.com/NxGBcAxUGo

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 2, 2020

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Prepared on the basis of a draft submitted by a panel led by former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief, K. Kasturirangan, the policy was recently approved by the Union Cabinet. The NEP brings in a fresh mandate for vocational training while boosting the prospects for EdTech space. Undoubtedly, the NEP is ambitious and futuristic and much of its success will depend on how it is executed. However, if the NEP is to be evaluated from the prism of whether it can yield higher demographic dividend, the answer seems reassuringly positive.

While the NEP is expected to better the gross enrolment ratio (GER) in the K12 segment, the higher education segment too is set to align with global standards with the introduction of multidisciplinary choice-based credit system. As per NEP, “a concerted national effort will be made to ensure universal access and affordable opportunity to all children of the country to obtain quality holistic education–including vocational education – from preschool to Class 12.”

Importance of vocational education

The policy stresses on vocational education right from the school level and proposes ‘local teacher education programmes’ in which local resource persons can be hired by schools for shorter courses on vocational crafts. NEP further states that “at least 50% of learners” going through the school and higher education system “shall have exposure to vocational education”. The policy also talks about introducing vocational courses in secondary schools “in a phased manner over the next decade”. NEP also talks about setting up “skill labs” in collaboration with polytechnics and local industries. An equally welcome move is bagless days in school. Providing opportunities to students right from school level to skill themselves through vocational courses will finally make schools provide real education and transition from mindless rote to actual learning.  The restructured 5+3+3+4 is also a welcome step and skilling of each child during schooling will increase the stature of skill-based education and increase employability of the youth.

Learner-centricity is at the core of NEP

Coupled with multiple entry-exit options, NEP augurs well for learner-centricity.  There is also a proposal to set up vocational courses through online mode.

And this is where the EdTech sector would have a big role to play. The COVID-19 pandemic has served to accelerate the role of EdTech with many homegrown EdTech companies offering blended learning environments and flipped classrooms across learning streams. With several premier Indian institutions – IITs, IIMs, NIRF ranked Universities – warming up positively to the idea of offering their premier programs online either on their own or in collaboration with a technology platform provider, Indian higher education sector is truly poised for democratizing the learning to yield desired outcomes. The very fact that EdTech is attracting hundreds of millions in funding during the pandemic is a testimony to the potential EdTech holds for Indian education system.

Myriad options available for Indian learners now

For the Indian learner, she is now spoilt for choice as never before: sitting in the comfort of her home, she can choose to learn from and be certified by the best institutions in India or indeed the world at a fraction of the cost of traditional f2f education. Given the focused approach of Gen Zers / millennials, choices are no longer simply brand or reputation centric,  but driven by the desired skill/outcome and where the best perceived faculty/practitioners for that skill are at. Besides managing the platform, marketing and student support, EdTech companies can offer quality marketing insights to the institute while allowing the institute to focus on what it does best – high quality learning. 

For long been looked upon as avoidable intruders, there is a pleasant shift in the outlook with several Indian premier institutions co-opting EdTech companies as collaborators to extend their reach beyond their high portals. With top-200 global universities being allowed to operate in India, Indian EdTech space’s depth and breadth is poised to expand substantially. To complement the vision to make high-quality education accessible and affordable with a learner-centric approach – in line with interdisciplinary, choice-based credit system – EdTech companies should also offer intra-platform and inter-platform mobility. To borrow an analogy from telecom sector, the EdTech space should contemplate portability within their platform and across the platforms to be truly learner centric letting the learner pick up a set of courses that he/she would like to pursue. One way to do is to take a program-based approach rather than degree/certification-based approach.

A heart-warming anecdote of Surya

While the world of employability offers us myriad success stories, I believe the heart-warming story of Surya, a student and a rickshaw driver’s son truly embodies our vision. Surya dreamt of becoming a banker someday after completing his post-graduation but could not find better opportunities. Smart enough to understand that he needed to acquire new skills and upgrade his existing skill set, Surya and his father visited a skill training centre. At the centre, Surya was counselled to join diploma course in Banking Management; today, he works as Assistant Manager at one of the leading Indian Private Sectors banks. Surya is a fine example of a young man who bettered his entire family’s lives through education.

“Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great and you can be that great generation”, said Dr Nelson Mandela. We firmly believe that the best way to empower this generation of Indians is to make world class learning accessible and affordable through technology thus enabling them to be productive, progressive citizens.

The post Impatient Optimism for India’s Demographic Dividend appeared first on Higher Education Plus.

The institute could not bid these students a proper farewell. So for this special batch, the entire convocation was aired using the national broadcaster Doordarshan. Co-recipient of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics, and a Professor of Physics at Princeton University was the Chief Guest during the ceremony. Stephen A. Schwarzman.

Chairman, CEO & Co-Founder of Blackstone, world-renowned investor and philanthropist was the Guest of Honour. All of them connected virtually for the convocation.

The families and the students also got to take a virtual tour of the campus before the convocation began. During this, the students were informed that the over 60-year-old institute was making its entire library available online.

Even members of the IIT Bombay senate were videographed individually and assembled digitally for this function where all of them are seen sitting together on the stage. In the video where they are seen walking to the convocation stage, they are maintaining physical distancing and safety norms are being followed.

Subhasis Chaudhuri, Director, IIT Bombay & Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering speaking on the occasion said, “Providing a virtual reality experience to all our graduates needed not only highly innovative steps but also a tremendous effort by our professors and staff. They did it for the students. Hopefully, this will enthuse our graduates as well as other engineers in the country to think big and think innovatively”.

The graduating students this year include 381 PhDs, 18 Dual Degree (MTech/ MPhil+PhD) and 27 Dual Degrees (MSc+PhD). Out of these, 39 research scholars were selected for the award of ‘Excellence in PhD Research’ for the year 2018-20. In addition, 33 joint PhD degrees, in association with Monash University, were also conferred the degrees.

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The Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University (AKTU) launched a Whatsapp chat bot to answer queries of candidates appearing in the Uttar Pradesh State Entrance Examination (UPSEE) 2020 – a gateway for engineering colleges across Uttar Pradesh.

Aspirants may get their queries answered by dialling the number +91 5222336810, university authorities said.

The entrance examination for the courses of B.Tech, B.Pharm, B.Arch, B.Des, MBA, MCA, BHMCT, BFAD, BFA of UPSEE is scheduled on September 20.

At the launch ceremony, vice-chancellor Vinay Kumar Pathak said, “The artificial intelligence driven WhatsApp chat bot will provide real time answers to the questions/queries related to UPSEE 2020 entrance exam.

“If a candidate raises a question through the registered mobile of UPSEE 2020, then the information will be made available within seconds. Candidates can get information related to the examination, application number, examination results and counselling at any time through the WhatsApp chat bot,” he said.

In the past years, thousands of questions relating to the UPSEE entrance exam were asked by candidates and it was difficult to answer for the helpline with immediate effect. But with the launch of the WhatsApp chat bot it will be possible to answer all questions immediately, he said.

UPSEE coordinator Vineet Kansal said that about 1,700 candidates had appeared in the entrance examination for these exams, against which 1668 candidates have passed the entrance examination.

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