Minutes of the First Dr. T.B. Rajashekar Memorial Lecture held on 3rd June, 2006 at Choksi Hall, IISc, Bangalore.
The event began at 5:45 pm with a cup of tea. The speaker, Prof. N. J. Rao and the presider, Prof. N. V. Joshi inaugurated the event by lighting the lamps. Mr. Francis Jayakanth gave a brief background of the association of Late Dr. T.B. Rajashekar with NCSI-NET and about the memorial lecture series.
Ms. Anitha introduced the guest speaker. Prof. N. J. Rao spoke on ‘E-support Systems for Learning, Teaching and Research’. He gave a history of the methods of teaching and learning. Earlier models considered the brain as a black box. But with research on how the brain acts to stimulus, newer models have evolved. Traditional classroom
teaching is teacher centric and is also limited in interactions with the students. A learning environment should be focused on the student instead and allow extensive interaction with the teacher. He focused on how ‘Problem Based Teaching’ can be very effective in forming a new generation of professionals who need to be very competitive in their
work environments. He identified the characteristics of a modern and ideal teaching and learning environment. It should be possible to take advantage of the developments in ICT, like Internet and E-mail, and build a teaching-learning system that possesses all these characteristics. He explained the features of Moodle, open source e-learning software and also gave the screen shots of the system.
The CD “Late Dr. T.B. Rajashekar’s Academic Contributions” was released by Prof. N J Rao. This digital collection comprises of the academic works, presentations and tutorials of Late Dr. T.B. Rajashekar. The collection has been built with the latest version of Greenstone Digital Library (GSDL) Software, and has search and browse features. The same
collection is also available online at: http://ncsi-net.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/gsdl/cgi-bin/library
Vote of thanks was proposed by Ms. Suvarsha Walters, and the event ended with high tea at 7:30 pm.