So, I am going to talk about designing a curriculum to meet engineering student needs. And I am going to present my perspective and to a certain extent the committee that went into this, the committee's perspective, ok. So, obviously this is a subjective opinion and it is open for debate. So, I will initially start off with why curriculum design at all, you know why do you need to do curriculum design, just dish out courses that are part of an existing curriculum and do your job well and move on, you know. There are several reasons that you can give, most of them are obvious, but it is good to just look at them, you know refresh ourselves before we get into this exercise. The most important reason is that it has to be a part of a regular introspective process, ok. So, we are engaging with students over during our teaching lives over let us say 10, 20, 30 years, ok. So, you cannot be doing the same things that you were doing 10, 20 years back for a variety of reasons. One is that becomes stale, secondly does not make sense, third you have to look at what the students want, right. So, it is a part of a regular introspective process curriculum design, where you look at how you have been performing, ok, look at ways in which you can improve and so curriculum plays a role there. The second reason is kind of a more market oriented mercenary reason in the sense that this I will spend quite a bit of time on later is that you have to increase the relevance of what is being taught, ok. So, that is a very important component of especially an engineering program or a quote unquote professional program, where the idea is to train people who can go and contribute in some section of the industrial society or you know. So, the question of relevance comes too early in the program actually, what does this get me? You know this question comes too early in every student's mind, you know. So, that has to be addressed. So, increase relevance of what is being taught. Thirdly, this is probably very apparent to you as well. There is a definite trend of decreasing student interest, ok. The relevance of an academic program, right, is not very clear to students. What is, why are we doing all this and I mean ultimately I am going to end up in some kind of a job which has no bearing on what I learnt. You know that those sort of issues have led to decreasing student interest, ok. And partly also because the role of the instructor as well as the role of the academic body as a source of knowledge is largely gone, ok. So, the source of knowledge I mean adding I mean the professor as the source of knowledge and therefore, the academic institution is the collection of professor as a source of knowledge is an old concept in the sense that you can, you have so much access to knowledge itself that I do not need to come and lecture somebody about how a Wheatstone bridge works, ok. So, it is all out there. I mean the role of a professor itself changes, ok. So, that also has a bearing on student interest. Finally, I want to briefly allude to this thing. It is a belief that if you put a good curriculum or a good structure and curriculum in place, then you enhance the learning experience both for the student community as well as for the teaching community. So, that is a belief. So, if one does not believe in that then the exercise of designing a curriculum is largely a waste, ok. So, let me move on with these brief observations, ok. To the concerns that a typical curriculum design exercise should address. So, these concerns are specific to the modern day environment or the current environment surely the concerns will change over a period of time, ok. So, let me start with student concerns or student complaints. Some of these complaints that you see here may be specific to the situation that I am in or I am familiar with. So, there are of course, these are not in any way exhaustive, ok. So, we will have a discussion shortly. The student complaints typically fall in these categories of you know of complaints. One is that there is a lack of hands-on experience, ok. One is undue emphasis on math or undue emphasis on analytical details, ok. This is a huge concern across all sections of engineering institutions, ok. So, and it is a fact that our engineering institute the engineering institutions in this country are woefully inadequate in terms of laboratory infrastructure, ok. It is all a sham of an experience for anybody involved in students as well as faculty and we really do not have not taken concerted efforts to address this in a big way at all, you know. And it is also because of the way we are traditionally exposed to engineering and science etcetera, it is through passing some exams, ok. So, the aim is to pass some exams and get into an engineering or a science program with little or no idea of what it takes to conduct a good experiment, what it takes to actually build something, you know. There is really no emphasis at any point in time at all, ok. So, because of which the hands-on experience or the experience in the laboratory is pathetic, ok. On the other side, right, your books and books of, you know, details pertaining to mathematical models which describe particular situations and associated cute problems that can be manifested this way or the other and given in lots of different exams, ok. So, you have that going, right. And the students just keep cramming on that and some of them leave with the idea that this is what engineering is about. Some of them are like, I know this is not what engineering is about, but I do not know what is what engineering is, ok. So, that is a common complaint among students. The other complaint is that there is this logical content being disparately addressed, ok. So, let me explain what this thing is. So, typically what happens in a curriculum is that there are two things happening. One is to organize the material or the if I may say the knowledge that has to undergraduate student needs to get out with, right. So, organize that knowledge in some sections, ok. So, you compartmentalize that knowledge in some sections which are convenient for dissemination, right, for instruction, right. You say the first