Gurumurthy Kalyanaram Reports on NMIMS Faculty Development Program on Case-Based Teaching

On May 5, 2012, the University organized a Faculty Development Seminar on Case-Based Approach to Teaching.

Case-based teaching is one of the useful approaches to instruction, as is simulation, group and individual tasks, proto-typing, mental and visual modeling. Case-based approach is a manner of instruction where both the instructor and the learner engage in a series of questions. Quite often question is the answer or answer becomes evident from the question. When employed thoughtfully, case-based approach can be an effective approach to learning and integrating.

Three of our School of Business School colleagues, Dr. Chandan Dasgupta, Dr. Mala Srivastava and Dr. Veena Vohra, who are highly credentialed were the resource persons. They brought varying backgrounds, and they have invested cognition and time in case-based learning including spending some time in Harvard’s program on case-based teaching.

Over sixty faculty members participated in the day-long seminar.

Before arriving for the seminar, the participants reviewed the three Harvard Business School three cases which were used by the three resource persons. The goal was not so much to know the subject-matter, but as much to be ready to engage and participate.

The three cases used in the seminar were:
• Butler Lumber Company;
• Forecasting the Adoption of E-books; and
• Creativity under the Gun at Litmus Corporation

The Butler case is in the accounting/finance domain, E-books case addresses adoption of a new innovation and forecasting of diffusion of such innovation, and Litmus Corporation case is about organizational and leadership facilitation of creativity.

Gurumurthy Kalyanaram Reports on MIT’s 17th President, Rafael Reif

Here is the announcement received from MIT

To the Faculty, Students, Staff, Alumni and Friends of MIT,

It is with great pleasure that I share with you the news that this morning, the MIT Corporation voted to elect MIT’s Provost, L. Rafael Reif, as the 17th President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Reif will assume his new responsibilities on July 2, 2012.

You can learn much more about our president-elect in a news article that can be found on MIT News; I’ve also pasted the text of the article below.

We hope that many of you will be able to attend or watch a special MIT Community Meeting and Reception this afternoon at 2:00 pm in Room 10-250, where Dr. Reif will be welcomed by our community for the first time as president-elect.

For those of you not able to attend the meeting, it will be webcast live; you will be able to access the webcast from the MIT homepage (http://web.mit.edu). The webcast will be archived, so you can view it after the event as well.

I look forward to celebrating this wonderful occasion with you all.

Most sincerely,

Kirk D. Kolenbrander

——————————————————————————–

L. Rafael Reif selected as MIT’s 17th president
As provost since 2005, the president-elect has inspired innovation and played a critical role in the financial stewardship of the Institute.

By Steve Bradt, MIT News Office

L. Rafael Reif, a distinguished electrical engineer whose seven-year tenure as MIT’s provost has helped MIT maintain its appetite for bold action as well as its firm financial footing, has been selected as the 17th president of the Institute.

Reif, 61, was elected to the post this morning by a vote of the MIT Corporation. He will assume the MIT presidency on July 2, 2012.

As the Institute’s chief academic officer since 2005, Reif led the design and implementation of the strategy that allowed MIT to weather the global financial crisis; drove the growth of MIT’s global strategy; promoted a major faculty-led effort to address challenges around race and diversity; helped foster the emergence of an innovation cluster adjacent to MIT in Kendall Square; led the development of MITx, the Institute’s new initiative in online learning; and led MIT’s role in the formation of edX, the recently announced partnership between MIT and Harvard University that builds on MITx and that aims to enrich residential education while bringing online learning to great numbers of people around the world.

Reif has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1980 and is currently the Fariborz Maseeh Professor of Emerging Technology in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He succeeds Susan Hockfield, who announced earlier this year that she would step down after more than seven years as MIT’s president.

A rich candidate pool gained from ‘especially broad outreach’

Reif’s selection as MIT’s next president follows broad consultation with students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of MIT. Through outreach via multiple channels, a 22-member Presidential Search Committee generated a list of more than 100 candidates for the presidency. That list included people identified by the committee itself as well as those suggested by others; members of the MIT community and people outside the Institute; and candidates with a broad range of backgrounds in academia and beyond.

