Chennai: With fresh BE graduates having little or no formal pedagogical training donning the role of teachers in engineering colleges, the National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and Research (NITTTR) here is developing digitised lab experiments and e-resources to enable quality teaching in technical institutions in south India. "The problem of untrained teachers in engineering colleges is acute. Many of these teachers perhaps did science experiments only as students and may not be equipped to perform perfectly. Our videos will demonstrate how an experiment is done. Watching these will not only enable students to do an experiment properly but also help teachers demonstrate it in a better way," S Mohan, Director, NITTTR (Chennai) said. The institute under the union ministry for human resources development ministry, has begun producing videos demonstrating Chemistry laboratory experiments. It has decided to collaborate with major industry players in the e-learning industry and a few private engineering colleges to develop the e-resources and digital lab experiment DVDs to benefit students in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. "We have plans to collaborate with Wipro, Everonn, Cognizant, SSN Engineering College, Sathyabama University, Dr Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology and a few other companies. We would train their staff on the parameters to be adopted for developing the digital content." he said. This project is different from the National Programme on Technology Enabled Learning that is being implemented by the IITs and the IISc. "The NPTEL project is aimed at taking the IIT-level teaching. Not all students would have the aptitude to understand those lectures. Our e-resources are based on the engineering college curriculum and we have expertise in training teachers on pedagogical aspects," Mohan added. "We have adopted the instructional dimension methodology while developing the e-content. The student can simultaneously view the demonstration and try it out step by step in a parallel computer screen," said P Sivakumar, head, department of educational technology and multimedia, NITTTR (Chennai). ESM Suresh, assistant professor, educational media centre, NITTTR said while digital learning cannot replace the conventional classroom teaching, there is a need to make learning more interesting for students. Source: The Times of India