year you will do science courses and then the second year you will do these sort of courses and you will do this course in this semester and that course in some other semester because I cannot teach in this semester and you can teach this semester, etcetera. So, there are a lot of convenience related issues which dictate how the organization of a structure goes about, right. So, how you ultimately arrive at a course structure. And this is not something that the student wants, ok. Because the student is left to make all these links, ok. And the instructor, sometimes the instructors themselves do not know all the links, right. So, they are themselves fooling around and they have their own pockets which they are comfortable with. But ultimately the student experience gets affected because of this because you are just presenting different things that I need to go through this, I need to go through this, right. Each instructor keeps coming and presenting things. But where is the link of and sometimes the smarter students tend to see that you know actually this could have been done in a better fashion somewhere else in the curriculum, etcetera. But the fact is that a lot of people are left with no clue about links between different things that they have learned through the program, ok. And they are left to make these links themselves. And I would think this is probably the most serious concern, even more serious than the lack of hands-on experience, ok. But because of which an engineering situation or a situation that presents itself where you have to apply ideas that you have learned in your engineering program, right. You are not able to organize yourself in a fashion where you are able to cogently analyze the problem. You first tend to compartmentalize this, you know. So, I want to, ok. So, this is looking like something is breaking. So, I have to use something related to strength of materials. I mean that sort of compartmentalization comes immediately without an ability to look at the problem holistically. I mean that is in one sense because of this problem of logical content being disparately addressed. Third issue is of course overload. You know six courses are sinister. If anybody is serious about learning, I mean it is a real overload, ok. Most of us cannot through sit through any more. Six courses are sinister, ok. You go from one class to the other every day. It is going to be a real, it is a real tax on the brain if one needs to do a good job of the learning, ok. So, there is course overload. Then there is repetition of material because instructors teach what they know, right, not what the students want to know. And lastly the program structure is rigid, ok. So, most of the student complaints kind of are organized into these bullets. So, the real program structure has both sequencing of courses, ok. So, when you do what course and that I have to do this course only at this time, right. Let me point, go to the faculty complaints. I mean these are also very important. This is just not talk only about the students. So, the teaching community has the following complaints. Abysmal levels of interest, ok. So, this is increasingly demotivating to faculty members who see 100 of students in front of them, 80 percent of which are not interested. Everybody knows that. The student knows, the faculty knows that you just go through the procedure, right. So, you see some 20-30 percent sleeping and the rest are all doing their own thing. Then you have a few bright and enter ones who are participating, right. So, but it is a fact that the levels of interest are seriously low. The second point I want to talk about is too many extra curricular activities or distractions. I mean this is kind of a, you know, fatherly view if I might say, to doing too many things which are not supposed to be done by a student. But the fact is that at least in a setting like this, there are a huge number of extra curricular activities that students want to participate. It is an age where you want to do all that. You have incredible energy and that does affect what you end up doing in the class as well. So, if you are staying up right through the night, you know, doing, you know, painting one hostel wall or something like that, you are not going to be in a position to come and listen to what is happening in the next day's class. Ramping is the reason, ok. So, this also I think is familiar to most people. Given an opportunity, a large percentage of the class will copy, right. And this is not specific to any one college or anything. It comes from basic lack of understanding of why you are here, ok. So, that translates in a variety of ways. So, ramping plagiarism is and poor output, ok. So, projects and term papers, term papers is just, or if you want to do a review of a problem, you want to go and search on what has happened or deal with the problem, do an honest investigation. Most of the time it is some cut and paste work from some sites. No understanding is put some material there and there and present it as, you know, something that you have done, ok. So, these are the complaints that we start to address, just so that I do not make this a monologue and say what we have done. So, let us get some opinions on any other things that you from your experience have seen as concerns that are partly related to the curriculum, right. Both faculty and student concerns, any ideas that you may have that are not really captured here, feel free to share that. Large number of students. Large number of students, it is a faculty concern that has not been put here. Student concern, if you are asking the question, what we are studying really well in today's. Right. So, yeah, I mentioned that briefly in the previous set of slides, but yes, that is if you had to pick two things, I would say that there is no link between different things that you learn. And secondly, the lack of relevance or perceived lack of relevance of what you are doing. How this are you going to come to industry concerns? Sure, I am not going to talk about industry concerns here. It is the main concern. What? Industry, one who used this property here. Right. If a student does not