“The search committee has done excellent, thorough work that not only resulted in an outstanding outcome, but also in a great feeling of community among the wide-ranging group of people who helped us in our search,” said MIT Corporation Chairman John S. Reed ’61. “Rafael Reif emerged early as a uniquely qualified candidate, and that impression only deepened as our discussions with him and with members of the MIT community proceeded. Rafael brings with him a career as a distinguished engineer and a gifted administrator, and his 30 years of achievement at MIT speak to a profound dedication to, and understanding of, the Institute.”

The Presidential Search Committee was chaired by James A. Champy ’63, SM ’65, a Boston business consultant and author; Champy also led the 2004 presidential search that culminated in Hockfield’s selection.

“The committee’s intense and thorough process included especially broad outreach,” Champy said. “The committee sought input not only from faculty and students, but also from staff. As a result of this rich internal input as well as input from voices outside MIT, we had an excellent pool. As a hundred became dozens, and dozens a small handful, one name kept coming up. In discussing Rafael’s candidacy with key members of the MIT community, we heard not only about Rafael’s impressive record of achievement in service to the Institute, but also about people’s enthusiastic support for him as a leader fully engaged with the MIT community. The committee members are overjoyed by Rafael’s election.”

An accomplished provostAs provost, Reif has held overarching responsibility for MIT’s educational and research programs, as well as for the recruitment, promotion and tenuring of faculty. He has worked closely with the deans of MIT’s five schools to establish academic priorities and with the executive vice president to manage the financial planning to support these priorities. Also in his role as provost, Reif has oversight responsibility for Lincoln Laboratory (a research laboratory that MIT operates for the U.S. Department of Defense), as well as for the Institute’s libraries and a number of major interdisciplinary laboratories, centers and programs.

Reif played a critical role in balancing MIT’s budget before, during and after the global financial crisis. Early in his tenure as provost, he led a “rebalancing” process that eliminated a $50 million structural deficit – putting the Institute in a much better position to weather the global downturn that began in 2008. Then, after the crisis struck, Reif led the team that designed and implemented the strategy for managing budget cuts.

Among other steps, a 200-member Institute-wide Planning Task Force ultimately achieved significant long-term cost reductions by acting upon 77 percent of all ideas submitted by members of the MIT community.

As provost, Reif propelled a global strategy that has seen the Institute partner with governments and foundations to create four new research centers and universities worldwide. In 2007, MIT assisted in the creation of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi, a graduate educational and research institute devoted to advanced energy and sustainable technologies. Since 2008, Reif and other Institute officials have partnered with Singapore’s government to establish two new institutions: the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Centre and the Singapore University of Technology and Design, whose first class of students matriculated earlier this month. Last fall, MIT joined in the creation of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Russia, envisioned as a unique, world-class graduate research university.

Starting in 2007, Reif promoted a major faculty-led effort to address challenges around race and diversity, convening a faculty committee to investigate impediments to MIT’s recruitment and retention of minority faculty. The committee ultimately concluded that while efforts to hire and retain minority faculty had produced some gains, the experience of minority faculty at the Institute differed from that of their majority peers. Reif has since taken steps to foster a culture of inclusion at the Institute, taking a personal interest in recruiting and retention efforts for minorities and women. To help with these efforts, Reif established the Office of the Associate Provost for Faculty Equity.

Finally, Reif led a five-year project to develop a new paradigm in online learning. These efforts came to fruition with last December’s launch of MITx: a pioneering online-education initiative designed to bring new tools to students at MIT and to offer MIT content online to learners around the world, for free, through an interactive, open-source learning platform. MITx’s initial offering – an online course called “Circuits and Electronics” – has enrolled more than 120,000 students from around the world. Reif’s vision of exploring how online learning tools can improve residential education, as well as his interest in broadly accessible, high-caliber online courses, was further advanced earlier this month with the creation of edX, a $60 million online-education partnership with Harvard University. Reif led MIT’s entrance into that significant partnership.

“During my presidency,” Hockfield said, “our provost, Professor Rafael Reif, has been a true and trusted partner. I and the global MIT community have benefited immensely not only from his brilliant leadership of major initiatives, such as our international engagements and the MITx and edX launches, but also from the vital role he has played in stewarding the Institute’s finances and capital planning during a time of global financial uncertainty. His leadership in establishing the Institute-wide Budget Planning Task Force, which so brilliantly tapped the creativity and dedication of the MIT community, brought forth the very best of MIT. The Institute today finds itself both sure- and swift-footed, thanks in great part to Rafael’s strategic intelligence and dedication. I am enormously pleased by his election, knowing he will serve the Institute as president with devotion, insight and compassion.”

