Speaker 1: Dear friends, participants, colleagues, good morning and welcome to two-week faculty development program on managing online classes and co-creating MOOCs. First of all, I welcome you on behalf of Ramanujan College Teaching Learning Center under Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya National Mission for Teachers and Teaching, which is sponsoring this program for all of you. Friends, first of all, let me explain a little bit about Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya National Mission for Teachers and Teaching. This is an innovative program started by Ministry of HRD about three years ago, and the basic purpose was the training of teachers, both in terms of knowledge, technology and innovation. There were earlier programs of training of teachers in terms of refresher and orientation courses, but probably they were not serving the purpose for which they were designed. And let me tell you, friends, in last three years, we have organized more than 30 programs and trained about 4,000 teachers through various technology and one-to-one contact. This program is a unique program, which is being conceived by my colleague, Dr. Nikhil, Dr. Vibhash, Dr. Sumit and other team members to do it online training of teachers for teaching online and developing MOOCs, and it will cater to 16,000 teachers from all over the country. Maybe from outside the country, we really don't know. And this is a unique experience both for us as well as for you, as well as maybe for the ministry also. Ministry is quite eager to see how this program goes on. Friends, let me tell you, the training programs organized by us are highly successful and are very useful for teachers. Friends, all of you know that we do not have any formal training when we start teaching in different colleges and universities. And this was really thought well by the ministry that some kind of training programs be organized under this banner. And I'm glad that this program is into fourth year now. And I'm sure this will go, this will have far-reaching impact on teaching community. Friends, another important aspect I would see here is that this program is not only technology-based, but will also be knowledge-based and innovation-based. Friends, we would be emphasizing more on hands-on training, videos, presentations, and other modes of learning, maybe experiential learning also, if we can. We are also looking forward for your training as well as your inputs of this program. Because after two weeks, we will be analyzing your feedbacks, we will be taking various improvements in future programs. Friends, another important thing I would like to highlight here is that India today is at a threshold of knowledge economy. In times to come, due to COVID-19, there will be a different order of economies. US may not be the most powerful economy in times to come. Because all of you know that ancient knowledge in India was much better, technology-wise as well as knowledge-wise. But today, again, all of you are important for the country that you can create knowledge-based, technology-based innovation, which can have far-reaching impact on the world economy. India will have a different kind of order in the next two years. And friends, without knowledge, without innovation, without technology, we can't progress. And let me tell you, we have been preparing for this kind of program for the last one year. We organized a few of these programs in the lab setup in the form of Google Classroom and developing the MOOCs. They have been very successful. But now suddenly this problem of COVID-19 came and then we started training our own teachers and we realized that it has a very good impact on their teaching style and students are liking this. And let me tell you, friends, in the next few years, the students will be more liking to be sitting at home and taking lectures online rather than coming to the institution itself. Because we have to cater with different kinds of students in this country, both in terms of formal education and informal education, it will be a new path-breaking for students who are undertaking informal education. And even in the formal education, you will see the trend would be that students will be coming to the college, to the universities for cultural functions, for sports, for fun, for organizing various activities rather than for teaching as such. So friends, I'm sure this two-week program will be quite helpful for you to teach in your colleges, universities and wherever you are working. The program will also be helpful to the researchers who will be doing research and future teaching assignments. Once again, I welcome you, congratulate you that you will be completing this successfully and giving us valuable inputs for our future programs. Thank you very much.