learn this brand or which are not being able to get across. Right. It is industry concern. Right. So, how material to do industry. Right. So, if that concern has not been addressed, then the curriculum is going to be out of order. Yeah, so the stakeholders typically are the students, the faculty, the industry, the alumni, a lot of people involved. So, the kind of captive audience for stakeholders to get feedback from are students and faculty, right. The industry feedback that we open was not through an extensive survey, but through a lot of one-off opinions of speakers who came here, of industry leaders. So, those were subjective opinions, not surveys that were conducted. So, we did go through a process. I will briefly talk to you about some of those things which again are obvious, but just point that out. But yes, we did do that exercise. Yeah. We tried to do this exercise at our institute. Yeah. Force that is engine mechanics. Right. So, basic course. So, there is one more concern which may not come into any of this book categories and that is that of the faculty. Faculty who were teaching that course for several years, they were not ready to change that course. Because then they will have to require to, you know, do all the thing again and again. So, that would come somewhere in India. Yeah, it's fine. Faculty were themselves not ready to change that scenario. Yeah. So, I would say that is a student complaint that you keep dishing it, dishing the same things out. Yes. The quality of faculty are not put here. So, all this doesn't make sense if you don't have quality faculty. That's if you, that is a kind of... See, if a faculty is not going to, is not willing to do that, then curriculum design is just out of the scope. You just throw this away. A few more remarks. The last remark kind of alludes to what you had raised. So, I will start with that. There's a rapid change in the environment of the outside world. So, the workplace has become increasingly information rich. There's a lot of information. What is required is the ability to interpret that and make good decisions. And typically these days, employers seek multiple domain competencies. So, you get out with a degree in mechanical engineering knowing how to solve ethical domain sort of problems and doing that well. You typically are not going to find a job that rewards you in some sense. So, typically employers these days are looking at people who have not only core competence or not only knowledge of the one area, but generally feel of how things work. So, this is something that we got repeatedly as part of our pulling the industry folks. So, we want people who are more well rounded, not just specialists or not straight jacketed people. A few more remarks. The current programs are perceived by the industry as straight jacketed with little flexibility. And they have mentioned that this is something that you can address. So, if you remove that straight jacketing, things may become a little better. The product that you get out will be a little better. And the first remark that I put out here, students feel that they are ready to take charge of their careers. So, they will need you to come and say this is what you need to do. Many of them have thoughts and this is a trend I think which is associated with the kind of level of confidence of youth in India. There is general perception that things are getting better. And there is a lot of information I can make my own decisions. So, that is in some sense affecting the way students receive some rigid curriculum that you impose on them. Just because they are captive for four years or three years or whatever the case may be in the undergraduate community, they have to listen to you otherwise they will not get the degree. That is the only reason they will listen to you most of the time. It is not out of any other reason. So, this perception amongst students also need to be addressed. So, it is something that is in my opinion good. As the confidence to say that yes, I am going to take charge of what I am going to end up being is good and we have to address that. And if you do not address that, you are going to again face the situation of repression of this guy wants to do something and you want to do something else because you have been doing that for a long period of time.  I just wanted to add that basically the attitude to change your scene is because these students have now got a more of an entrepreneurial streak. Right. I want to employ somewhere. Right. Today you are all going to be single office, single home, office, that type of attitude. Right. The entrepreneurial streak is coming up. We want to pick up things fast and become your own boss. Correct. We want to figure employment as a project. Right. Yeah, this is very true that people who want to take charge of their lives and you know, who want to do things and there is a perception that India now is increasingly offering these opportunities. Right. And that is filtering through the students. They see all, they see examples of that big example, small examples, you know, all of that. So, they also want to be in their role models to look up to now. So, from now on I am going to describe the kind of the thinking, thinking process of the committee that I was part of. Right. So, we did the following. We looked at immediate challenges. Okay. How they need to be addressed and also defined an approach on how we are going to address the challenges. Okay. So, immediate challenges where low motivation among students for academic work. So, this has to be addressed. The disillusionment with the quality of the academic programs especially hands on and lab work. Okay. And the perception of disconnect between academic program and the career prospects. Okay. These we identified as the key things. So, if you address this, you are probably doing a pretty decent job. Okay. And what we also observed that these, these three issues led to a small number of academically motivated students formed by a huge uninterested majority. Okay. So, and this plays a big bearing on how the small number of motivated students are going to, I mean, are going to go through the academic