Gurumurthy Kalyanaram Reports on Dr. Madhusudan Atre’s NMIMS Research Colloquium

On May 4, 2012, Dr. Dr. Madhusudan Atre presented his findings and observations on, “Multi-Disciplinary Research, The Future Trend – The Case of Nano-Technology.”

In his presentation, Dr. Atre drew upon research and practice in micro/nano-electronics and new materials to show the convergence of these disciplines to nano-technology.

Dr. Atre is a highly credentialed researcher and practitioner. He got his doctoral degree in Physics from Indian Institute of Science, and then did his post-doctoral research at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Dr. Atre then went on establish the Lucent Research Laboratories in India (after a stint in Texas Instruments). Finally, he led the Applied Materials (India) as its President. Recently, Dr. Atre relinquished these responsibilities and is now focusing on consulting and working with academic institutions.

Dr. Atre summarizes his presentation as follows.

The philosophy of research was traced from ancient times – how most of the early philosophers studied nature in its entirety across disciplines of sciences and engineering, how research got specialized into specific domains in the 19th and 20th century, and how the trend is now reversing back towards cross-disciplinary research.

All the ideas, innovations, applications of multi-disciplinary research were illustrated via the field of nano-electronics.

The nano world lies in the domain of 100 nanometers (10-9 meters) or below – where the invariant bulk properties are lost, and the atomic properties are not present. The fundamental concept of the nano world is that the properties of materials depend on the size.

The nano materials can be built in two important ways – “top-down” where bulk material is whittled down to the nano region, and “bottom-up” where the nano material is built from molecules and atoms.

Important aspects of multi-disciplinary research were highlighted – different disciplines of pure sciences and engineering, applications and products, the industry ecosystem, the technology management. Important applications areas were pointed out – medicine and healthcare, energy generation and storage, defense, etc.

In the area of nano-electronics – the role played by decreasing dimensions in the semiconductor manufacturing industry was explained. The importance of new materials, semiconductor manufacturing process steps, increasingly sophisticated equipments, spin-offs into the other semiconductor manufacturing sectors like solar cell, LEDs, flat panel LCD/LED displays, were highlighted.

The importance and relevance of nano technology in diverse domains was pointed out – nano medicine, drug delivery, filtration, new devices, transportation, catalysis, construction, safety, agriculture, etc.

Finally, the very important aspects of environment and safety were highlighted – nano materials in the environment, effects of nano particles on body cells and tissues. This leads to the very important topic of standards, certification, etc.

Gurumurthy Kalyanaram Reports on Recent Faculty Recognitions in NMIMS University

Dr. Tapan Bachi, Director of Shirpur campus of NMIMS University, was recently awarded Doctor of Science in March 2012 by Indian Insitute of Technology, Kharagpur, for his body of research work in the area of quality engineering. Tapan is only one of twelve such academicians so honored by IIT Kharagpur in its 60 years of history. A rare honor and distinction!

The paper, “Price Effects on Prescription Behavior of Physicians,” by Dr. Gurumurthy Kalyanaram and Dr. Mala Srivastava presented at and published in the proceedings of the annual conference of Business and Health Administration Association in Chicago, March 2012 was adjudged to be the Best Paper in the Pharmoeconomics track. Dr. Demetrios Varkratsas of McGill University was a co-author in the paper.

Dr. Gurumurthy Kalyanaram was an invited speaker at the Sustainability Seminar Series, Earth and Environmental Studies, Montclair State University on April 17, 2012. He presented his research on “Non-market Valuation and Ethical Preferences: A Study of Choice in Public Goods.”

Professor Suresh Mony Reports on Research Productivity in India

Please see Professor Suresh Mony’s very intesting report on research productivity in India. Suresh Mony is a professor at NMIMS University. He is currently the Director of the Bangalore Campus of NMIMS and he brings with him rich experience in academic and administrative leadership.

