Annual Report 2010-11

Ramnarain Ruia College

Matunga, Mumbai 400019

College with Potential for Excellence: Annual Report  (2010-11)

Introduction

Ramnarain Ruia College was awarded the CPE status in the year 2010-11 and the plan proposed was sanctioned in the month of Oct 2010.  This report covers activities undertaken during this period of 2010-11

At the start of 11^th plan in 2006-07 itself, College had initiated detailed discussions and brainstorming sessions with faculty, alumni and management for considering strengths and weakness of the college, changing trends in education sector, national priorities and identified several areas for the development of the college during 11^th plan period. Implementation of these ideas and concepts became possible due to the award of CPE status to the College. Considering the time and budgetary limits some of these activities were selected and proposed for implementation under CPE program. This reports highlights the major achievements in each of the proposed area.

Major achievements

• Infrastructure

o        All Classrooms, all Laboratories and Faculty offices are connected to Intranet and Internet with Linux based firewall and content filtering

o        Established Sakai server on Intranet and Moodle server on Internet and Intranet

o        Implemented Comprehensive College Management Suit where College Management System (Academic, stores, accounts, attendance and examination) is integrated with Learning Management System (Moodle & Sakai) for exchange of user information and grade books, OMR and Biometric inputs and automated integration with College website for providing easy access to specific data like attendance, fee status, results etc to students, parents and teachers.

o        10 smart Classrooms with Data Projector, Computer, Internet and Intranet (for access to College Sakai and Moodle servers) are established.

o        OMR scanning facility is established in the office and examination section for use with data input, survey form analysis and objective test analysis. College management system is configured to collect data from OMR generated files. College successfully conducted OMR forms based student feedback survey for the year 2010-11.

• ICT in teaching

o        Experts from C-DAC, Mumbai provided training to faculty members in use of Learning Management System Moodle for course creation and integration into their regular teaching. Follow-up sessions along with two months support are also made available to all teachers.

o        Each department is in the process of selecting topics for creating trial courses in their respective subjects and creating quality teaching material for execution on this platform.

o        All round Participation of students and faculty: IQAC of the college constituted department wise Teacher & Student groups for effective implementation ICT program –

1.      Technical Committees of Techno-savvy teacher and students for fault free working of ICT during daily use in classroom environment.

2.      Class wise Internet savvy students are selected and are to be trained as Goggle-Jockey for helping teachers in using Internet and other electronic teaching material effectively during regular classes

3.      Academic Committee of senior and experienced (ICT) teachers is also constituted for monitoring utility and quality of teaching material and courses created by individual teachers and departments.

• Value added student services (PG)

o        Counseling service for PG students is established and every PG student is screened for indication of stress and adequately counseled if required

o        Sakai based student guidance and management system is installed and is being adapted to all PG students.

o        Committee of all PG teaching department is formed and given the responsibility of effective use of this technology for the coming academic year.

• Research (PG & UG)

o        Department of Chemistry

1.      Department has installed Microwave reactor with the temperature and pressure control facility for green chemistry work at PG level

2.      Department is also in the process of designing Green chemistry based methods for routine UG experiments.

3.      Chemistry department has also established a dedicated computer facility primarily for introducing chemi-informatics techniques to PG and UG students.

4.      Department has acquired specific HPLC columns and solvents for PG & UG student projects to be given under project based learning initiative

o        Department of Microbiology - department has upgraded its facilities for molecular biology work and Lab-on-paper and lab-on-chip (microfluidics) work. 

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  • Lab-on-paper –

1.      A Group of dedicated UG and PG students of the department has standardized five routine biochemical tests like sugar estimation, protein estimation, bile salt estimation to lab on paper system for quantitative analysis. Collaboration with Dr S Noronha of Chemical Engineering /Biotechnology, IIT Mumbai is being worked out for extending these techniques to cheap, affordable, easy to use public health applications.

2.      Designing and preparation of paper templates for above said purpose by using easily available photoresists recipes is also standardized.

3.      Work is in progress on standardization of making multi-layer paper devices for more complex analysis. Guidance is also being taken (for 2 & 3) from the laboratory of Dr George M. Whitesides, Harvard Univerisity

•  
  • Lab-on-chip –

1.      Computer-based electronic valve controller for the control of the opening and closing of valves and pressure in the flow lines of microfluidic chip and Solenoid valve assembly for use with this device are locally fabricated with extensive guidance from Dr. Rafael Gómez-Sjöberg of Stanford Microfluidic Foundry, Stanford University, USA. Stanford Foundry gifted the special printed circuit board required for this purpose.

2.      Simple chip fabrication using Sylguard 186 silicon elastomer kit is in progress with guidance from Dr S Noronha of IIT Mumbai

• Project based learning (UG)

o        Department of Chemistry selected topic of analytical methods standardization and application development for the students of F.Y.B Sc where students were introduced to different analytical methods and asked to carry out the same determination from different samples (Food, drugs, environmental) collected from the market / environment.

o        Department of Microbiology

1.      Department selected topic microbial taxonomy and biodiversity for project based learning scheme for the class of SYBSc Microbiology. Under this scheme, based on collaboration established with Dr A Lali of ICT Mumbai, screening of Brackish water samples for salt tolerant algae is successfully completed and 7 different isolates obtained are handed over to ICT for further studies on their usefulness for bioenergy production. Students interacted freely with research students and scientists of ICT during this phase and learned various methods of enrichment, purification and large-scale cultivation of algae.