program because a lot of what happens in the undergraduate years is driven by peer pressure. Okay. I mean, the herd effect is phenomenal in the, in the undergraduate world because you do not want to be let out for, for any reason. Either social acceptance or financial remuneration or future prospects or you don't, you think that the decisions you are making right now are really, really important and therefore you don't want to be left out in any way. So, if you see a large majority of students who are just doing their own other things that are not, not, not pertaining to academics per se, then you start wondering what they are doing. Okay. So, you, I mean, there is, there is this peer pressure on the academically motivated students to not, not be academically motivated. Okay. And associated with that is the packed extracurricular calendar. This may be very specific to the IIT Bombay scenario, but I guess it will be true in, you know, in many other situations. Okay. So, this, these three issues we wanted to address immediately. Okay. We wanted to take a kind of a positive approach. We didn't, we didn't think that these were, were issues that, you know, that were against what we wanted to do. Right. This is not something like we felt like, oh, these, these students think that the academic program is useless. They don't know what they're doing. I mean, that sort of an approach is kind of distancing yourself from the problem even further. Okay. So, if you, if you, if one takes that approach, then it defeats the purpose of actually doing an exercise where the whole curriculum is more rewarding. Okay. So, the approach we took is, is an approach of looking at opportunities that we have to make this learning experience more reasonable through a curriculum change. One thing we observed and we took that as an opportunity is that most people felt we are in a crisis situation. If you, if you ask the IIT faculty members who have been here for like 20, 30 years, all, all of them will say that, you know, 20 years back, we had students who are ever so good and these days we don't have guys who are so good. People are not interested in listening to our lectures. We have to impose an attendance rule and things like that. So, it is perceived that the situation that, that we are in is a crisis situation. I mean, if you don't address it over the next 5, 10 years, you are going to largely lose the student population. So, more and more of the tutorial process will start and the academic entities will just be, just be degree-giving entities with no, no faith in what they are doing, you know. So, we didn't, so we, a lot of people felt that this is a crisis situation and that has made them receptive to new ideas. So, this is an opportunity that we wanted to exploit because this sort of curriculum, the redesign exercise has been proposed in this institute several times in the past. So, some minor modifications were made, but this is the first time that any serious significant philosophical modification has happened and that's because, we think mainly because of the stakeholders of the faculty community, especially were receptive to new ideas. And we also recognize that few real conceptual changes to curriculum designers have happened in engineering education institutions. The second opportunity that we noticed was that the curriculum design itself provides an opportunity to sustain student enthusiasm and I'll point out to this later. So, what we felt that let the student take, I mean, the student wants to take responsibility, let the student take responsibility. Why are you, you know, straight-jacketing some program for the student and you know, making the student go through that, right? And we've been able to do that through a variety of measures. So, I will point to that later. And the third thing we wanted to focus on, the opportunity is that we want to get out of this instructive-centric dissemination of a curriculum. So, what do I mean by this? The instructive place is central, no doubt about that. But the instructor is not the sole entity through which the student gains knowledge or learns how to look at a problem. So, the role of the instructor being the sole authority as far as that subject or course is concerned, we wanted to get out of that. So, give students a chance to decide that. Maybe for some students, the instructor is the most important authority. For some other students, the instructor is just somebody who can bounce ideas from, to and from, right? So, we wanted to, so we said that this is an opportunity. So, curriculum design provides an opportunity for us to do something good. Okay, so let me move on to the new curriculum. Sandeep, you're going to spend a few minutes on the philosophy of the new curriculum. Okay. The details are not as important. There are two aspects to this philosophy. One is that we said we are going to have fewer, more intense courses. So, we are going to, in some sense, cut the number of courses that your student has to do, because there are too many context switches. So, what do I mean by context switches? I go sit in this class and suddenly, so it's maths and suddenly I'm going to humanities, then I'm going to do a class in electrical circuits. And there are a lot of context switches because of which there is no serious attention played to anything. Okay. So, you just keep going from one place to the other. So, we wanted to reduce the number of context switches and make the courses themselves more intense. And if you really look at it, if each one of us were to write down the set of courses that, for example, let's say electrical engineering. Okay. So, each one of us has a perception on what an undergraduate electrical engineer needs to know when he or she graduates. And if you list down the set of ideas, the set of abilities, the set of skillsets that the person needs to leave with, you will see that you don't need 25 different courses for that. If each one of us were to lay this down. Okay. The number of ideas that are there, the new ideas that are there in a course are typically 2, 3, maybe 4. That's the total number of ideas, total number of ways of looking at a problem.  