NextEducation Research Lab

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About Us:

The Next Education Research Laboratory has been setup in Inter-disciplinary Program in Educational Technology at IIT Bombay in 2017. The lab is funded by Next Education Private Ltd.

The goals of the lab are:

Identify potential benefits that emerging technologies might afford in the teaching-learning process and design appropriate learning activities.
Teacher training through multiple Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) that run on IITBombayX on :
- Pedagogy of effective use of ICT in teaching
- Effective teaching of Computer Science topics in schools
Design & develop evaluation instruments like analytical rubric to test quality of digital learning materials and textbooks from Science and Mathematics

The products are envisaged to benefit a wide-range of stakeholders starting from the teachers and students to the learning solutions companies.

Detailed report of the various activities of lab can be seen here.

Objective

To explore application of emerging technologies for learning and teaching.

Examples of such emerging technologies include gesture-based technologies, wearables, augmented reality and virtual reality. As part of these explorations, our goal is to identify potential benefits that these technologies might afford in the learning and teaching process, and design appropriate learning activities.

The following are course projects done by Educational Technology research scholars in this area:

Projects done:

Geometry via Gestures (G-v-G): An exploration of gesture - based teaching and learning of 3D Geometry.
Corrective Myo Badminton Trainer (CoMBaT): An exploration using Myo - Armband to develop psychomotor skills in badminton.
Geometry Solids via Augmented Reality (GeoSolVAR): An exploration of Augmented Reality to develop spatial thinking skills for 3D Geometry.
Stereochemistry via Augmented Reality (StereoChem): An exploration of Augmented Reality to enhance the perception of molecular structures' spatial orientation in Chemistry.
Titration ColorDarts : A Smartphone Tutor for assisting chemistry learners perform phenolphthalein-based titration experiment.
Augmented Maths (Euler's rule for polyhedrons): Empowering teachers to teach derivation of Euler's rule for polyhedrons using Augmented Reality in classrooms or laboratories.
RoadEthos : A game-based learning environment to sensitize students from middle school on the ethical decisions to be made on road with empathy.
SpeakUp : Virtual reality-based training application to improve learners’ oral presentation skills.

Objective

The lab has created multiple learner-centred Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for school teachers on the topic of pedagogy for effective use of ICT in teaching and learning. The ET611Tx course is targeted at all school teachers whereas ET621Tx course is targeted at Computer Science (CS) teachers in schools and focused on effective teaching of CS. These annual courses are running successfully on the IITBombayX platform. The courses have already trained 4000+ school teachers. Honor code certificate from IITBombayX is awarded to teachers who successfully pass the course.

Current courses are:

ET611Tx: 'Pedagogy for effective use of ICT for school teachers'
ET621Tx: 'Pedagogy for effective teaching-learning of CS in schools'
CEP course: 'Continuing Education Programme (CEP) - IIT Bombay for Next Education India Pvt. Ltd on Emerging technologies for effective teaching and learning conducted by Educational Technology, IIT Bombay'

Objective

NextEd Research Lab has developed two types of instruments to evaluate quality of instructional products like multimedia teaching materials and textbooks for Science and Mathematics.

Learning object evaluation instrument (LOBE) - a rubric to judge quality of multimedia learning products along the four dimensions of Content quality (C), Pedagogical alignment (P), Design efficacy (D), and Technology integration (T)
Textbook evaluation instrument (TEC) - a 3-scale 22-question checklist with illustrative examples.It can be used for quality evaluation of Science and Mathematics textbooks used in schools.Quality is evaluated along the three dimensions of Content quality (C), Pedagogical alignment (P) and Technology integration (T).

Current instruments developed:

Learning object evaluation instrument (LOBE): LOBE is a 4-scale rubric to evaluate the teaching-learning effectiveness of existing e-learning content i.e. learning objects.
Textbook Evaluation Checklists for Science and Mathematics (TEC): TEC takes Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS, USA) and National Curriculum Framework (NCF, India) as defining standards for evaluation of skills, knowledge and process in Science and Mathematics.