WHERE DOES INDIA STAND IN RESEARCH OUTPUT ON THE WORLD SCENE“
Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind”.
- Marston Bates

We often hear this lament in academic, educational and governmental circles that “Research standards in India are poor” and that unless we improve the research culture, we will be not able to be on par with the advanced nations. The best of our universities do hardly any research which is reflected in the fact that there is no Indian institution in the top 200. Rather than mouth inane explanations, a dispassionate analysis of research output benchmarked with the leading nations would be in order.

GLOBAL RESEARCH OUTPUT
In order to assess the quantum of research output, the logical parameter to consider is the number of research publications in peer reviewed journals. In this regard, ‘Scopus’ which is the world’s leading database on research had compiled the research output of the top 20 nations for the period 1996 – 2007.
From a study of the data from OECD Main Science & Technology Indicators as composed by Scopus, the following insights emerge.
• In terms of volume, the USA with 3.4 million publications during the 12 year period was far ahead of the other countries. Japan, UK and Germany are closely bunched with research output ranging from 0.89 million to 0.98 million. China is next on the list with 0.75 million publications. India, is a lowly 12th on the world list with 0.28 million publications.

• One may ascribe the research culture in the USA that has drawn 7.5 lakh researchers (a large percentage from outside USA) to have largely contributed to their research output- the nearest in terms of researchers is China with 1.15 lakhs followed by Japan, Germany and UK. However, in terms of research productivity, UK tops the list with 3.2 publications per researcher followed by Germany, Japan, China and USA. The number of researchers in India is not available and hence it is not possible to comment on the research productivity.

• The citations per publication which is the accepted indicator of quality of research output ranges between 2.14 for China and 12.63 for USA. India appears to be better placed that China in terms quality with 3.47 citations per publication against China’s 2.14. However, the interesting point to be noted is that although USA has higher citations than the other four leading nations, it is not the top ranked in terms of citation per publication, and is marginally pipped to the post by Switzerland which has 12.68 citations per publication.

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH OUTPUT IN INDIA
While our overall research output is dismal, Thomson Reuters in their report titled ‘Global Research Output-India, October 2009’ report have stated that the scientific research productivity in India is on par with most G-8 nations and that in the next 7-8 years, by 2015-2020, India will go ahead. India’s share of scientific research output in the world is consistently less than 5% in all the disciplines (Source: Thomson Reuters)
While it is believed that India is strong in Chemistry followed by Physics, in reality Agricultural Sciences is next to Chemistry in research output. India’s share of the research output in microbiology is low.

Besides, there are other niche areas where research output in India is significant, namely: Agricultural Engineering, Tropical Medicine, Organic Chemistry, Dairy and Animal science, Crystallography, Integrated and Complementary medicine, Textiles, Medicinal chemistry, Agronomy. India’s share of the global research output (as given in Web of Science) in these areas ranges from 6.07% in Agronomy to 11.21% in Agricultural engineering. Thomson Reuters observe that Indian researchers do not collaborate with counterparts from advanced nations and If collaboration increases the scientific research output can improve considerably.

MANAGEMENT RESEARCH IN INDIA
Based on a study by Professors Nirmalya Kumar and Phanish Puranam of the London Business School, the management research output in India is discouraging. (Source: Aditya Birla India Center, London Business School)

India’s Management research output is very low, an average of 4 publications in the 40 top peer reviewed journals per year between 1990 and 2009. Any contribution worth the name is from Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), ISB, IIM Calcutta and IIM, Bangalore.

Filed by Dr. Gurumurthy Kalyanaram, Dean, NMIMS University

Professors Ramesh and Barnabas of NMIMS, Bangalore are authors of a new case at Ivey Publishing

Professors Ramesh and Barnabas of NMIMS, Bangalore are authors of a new case, Vibhava Chemicals: Pursuit of a Cleaner Space, published by Ivey Publishing. See the letter below.

April 23, 2012

Dear Dr. N. Ramesh and Dr. N. Barnabas,

This letter confirms that your submission, “Vibhava Chemicals: Pursuit of a Cleaner Space,” is registered with Ivey Publishing. As a leader in distributing business case studies globally, we think you will be pleased with the exposure your contribution will receive. We currently have over 140,000 professors around the world registered with us.

We do hope you will think of us again with your future case writing.

