Webinar by Rabbitt AI

 I was invited to be on a panel in a webinar hosted by this company yesterday. It was about AI in Higher Education, and it was a great experience in many ways. We were a mix of teachers, practitioners turned profs., and administrators.

We talked of AI in curriculum, the process of teaching-learning, and the upsides and downsides of AI. It was good to see that Bangalore and Kalburgi/Gulbarga taking the lead in some practices in teaching AI as a part of their curricula, or inviting guests to teach the latest.

Pune, Gurugram, Kolkata, and the South were represented, in an all India panel. I recommended a book, and talked about Flipped Classrooms aided by AI, among other things. Faculty training too..

Book Review- Journeys Beyond and Within

 One of the learnings (hers) that comes through is getting over the idea of the White Man/Westerner being superior to others. In India with our fairness fetish, this is more pronounced. But that is just skin deep, is what you learn when you go inter-cultural over long periods. Like she did in Chile in a volunteering stint, teaching English to local kids (My wife taught local immigrants English in a small US town a long time ago- they were adults though).

Simple joys like drinking in public - near the Eiffel Tower, or the Seine- are captured well, along with the more elaborate journeys into the unknown, inaccessible or less travelled parts of the world. The Indian parent syndrome also gets panned, particularly the gender discrimination- the same things done by a Son are praised, and by the Daughter, criticized.

I found the insights into growing up in our (patriarchal) culture very accurate. Of course, every culture has its issues- the U.S. had loneliness, teen pregnancies and drugs as some of theirs. Maybe Trump too, now!

The style of writing is honest and not showy, and it helps to keep you going, wanting to know more. Well done, Priyanka Gupta.

Why should you read the book? Hope you got the answer to that above. I can't tell all- you have to read it to experience it fully. You can get it from Amazon.  https://www.amazon.in/Journeys-Beyond-Within-Life-Changing-Adventures/dp/B0DTT1Y2HB

Classmates as Guest Faculty

 A rich source of guest faculty is my class from IIM Bangalore. Therefore, we at Prestige University have started tapping into this. We have had B.B. Dash, Ph.D. from IIT Delhi in addition to the MBA, recently. The latest was Shankara Rajan, also nicknamed Rajan of India, as a guest faculty in H.R. He was head of H.R. Transformation at Reliance Industries in his last corporate foray.

Pics from his visit-

Even more recently, in March/April 2024, we had Dr. Sunil Gupta, an IIT Delhi Ph.D. once again (after IIMB). We co-taught a course called Business Research Methods.

Delhi Trip Again

 Visited Delhi for two unique meetings. One, to talk with Ph.D. scholars at IIT Delhi about the Case Method of teaching, and its possibilities, as a pedagogical tool. Another was a dinner hosted at ITC Maurya by No Paper Forms, who do our admission related process, as with many other educational institutes. Happened to meet a few interesting people in both places.

Stayed at Aerocity.

At the event with the host from No Paper Forms.