2.      Second collaboration is being initiated with Dr Deepti Deobagkar of Dept of Zoology, University of Pune, on screening, isolation, and characterization of microorganisms producing novel and/or useful chemicals, enzymes and biomass. At first instance screening methods for lipase producers are finalized and several lipase producers from variety of environments are isolated. Community DNA from these environments is also isolated for proposed metagenomic studies. Students from FY, SY & TY classes are selected for this program and are actively participating in this work even during summer vacation. Adopting some of the screening technique to lab-on-paper format is also underway.

Departmental Progress Reports

Department of Microbiology

CPE: Academic Committee – ICT implementation & designing teaching material

Report & Action plan of work (12^th Aug 2011)

We are exploring various platforms suitable for this purpose and narrowed down to following four platforms for implementation

a) Moodle b) Sakai c) Google d) Referata

1.      Moodle platform is available on college LAN as well as on newly developing college website at www.ruiacollege.co.in/moodle. In order to check its functionality before its release to use by all departments, we have uploaded following trail courses for FYBSc Microbiology students 

1)      Paper I Semester I – assignment 1 submissions (Mrs. L R Phadke) –

2)      Paper II Semester I Preparation of objective question bank and getting output for class test to be conducted in August 2011 (Dr R P Phadke)

3)      Computer literacy for biology students (Dr R P Phadke) to be started from 16^th Aug 2011

This activity has helped us in training 80 F Y B Sc students to log on to Moodle website, get familiar with the layout, navigate through it, post their comments and upload file on the server.

2.      Sakai Platform is made available on College LAN and department is using it for managing PG students. Currently all M Sc part II students are registered and are experimenting with using it for daily record keeping. M Sc Part I students are also getting registered as and when they are taking admissions.

3.      Google Platform is being used for variety of activities listed below. The features of Google used for this purpose are – Google groups, Google Websites and Google Documents.

1)      Student Groups of all classes i.e. FY, SY, TY, M Sc Part I and M Sc Part II students where exchange of notices (eg weekly plan for practicals), study material, free exchange of ideas is encouraged.

2)      Goolge documents are used for making available study material usually in the form of PDF files, document files as well as keeping attendance records (visible to all students)

3)      Google website are used for creating class websites using an excellent template available on Google sites where assignments, opinion poles, notices, links etc  are made available. IT is also used for creating Webquest (using webquest template available for student assignment.

This activity has resulted in ALL 80 F Y B Sc students having email id, able to post their files through email utility to a specified email id, log on to Google group and post discussions, guided navigation of  Internet  for specific purpose, collect information and prepare report.

4.      Referata platform is a semantics wiki platform where we have experimented earlier with FY & SY students on creating collaborative semantics and ontology based wiki on specific topics of FY and SY.  Depending on student response we are hoping to revive this concept this year preferably with M Sc as the concept is bit difficult for UG students.

List of Teachers involved in the program (as on 11^th Aug 2011)

List of students involved

1)      All F Y B Sc Microbiology (CPMic, CBMic, CPMic) students (80)

2)      All M Sc part II students (19)

3)      All M Sc Part I student (5 registered to date)

Future Plans

Teacher:  - Ms. Leena Phadke

Class: - For FYBSc: -

Paper I: Fundamentals of Microbiology - Topics identified

1)      Units 1 to 3 are to be taught in the first semester - There are a few topics in this paper where students can collect reading material & put it up on Moodle for sharing. One such topic is history of Microbiology from unit 1. Even if you take ten lectures on the topic, you will not be able to cover & do justice to all the scientists. Therefore students will be encouraged to collect interesting reading material with photographs of the scientists & appropriate diagrams of their work that will stimulate interest in the subject in a fresher’s mind.

2)       

3)      Unit 3, which deals with nutrition, cultivation of microorganisms, it is difficult for students to understand concept of types of media. So at the end of the topic I can give them five thought provoking questions & invite the students to answer those using Moodle. There can be a discussion on those answers, which should clear their concepts

4)      Paper I unit 5 second term - Unit 5 includes study of algae, usually the difficulty level of algal classification is high, and students find it hard to imagine the differences between different groups of algae. So they can be told to gather information & pictures describing \ depicting groups of algae which might make the topic more interesting. 

Teacher: Dr. R. P. Phadke

1)      For paper II, developing Webquests for important conceptual topics for month of Aug-Sept (post class test assignment) as well as for second term topics.

2)      Finalizing the Interdisciplinary on line course Computer literacy for Biology for implementation to F Y B Sc students from 15^th Aug 2011. This course is being developed under Star College initiative. At first instance all F Y B Sc Microbiology students will participate in this course though course is open to anybody interested.

3)      Helping M. Sc students generate their e-portfolio on Sakai for their possible future use for Ph D admissions / jobs (along with their Recommendation Letters).

4)      Reviving interest in Referata semantic wiki