Sincerely,

Professor Paul W. Beamish
Director, Ivey Publishing
Richard Ivey School of Business
The University of Western Ontario
1151 Richmond Street North
London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7
Phone: (519) 661-3237
Fax: (519) 661-3700
E-mail: pbeamish@ivey.uwo.ca

Filed by Dr. Gurumurthy Kalyanaram, Dean, NMIMS University

Sashi Sivramkrishna Reports on Research Seminar in Bangalore Campus of NMIMS

Research Seminar Series, Contemporary Research in Management & Innovation, Held at NMIMS, Bangalore on Saturday, April 21, 2012

The seeds for this seminar series were sown during the visit of Professor G. Kalyanaram during his visit to NMIMS, Bangalore, in early 2012. Although the Bangalore campus was conducting research seminars regularly, it was felt that a more formal seminar series to widen its scope and scale would be appropriate. The seminar series was aimed at providing a platform for researchers in management to discuss their ideas in free-flowing and interactive sessions, with adequate time for questions and answers. The need for inter-disciplinary research is being realized in all fields, management being no exceptions. A seminar series with a wide range of papers from across various managerial domains could throw up insights and challenges in inter and cross-disciplinary research. Finally, it was hoped that the research seminar series would encourage inter-institution collaboration in research.

The seminar began with a welcome by Professor Sashi Sivramkrishna, followed by an address by the Director of NMIMS, Bangalore, Professor Suresh Mony who outlined the dearth of quality management research in India.

Dr. N. Ramesh, Sr. Professor of Marketing at NMIMS, Bangalore, in his introduction succinctly captured the objectives and scope of papers of the first seminar in the Research Seminar Series. The seminar series was envisioned as an agnostic platform to share research notes on a variety of topics, literature, and methodologies in management. The form and format of the seminar series was such that it strove to strike a balance between breadth of topics and depth of treatment. The presenter would be provided sufficient time for meaningful explication of his/her work, coupled/followed with /by audience interaction. The proceedings of the seminar would be suitably compiled, edited and shared with the research community through various means. The series could also serve as a bridge for researchers interested in publishing their work in NMIMS Management Review. The overarching purpose of the seminars was to encourage and enhance the institutional research culture and promote extra-mural collaborative opportunities – between individual researchers and institutions and between the academia and the industry.

Outlining the papers presented at the seminar, Prof. Ramesh reiterated that the seminar held on 21st April, 2012, had a broad theme, being the first in the series, to allow for variety – conceptual as well as methodological. The contributions of the authors resonated with this rationale. The papers covered a diverse range of topics-independent & intersecting – knowledge management, global competitiveness, innovativeness, human development, technology design, e-Governance, drug prescription behavior, brand switching behavior and pricing model. The units of analysis ranged from micro to macro – manager, firm, urban agglomerate/Municipal Corporation, industry, nation and society.
The research paradigms adopted by the authors reflected an eclectic mix of qualitative interpretivistic approach –like in the ethnographic research strategy in Dr.Amit’s paper and the quantitative deterministic positivist perspective – the stochastic model in Dr. Gurumurthy’s paper. The rest could be positioned along this continuum.

The papers covered a variety of methods – conceptual discussions based on secondary sources of data, empirical studies drawing on longitudinal and cross-sectional survey data and ethnographic case studies. The authors explore several interesting relationships – between bounded awareness & tacit knowledge (Dr. Ajith Kumar); innovation & global competitiveness (Dr. Bala Subrahmanya); human development & technology design (Dr. Amit Prakash); drug prices & prescription behavior by physician (Dr. G. Kalyanaram); brand switching behavior of the youth & the family (Dr. Githa Heggde); attributes of land & its price (Dr. Madalasa Venkataram).

The significance of the studies presented an interesting and useful mix –
o Pushing back the ‘bounds on managerial awareness’ to improve the quality of decision-making;
o Achieving global competitiveness by leveraging the national innovation capacity;
o Choosing an appropriate design of technology [ICT] with a good fit with the human development issues in an e-Governance context
o Heighten the price sensitivity of physicians when they prescribe drugs, without affecting the quality of drugs prescribed; cost of healthcare
o Understanding the role of youth in the family’s choice of brands – put differently, are the youth pulling the brand-wagon?
o From brands to a pure commodity – a very down to earth issue – what drives land price in Bangalore? This issue has serious implications for land allocation among alternative uses and taxation for local municipal bodies.