Developing the skills and ability to, or developing the jargon, you know, to be able to communicate to other people who have gone through the similar course. Right. So, we wanted to reduce the context switches and focus on the main essentials. Okay. So, fewer more intense courses we thought will do that. And we evolved something called the basic minimum program. It's not called the basic minimum program. It's just called BTECH, which addresses this issue. So, there is a drastic reduction in the number of courses. I will come to that a little later. But they will hopefully be delivered in a more intense fashion. Okay. This also accommodates, so if you have fewer courses, it accommodates students who are having trouble going through the program. You know, if you have six courses in a semester, somebody fails a course. It's usually difficult for the guy to, you know, maneuver the program without some external help. And he'll go and say, sir, please allow me to take this extra course with you so that, you know, I can do it without having to repeat the course again, etc. There are lots of such requests that keep coming for people who are not able to, you know, go through the program without, let's say, failing one or two courses. Okay. So, and there is no problem. If you fail a course, you do it again. So, you should give the flexibility to the student to do that, you know. So, I think this minimum program does that as well because there are fewer courses. So, if you fail one, you can always cover it later. Okay. The second aspect of it is, I think the kind of crowning theory of the program is that we wanted to give more freedom to the student. Okay. So, we've introduced a whole host of measures that will provide that freedom. Okay. The first measure that I want to talk to you about is a minor option. Okay. So, we have... So, the minor option is that you provide the student an opportunity to do a set of courses which may be termed what is called as a minor in an area which is different from what he has been saddled with. The student who typically passes 12 standard has some idea of the maths and science courses. He's not really in a position to make a judgment on what sort of engineering or what sort of programs he or she likes. You know, you get into a program for whatever reason because of your rank, because of your marks or whatever. Somebody tells you, IT is very good. You get into computer science or something like that. Okay. So, the minor option is a way for the student to exercise choice on investigating a set of courses or going through a set of courses that he or she perceives as interesting. Okay. It may be anything the student wants to do. The packaging of these courses is left to the academic machinery. Okay. So, for example, I may be a student in electrical engineering and I may want to know something about I like planes, I like things that fly or for whatever reason. I want to do a set of courses in aerospace. So, the aerospace department will decide that if you do these set of courses your transcript will give you credit for having done that and you can explore it. And there is no penalty. If you do a couple of courses there and you decide that you don't want to do it, fine. That's fine. It's just that you will not get something in your transcript. So, this minor is something that is outside of your department that you could do and, you know, be rewarded for having taken the initiative. Okay. So, that's one thing we've done. The second is that actually this is not supposed to be a major option. It's supposed to be an honors option. For those students who are academically motivated and by chance they have landed in the department that they end up liking. Right. So, give them the opportunity to really showcase their interest. Okay. So, the way we've done that is that you will distinguish those students who have taken extra initiative to participate in the academic activities of, let's say, mechanical engineering by giving them an honors degree. Okay. So, BTEC with honors. So, they've done something extra. And what this honor means is left to the department. Each department decides what would constitute an honor. So, now the student has options. If you don't want to do any of these and just want to, like, chill out, I mean, I'm not set for engineering. A lot of students are like that. They come into engineering because of their competence and being able to solve some science, math problems. They decide that I don't want to do all these things. Okay. So, I have other interests. And I want to get a degree because a degree fetches me a job. Okay. This is the reality of today. So, it's okay to be, yes, it's okay to be like that, provided you go through the basic minimum program. Okay. So, go through the basic minimum program. You have free time.  And we are not going to come and impose anything on you. Okay. And we have also provided some freedom in the sequencing of courses. It's not required that we have to do this now and in the first semester and that in the third semester. And so, we have also provided that sort of flexibility. Okay. So, in philosophy, fewer and more intense courses and more feeding to the student. This is what the guiding philosophy of what we did was, okay. This is the question that somebody raised, you know. Did you just do this yourself or did you take into account what the stakeholders thought? So, this is the result of any survey. We have done this survey for every department for about, totally about 25 to 30% of the student community has participated across all year sections, across all marks or grade point sections. Okay. We have done this extensively. So, this is a sample result. So, 80% of the respondents claimed that these sort of changes are welcome. Fewer more intense courses. Students, we provided the option to plan out their own studies schedule. Lab component included as part of the course. Okay. And electives from a spectrum of departments. So, electives are minor. Okay. So, we have addressed that through the minor program. Also, just to get a sense of how the students think the current program is doing. Any students thought that 50% of them thought