Online Education: A View From India

1. Online Education: A View From India Mathai Joseph Advisor Tata Consultancy Services

2. Traditional University • Elitist in nature, purpose, intent • Not for mass education • Limited reach • Relatively small student numbers • Demand seems unlimited • Sebastian Thrun’s online AI course at Stanford had 160,000 enrolled (cfUdacity) But • Dropout rates ~ 90%

3. University Funding • Traditional university funding • alumni, donors, government • Students funded by • Social support • Parents • Loans, savings

4. Social Purpose • Society goals for education, e.g. • 100% literacy • 90% high school • National goals for higher education: • 50% university enrolment (e.g. UK 1997) • 30% professional education … (UK is an example of an advanced economy with centrally managed higher education)

5. Figures exclude Open University and overseas students (From Funding Universities to Meet National and International Challenges, David Greenaway, Michelle Haynes),

6. Costs • Lower bound of unit cost • Limits on class sizes, staff/student ratios • Effect of bell curve – ‘dumbing’ down? • High cost of ‘efficiency gains’ • Conflict: high quality or low cost?

7. Costs • Lower bound of unit cost • Limits on class sizes, staff/student ratios • Effect of bell curve – ‘dumbing’ down? • High cost of ‘efficiency gains’ • Conflict: high quality or low cost? • Limits are politically convenient • Taxpayers will not fund mass higher education • Today university education is self-limiting

8. Analysis UK percentage of undergraduates decreasing: UK expenditure per student decreased 50% from 1980--1997

9. Indian Technical Higher Education • Few engineering colleges 20 years ago • 6 IITs, ~10-15 Regional Engineering Colleges • ~100 engineering colleges • Growth in the 1990’s • Government institutions unable to meet demand • Private colleges started • Growth followed liberalisation of the economy • Growing demand from the IT industry • 100,000’s of engineers needed each year

10. Current Position • ~630 degree granting institutions: • 8 + 8 Indian Institutes of Technology • 11 + 20 Institutes of Information Technology • National Institutes of Technology • Engineering Colleges ~6500 with ~0.7M new entrants a year Many privately run but with government concessions & grants Note: 18-19 age group population is ~50M

11. Source: UGC India

12. Source: UGC India

13. Source: UGC India

14. Source: UGC India

15. Source: UGC India

16. New Challenge • Several new online education ventures • Universities tentative • Unwilling to lose educational market, but • Unwilling to dilute ‘brand’ • Distance education solutions won’t work • Remote campus for part of education • Central campus for ‘normalization’

17. India: Standards and Quality • Widely varying selection standards • 455,571 took IIT entrance test, 1:50 selected (2010)* • Good institutions take ~1:5 • (e.g. 1.1M applicants for 19,000 seats in 2012) • Smaller engineering colleges take the rest • Widely varying quality IIT’s offer world class education Typical small engineering college Under-provisioned, under-resourced, poor teaching Used as stepping-stone to job or higher degree *Harvard takes 1:16, MIT 1:11

18. Online Education for India • No other scalable solution possible • Must have • Good online testing • Mentoring • Social interaction • Supporting full degree education • Not supplementary learning • Alternative to coaching classes

19. Content & Distribution • Content will belong to course creator • Testing adapted to online model • Integrated platform for lecture text, notes, problems, social network

20. Access • Choice from multiple sources • e.g. Databases from Stanford, Circuits from MITx • Common platform for all courses • Course notes and annotations preserved • Problems generated from templates • Automated marking and comments • Social interaction

21. Voice to text The question to ask ourselves is ‘What is engineering?’ Well, the definition I like to use is one put forward by Steve Senturia, one of our professors who has now retired. He defined engineering to be the purposeful use of science. Then what is 6.002 about? 6.002 is the first course in engineering and I like to define 6.002 as the gainful employment of Maxwell’s equations. MJ: Why ‘gainful’? Annotations

22. Problems • Generic template model needed • Unsupervised problem solving • Social interaction encouraged • Record of all work • Crowd-sourced marking? • Supervised testing for grading/certificate

23. Social Problem Solving Problem space Social space • Hari, have you done this problem? • Yes, easy. Same as (3). • OK, I’ll try now • Dangers of crowd-sourced marking • ‘Standard’ solutions • True innovation discouraged

24. Problem and Solution Write a program to sum the elements of the integer array A with N elements n1, n2, ... nN.

25. Problem as Program Write a program to sum the elements of the integer array A intarray A with const intN [ran 1<N<=25] elements n1, n2, … nN V1 is int set(gen(ran intN)) Solution =sum(V1)

26. Technology • Current technology enough to start • Hard to manage problem space • Cannot automatically mark arbitrary problems • Need problem generation from generic problem • Problem generation linked to solution, marking • Online mentoring • Good problem response techniques • Limited live tutoring

27. Prospects • Discussions with Silicon Valley entity • Republic of Education (planning stage) • Dual interests • Mass undergraduate education for developing countries • Specialized professional education courses • Many similar problems, solutions • Define an education platform • Automated marking • Limited live tutoring

28. Big Changes in Education • Undergraduate education is becoming commoditized; next step may be • Mix & match courses from different sources • Online testing and mentoring • University ‘brand’ moving to graduate education • Already happening (cf UK, US experience) • Major shifts in education market likely • Not all predictable today

29. Thank you!