Summarizing his introduction, Dr. Ramesh articulated that “all in all, the six papers cover some of the key contemporary issues in management & innovation.”

The paper presentations were coupled and followed by intense discussions, at times a little heated, true to the spirit of a seminar. Before the vote of thanks given by Dr. Barnabas, Associate Professor of Marketing, Dr. G. Kalyanaram, Dean Research, NMIMS, Mumbai, made his concluding remarks on how the research seminar series could be taken forward and the need for more high-quality publishable research.

Apart from the faculty and Ph.D. scholars of NMIMS, the seminar was attended by faculty and scholars from several other institutions and companies in Bangalore including, Amrita School of Business, MATS-Jain University, etc.

Below is a list of the papers presented, the authors and their affiliation.

Research Presentations

J. AJITH KUMAR, Associate Professor, T. A. Pai Management Institute (TAPMI), Manipal.
Bounded Awareness and Tacit Knowledge in Managerial Decision-Making: Revisiting Challenger 1986

M. H. BALA SUBRAHMANYA, Professor & Chairman, Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
Innovation and Competitiveness in the Global Economy: Where Does India Stand?

AMIT PRAKASH, Public Sector Consulting, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore
Development Paradigms and Technology Design: Decoding the Indian E-Governance Plan

GURUMURTHY KALYANARAM, Dean for Research, NMIMS
Price Effects on Physician Prescription Behavior and the Role of HMO Orientation

GITHA HEGGDE, Professor and Chair, Marketing, WeSchool, Bangalore
Factors Affecting Brand Switching Pattern of Younger Generation (Gen-Y)

MADALASA VENKATARAMAN, Consultant, CoE, Center for Public Policy, IIM Bangalore and Adjunct Faculty, NMIMS, Bangalore
Determinants of Residential Land Price – a Hedonic Model

Filed by Dr. Gurumurthy Kalyanaram, Dean for Research, NMIMS

Gurumurthy Kalyanaram Reports on MIT-Harvard Partnership, EdX

Here is the announcement by MIT with regard to MIT-Harvard partnership for offering free on-line programs and courses on a platform developed by MIT. The first courses will be offered beginning Fall 2012.

Dear MIT Alumni,

The MIT Alumni Association wants to share this announcement from MIT, edX, with you at the same time the campus community is learning about this new partnership. There is a live video stream of the press conference beginning at 10 a.m., accessible from the MIT home page.

All the best,
The MIT Alumni Association
MIT Harvard edx
Contact
Kimberly Allen, MIT News Office
allenkc@mit.edu
617-253-2702

John Longbrake, Harvard University
john_longbrake@harvard.edu
617-495-1585
MIT and Harvard announce edX
Joint venture builds on MITx and Harvard distance learning; aims to benefit campus-based education and beyond.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Harvard University and MIT today announced edX, a transformational new partnership in online education. Through edX, the two institutions will collaborate to enhance campus-based teaching and learning and build a global community of online learners.

EdX will build on both universities’ experience in offering online instructional content. The technological platform recently established by MITx, which will serve as the foundation for the new learning system, was designed to offer online versions of MIT courses featuring video lesson segments, embedded quizzes, immediate feedback, student-ranked questions and answers, online laboratories and student-paced learning. Certificates of mastery will be available for those who are motivated and able to demonstrate their knowledge of the course material.

MIT and Harvard expect that over time other universities will join them in offering courses on the edX platform. The gathering of many universities’ educational content together on one site will enable learners worldwide to access the course content of any participating university from a single website, and to use a set of online educational tools shared by all participating universities.

EdX will release its learning platform as open-source software so it can be used by other universities and organizations that wish to host the platform themselves. Because the learning technology will be available as open-source software, other universities and individuals will be able to help edX improve and add features to the technology.

MIT and Harvard will use the jointly operated edX platform to research how students learn and how technologies can facilitate effective teaching both on campus and online. The edX platform will enable the study of which teaching methods and tools are most successful. The findings of this research will be used to inform how faculty use technology in their teaching, which will enhance the experience for students on campus and for the millions expected to take advantage of these new online offerings.