the program is doing poorly, current program. And 40% of them think it is doing okay, needs some improvement and 10% think it is doing really well. Okay. This is, usually you get an anti-establishment sort of response when you say, when you ask students, how is it doing? Very bad. Whether it is good or bad. So, the response is always like that. But, I mean, they have been honest, you know. And just to give you a flavor, this is some specific flavor. We have organized what is going to be delivered to the students in the basic minimum program into five different, or five or six different groups. One is the science and math, the basic science and math component. What we have introduced is, or this was already always there. The basic engineering focus was there. But we have introduced a couple of things there which you may be interested in. One is this course on data. So, this basic engineering course, set of courses in basic engineering, every student has to go through. Every student that is becoming an engineer through this process has to go through this. And what we said was that every student has to go through a program or go through a course in data analysis and interpretation. Whether you are an engineer or whether you are anybody who is dealing with data or dealing with numbers, is usually decided with problems associated with how do you interpret the data, what sense can you make out of it. A large number of engineers end up doing just this in their lives, in their professional lives. Use number of Excel sheets with a lot of data from a lot of different sources and then you have to figure out what is happening. Whether you are a marketing guy or a sales guy or an engineer who is actually doing technical work, this is something that a lot of people end up doing and we said that we don't have an explicit way of addressing that at all. So, data analysis and interpretation. So, what are the sort of questions you are going to answer here. Typically you are going to do statistical hypothesis testing. So, you have data, have a statistical hypothesis and you are going to find out if it makes sense to make the hypothesis or not. The second thing is on experimentation and measurement. We wanted to explicitly say that every engineer that goes through this program should know how to measure basic physical variables. This ability is not there by the way currently. Not every engineer knows this. So, the ability to design experiments, that is I would say a higher ability, the ability to just measure things and report. So, what do I mean by that? Suppose I wanted to measure temperature in some location of this room. I should not only know what is taken there, but actually measure it and give you a result. So, not just say that I will put a thermometer there. If no students is really sad, you ask them at the end of their course, mechanical engineering students, how do you measure torque? Most people say torque meter. Get a torque meter and stick it in there. So, how do you measure pressure? Something will be there, pressure meter. So, everything just ends up being, I am sure there will be something, I will just take that and put it in here. Without understanding how it is actually done and the ability to actually measure things. So, experimentation measurement, everybody going through that is something that we have said has to be done. So, we have just to point out a couple of things. We have a few more of such courses. And the departmental pool itself actually has been cut down to a certain extent. So, we are going to have about 13 to 14 courses. So, whatever you want to package, in your, if you want to give a glimpse of mechanical engineering to undergraduate students, do that in 13 courses. And usually that is plenty, if you really do a good job of organizing your content. And you increase the number of electives or the spectrum of things that students can choose from. And the recommended load per semester, according to the committee, is four lecture-based courses and two lab-based courses. So, you are not going to do six courses. So, in case you fail something, you have an opportunity to do it later. And we are not going to entertain the request that, please, please, please, no bad-doer entries into the program. If you fail once, doesn't matter, you do it again, but do it well. So, that's what we came up with. And this is the last slide. I hope it wasn't too centric to what we had done. But I just wanted to give you a glimpse of the sort of issues that we looked at. And also the considerations that went behind the design of the structure. And what we have... I guess the biggest success of the committee is, in fact, it has convinced both the student and the faculty body at large to accept this program. And it is in place now. It's not just a proposal. So, the current first-year students are going through this program. And the students from years to come, at least for another five, ten years, I guess, will go through this program. Let me tell you what a credit means in our context. A credit is a notional value of the number of hours that a student spends per week. So, if I say one credit, then the student spends one hour per week on that. So, if a course is six credits, the expectation is the student spends six hours per week on that. So, usually it is a three-hour of classroom sort of lecture-based interaction. And three hours, hopefully, of something the student does, right? So, that is what a credit thing is. And we said that no semester, in the basic minimum program, no semester will require the student to spend more than 40 credits. So, which means that more than 40 hours a week. So, the basic minimum program has a kind of undetermined cap of 40 hours a week. So, no semester we have more than 40 credits. The philosophy behind that is that if you do a good job of 40 hours a week of work, no matter where you are, whether you are a professional or a student, you will come up with something good. So, that was the guiding idea there.  