Edu-leaders

Located in the heart of the IT capital of India, IIM Bangalore is well poised to harness ICT to facilitate its educational activities. There are efforts underway to implement an ERP across functions. Over the last seven years, a large portion of its faculty and students have embraced such tools as learning management systems (LMS). The Moodle installation at IIMB hosts over 100 courses today. The PGSEM or Post Graduate Program in Software Enterprise Management,launched in 1998, is a long duration program for IT executives with significant work experience. Given the constraints of the participants, classes are conducted on Fridays and Saturdays.

The Impetus

In 2005, IIM Bangalore decided to extend the PGSEM program to IT executives in Chennai, with Infosys acting as its implementation partner. Since this was a long duration program, there was the prime stipulation of parity in the conduct of the program across geographies. Many business schools that offered “distance programs” were grappling with problems of pedagogy, which were often intractable due to a flawed design. Restraints on the movement of an instructor impeded the dynamics of a case discussion. A one-way video transmission had a drastic impact on socialisation across locations. A large-sized enrollment prevented students from being able to adequately clarify their doubts. Having recently launched their EDUSAT satellite, the Indian Space Research Organisation came forward to provide IIMB with bandwidth to conduct the classes in a distributed mode. This obviated the necessity to create a point-to-point connection over land, while promising nation-wide reach for the content, should the need arise. The familiar format of a video-conference was a strong option to conduct the PGSEM program. Business schools like Haas at Berkeley and Sloan at MIT had already tried and tested this technology. Even though there were “readymade” solutions for corporate videoconferencing, much work needed to be done to tailor them to the business school classroom. There was one unbreakable clause: neither the instructor nor the student must have to modify any aspect of their behavior within such a classroom. An economics instructor should continue drawing diagrams on a whiteboard. A strategy instructor must be able to pace around the room during a case discussion. The quant professor should be able to use a spreadsheet without having to worry about the visibility on the far end. Finally, all ends of the distributed class must have an identical set-up, given that the instructor is expected to teach from the other locations as well. There was no single solution option that would cater to all of these needs. There was growing body of literature on how such a distributed classroom could be realised and it was concluded that the solution must be constructed from individual components.

Points They Pondered

Microphones are placed within easy reach of every student – a must for a business school classroom. An audio mixer blends voices from multiple mikes into one audio stream. Pan-tilt-zoom video cameras of TV quality follow the instructor as well as the students. Large-sized LCD monitors bring in the signal from the far end in good resolution. The cameras are positioned so that an instructor can peer into the monitor at a student and hold a conversation and vice versa. An electronic whiteboard captures all writing for real time transmission via a computer. A control room hides away the technological sophistication behind this classroom. A joystick operated switcher helps a human operator to remotely track the instructor and students via the PTZ cameras. The operator identifies which video stream to send across to the far end. A video-conferencer blends the video and audio streams from the cameras and the mixer. The output of the VC is captured by a DVD recorder. A network router mixes the VC output with data streams emanating from computers hosting slides, spreadsheets and whiteboard output. Finally, all of this communication is conducted two-way via satellite. On the far end, the audio signal goes to the speakers, the video signal goes to multiple TV displays, the whiteboard stream is projected onto a whiteboard, and the screen displays the instructor's desktop. After finalising the design with a consultant, IIMB entrusted the implementation to a multimedia outfit called Actis. Many components had to be imported, and thanks to the duty exemptions, the prices could be reduced substantially. Since Actis had a long history of media installations, they were able to competently install and operate the classroom within their brief of 6 months.

Footloose

Some of the components (e.g. the video-conferencing unit) were cutting edge, the first six months were spent in stabilising the solution. There were a few unanticipated surprises. For example, heavy rains in both locations managed to soak into the satellite dish set-up, thereby affecting the video. Students in the first batch were naturally upset when the transmission was disturbed due to technical reasons. For the better part of one quarter, the Chairperson had to take the drastic step of asking faculty members to provide 100% face time at the far end (Chennai) while the set-up was being fixed. Once fixed, however, it proved its stability. Celestial phenomena like solar flares affected transmission. Therefore, after a year, it was decided to provide a back-up for the communication channel via PRI (ISDN) lines. This option, however, has been rarely resorted to.

The Stronghold

Over the last few convocations, nearly 70 students have graduated from the PGSEM in Chennai. This is about 8% of the entire population of graduates. IIMB has among the best VC facilities geared for pedagogical usage. The IIMB faculty has demonstrated its competence with handling advanced technologies and extending its reach to Chennai. Their pedagogical repertoire has been enhanced with the ability to handle a distributed class. Every now and then, a faculty member conducts a session by connecting to a classroom internationally, usually in the UK or the US. The time taken to set up such an exercise is less than a day, a feature heavily appreciated by the concerned faculty. In the globalising workplace, the ability to communicate to remotely located teams is a desired skill. Many courses are conducted in the distributed mode, and hence students from other programs also get an opportunity to hone this skill.