Our IUCEE Virtual Academy train is moving. We delivered Introductory Lectures for 16 MiniCourses of the IUCEE Virtual Academy in January. The response has been very good. As a result, we are conducting the Pilots of 12 of these MiniCourses (10 lectures each) between Mon Feb 27 to Thu Apr 5, 2012. We have received requests from 18 colleges from all over India for participating in this Pilot. The total MiniCourse registrations are 46 (average ~ 3 college registrations per MiniCourse). These offerings are distributed among three time slots in India: 9:45 am, 11 am and 3 pm IST; with the use of three simultaneous GoTo Meeting lines. We expect to cover ~ 2,300 students total (average 50 students per course per college) during this Pilot. The complete schedule for all the 12 MiniCourses is at other locations on this Portal. I think this is the first time such a unique approach is being tried, for improving quality of engineering education.

I send my personal wishes to you for a very Happy New Year. We are fortunate that 2012 is starting with enormous new energy for IUCEE (Indo US Collaboration for Engineering Education). Thank you for your part in making this possible. We are launching our new IUCEE Virtual Academy by offering 16 Mini Courses as Pilots by US faculty directly to students in our Consortium Colleges using GoTo Meeting technology on-line. Planning for this has been carried out during November and December. We have also strengthened and streamlined our plans for offering Faculty Leadership Institute (FLI) workshops by US experts at various locations during 2012. Workshops on Effective Teaching and ABET Accreditation are being offered in January and February. The modified IUCEE portal shows the wide range of programs which IUCEE can facilitate between Consortium Colleges and US experts. Please make sure you visit our portal regularly.