But there is no strict cap on that, you know. Maybe beyond 48, the academic body is going to say no. You have to do only that. There are two courses that we are saying. One of the things that has happened in this program, which the Humanities Department is not very happy with, at least some of them, is that we had three courses earlier belonging to the humanities, this thing, we have chopped that down to two. Now, this is in the basic minimum program. But if indeed someone wants to, there is so much flexibility now that if you are interested in humanities, you can just go ahead and take courses. There is nothing that prevents you from taking courses. In fact, some of the department guys are also upset that we have knocked their portion down because they were teaching 19, 20 courses of mechanical engineering for ages. So, that's become 13 all of a sudden. So, this class is there. But the answer to that is that you have the flexibility. Regarding what is going to be taught in humanities, one course is, the humanists may not really consider humanities is on economics. The other course, we are giving flexibility to the student to explore whatever the student wants to explore. There is a basket of things that students can take from. But other than that, the humanities department is going to offer right now. They are saying that there may be one or maybe two minors. So, students can graduate with a data in whatever engineering and a minor in humanities or minor in economics even or a minor in whatever. So, that is happening. So, right now the departments are evolving their minors. So, the idea is that this whole program or the basis for this structure will all fall flat if you find nobody taking minors. Then it is clear indication that no matter what you do, the students do not want to go through this program. But if indeed the minor becomes like a popular thing, then I think we have really done a good job of providing the opportunity to the students to go and explore what they want. In the context or in the limited set of things that we have. So, hopefully that will really take off. There are four lecture based courses and two lab based courses. Because in engineering, normally theoretical subjects are always associated with the lab program. So, how do you split it and what exactly is that? The way we look at it there, we are saying about 13. So, if you want to capture mechanical engineering, you have to do it in 13 or 14 lecture based courses. That is you can even call it theory. But it is basically lecture like I am doing right now. And nine courses which are going to have laboratory, significant laboratory content. So, not all courses will have a laboratory associated with it. So, for example, if you are teaching solid mechanics, you may not have a laboratory. But solid mechanics and strength of materials, let us say in mechanical engineering, will have one laboratory associated with it. So, what we are saying is that each semester you go through at least two laboratory courses in the program. So, you end up doing between 12 to 16 laboratory courses in your program. And four lecture based. So, in the latter part of the program, that is in the second and third years, I should not call it latter, in the second and third years, you will typically have two or three lecture based courses from the department. And two lab courses coming from the department and you have that one course will allow you to, you have to take it either from you know, from an electrical or from let us say from humanities or wherever it is from. So, that will be the general flavor of how it is organized. But these two courses will, these two or three courses will be dictated by the department. And the lab courses also will be dictated. What lab courses they will do will be dictated by the department. But the point is that four plus two. So, we do not want too much over loading beyond that for the basic program.  Okay, thank you.


Do you know how we that know you experience you? And the way you find that out is to ask people. And you've got to be careful who you ask. But could you find a couple of people in your life that would say, how did you experience me today when I said that, or I did that, or I behaved that way, and listen without judgment? That's the challenge.


Professor Herrick, can you please describe your educational background? Yes, I received my doctorate in social psychology from the University of California. My dissertation focused on heterosexuals attitudes towards lesbians and gay men. In turning your opinions, Dr. Herrick, what is sexual orientation? Sexual orientation is a term we use to describe an enduring sexual, romantic, or intensely affectional attraction to men, to women, or to both men and women. It's used to refer to an identity or a sense of self that is based on one's enduring patterns of attraction. Is homosexuality considered a mental disorder? No, there were empirical studies that had been conducted that had failed to support the view of homosexuality as a mental illness. Okay, looking at the study, the definition and scope of sexual orientation. It says, we suggest the term sexual preference is misleading as it assumes conscious or deliberate choice and may trivialize the depth of the psychological process involved.  Do you agree with that? Yes, yes I do. I was a precocious kid, so one day I ended up looking up the word homosexual in the dictionary, something along the lines of romantic attraction between members of the same sex, and it slowly dawned on me that that's what I was.  Well, once I realized what a homosexual was, I was scared by that. I realized this was bad news for me, so I hid it as far away from everyone as I could.  When I was in seventh grade, I remember being taunted about being gay.   It was scary going into that building, realizing these kids were taunting me with a word that was so close to the truth. I would go home crying. Did your parents ever find out that you were gay? When I was 13 years old, my parents discovered my journal, and for the first time I had admitted to myself that I was gay, I had actually written those words, and they found that and read it. And what happened when they found the journal? They were very upset. They were yelling.  It was shocking. I never heard anything like that from my mother.  