“EdX represents a unique opportunity to improve education on our own campuses through online learning, while simultaneously creating a bold new educational path for millions of learners worldwide,” MIT President Susan Hockfield said.

Harvard President Drew Faust said, “EdX gives Harvard and MIT an unprecedented opportunity to dramatically extend our collective reach by conducting groundbreaking research into effective education and by extending online access to quality higher education.”

“Harvard and MIT will use these new technologies and the research they will make possible to lead the direction of online learning in a way that benefits our students, our peers, and people across the nation and the globe,” Faust continued.

Jointly owned not-for-profit structure

The initiative will be overseen by a not-for-profit organization based in Cambridge, Mass., to be owned and governed equally by the two universities. MIT and Harvard have committed to a combined $60 million ($30 million each) in institutional support, grants and philanthropy to launch the collaboration.

Anant Agarwal, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, who has led the development of the MITx platform under the leadership of MIT Provost L. Rafael Reif, will serve as the first president of edX.

At Harvard, Provost Alan Garber will direct the Harvardx effort and Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith will play a leading role in working with faculty to develop and deliver courses.

It is anticipated that near-term course offerings from a range of Harvard and MIT schools will be included on the edX platform.

Research to enhance residential model

EdX will enhance the traditional residential model of undergraduate education on both campuses by supporting an unlimited number of experimental online approaches to teaching that can be used by Harvard and MIT faculty to benefit their students. It will also provide global access to some of the world-class instruction that already occurs at both institutions, but which is only one aspect of the full Harvard College and MIT experience.

“The campus environment offers opportunities and experiences that cannot be replicated online,” Hockfield said. “EdX is designed to improve, not replace, the campus experience.”

EdX will be separate from ongoing distance-learning initiatives at both institutions, including MIT OpenCourseWare and courses offered by schools at Harvard such as the Harvard Extension School, Harvard Business School and Harvard Medical School.

First courses by fall 2012

The universities will work to develop further the online learning platform already begun with MITx and to populate the edX website with courses from the MIT and Harvard faculty. During the early stages, the two universities will work cooperatively to offer as broad an initial set of courses as possible. A first set of courses is scheduled to be announced in early summer and to start in fall 2012.

“We are already moving forward quickly,” Agarwal said. “There’s a lot of energy in the air, and the teams at Harvard and MIT can’t wait to collaborate.”

Gurumurthy Kalyanaram Reports on Democratization of Higher Education in USA

First, it was MIT that made large numbers of courses (content, syllabi and more) online for no fees (free content) since about 2000 — thanks to the leadership of the then President Charles Vest and generous contribution from Ford Foundation.

Twelve years later, democratization of higher education is here. Free e-line courses are being offered by almost all major universities in USA. The latest to join this spring of democratization of higher education are Harvard and MIT. Harvard and MIT have formed a collaborative non-profit organization, EdX.

Earlier this month, Stanford, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania and University of Michigan started a collaborative venture, Coursera, with about $16 million venture capital.

These platforms are not timid, they are offering complex and interesting courses such as Artificial Intelligence.

“Projects like this can impact lives around the world, for the next billion students from China and India,” said George Siemens, a MOOC pioneer who teaches at Athabasca University, a publicly-supported online Canadian university. “But if I were president of a mid-tier university, I would be looking over my shoulder very nervously right now, because if a leading university offers a free Circuits course, it becomes a real question whether other universities need to develop a Circuits course.”

Here are some useful links –

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

http://mitx.mit.edu/

https://www.coursera.org/

Gurumurthy Kalyanaram Reports On Climate Change: Are Clouds Our Saviors?

The debate on climate change has been multi-facted. There are those the argue that global warming is real and imminent, and we should take urgent steps to ameliorate the situation. And others argue that current global warming is part of a lager macro-cycle. For example, the earth was equally warm about 400-500 years back.

The latest argument is the clouds will intervene to moderate the temperature of the earth. While this argument appears simplistic at first blush, it has substantially scientific grounding.

The following article provides more insights into this argument from a layman’s perspective.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/science/earth/clouds-effect-on-climate-change-is-last-bastion-for-dissenters.html?ref=science

Filed by Dr. Gurumurthy Kalyanaram, Dean, Research, NMIMS University