And what is North? North stands for the National Association for Reparative Therapy of Homosexuality. It's a reversal therapy organization based in Encino, California. How long were you at North? About a year and a half. From what ages? 14 to 16. During that time that you were at North, how was your home life?    Who did you meet with at North? I met with Dr. Joseph Nicolosi. Where would you meet with Mr. Nicolosi? I did actually fly out to California to do in-person sessions. I recall Nicolosi saying that homosexuality is incompatible with what God wants for you. And your parents want you to change and that this is a bad thing. Were you given any advice on how you would be able to suppress your homosexuality in these therapy sessions? I remember it as a general admonishment, but not a specific technique, no. No further questions, Your Honor? Dr. Cooper, you may cross-examine. Mr. Kendall, have you ever lived in the state of California? No, I have not. And you didn't have any role in the campaign to oppose Proposition 8, did you? No, I did not. You have never read a scientific study addressing the concept of sexual orientation, isn't that true? That is true. And isn't it also true that you have never studied whether a person's sexual orientation can change throughout the course of his or her lifetime? No, I haven't studied it. And nothing involved in the conversion therapy was your decision. It was all your parents' decision, isn't that true? Yes. At some point during your counseling you communicated to your parents objections to the counseling treatment, but your parents compelled you to go against your will. That's correct. Your only goal for conversion therapy was to survive the experience, isn't that true? Absolutely true. You didn't have the goal of changing your sexual orientation, I'm sorry, correction, you didn't have the goal of changing your sexual attraction, correct? That's correct.  That is correct. Is my experience that people don't want to go to programs like Narva? Well, you acknowledged in your deposition, did you not that some people report to have effective results in conversion therapy, isn't that true? Yes. No further questions, Your Honor. And was this therapy successful in that you were able to suppress your homosexuality?  While you were in conversion therapy, were you introduced to any people who purported or were purported to you to have successfully undergone conversion therapy? I remember during one of the group therapy sessions, Nicolosi trotted out his perfect patient, the guy who had been cured of his homosexuality and his name was Kelly. Did meeting Kelly have any impact on your views of conversion therapy? I remember once when Nicolosi stepped out of the room, we were talking amongst ourselves and Kelly told me that later that night he was going to a gay bar and that he was essentially just pretending to be cured for the sake of his family. Why did you stop going to reversal therapy?  I didn't have the world that I grew up in. My faith, which was very important to me, my family, which was even more important, everything had just kind of stopped and I just couldn't take anymore. And I realized at one point that if I didn't stop going, I wasn't going to survive. What do you mean by that? I probably would have killed myself.


That's why a lot of the conventional theories still cannot explain what dark matter is, and dark matter accounts for 82% of all the mass in the universe, and what the physicists do is in order to make their theories work is they just ignore it. They just basically call it dark matter and don't account for it in any of their equations or any of their theories because they don't know what it is and they cannot explain it.


Hello and welcome back to the NPTEL course on Supply Chain Digitization. I am Professor Sushmita Narayan from Indian Institute of Management Mumbai. We shall be continuing upon our discussions in this set of lectures on channel structures in the supply chain. We have already seen two kinds of possible structures which are very much the reference point when we look at making decisions namely the decentralized and centralized supply chain structures. Here we are going to look at some specific structures which have become really popular and very relevant considering the context of the platform economy and that is the way we are going to try and connect the concept of platform economy to supply chain structures. So, the types of structures that we shall be discussing in this series of lectures would be the break and water channel, dual channels, multi channels and omni channels. A variety of business models have actually emerged over the years with the growth of the platform economy with digitization and different types of technological advancements that have happened in information processing, material processing, relationship management as well as data processing and financial transactions. So, in a lot of ways a lot of technological advancements have led to a growth of different kinds of business models when it comes to supply chains and that is what we are going to explore in this set of sessions. Particularly in this lecture what I would be looking at is the first basic model which is called as the brick and mortar model. We will have a brief overview of what is meant by a brick and mortar structure and then discuss some of the benefits and challenges and also explore a few examples which will create a base for the next set of lectures as well where we will explore the other kinds of models which are present namely the dual channel, multi channel and omni channel structures. So, what do we mean by brick and mortar channel or brick and mortar as a concept is what we are going to discuss now. This is our traditional understanding of what the supply chain looks like manufacturer, distributor and retailer followed by the customer where these arrows are representing the material flow from this side of the supply chain to the other end of the supply chain. Now, this is what we call as a traditional supply chain and in this case we have been exposed to this multiple times over a variety of sessions in this course itself and you would also have observed that the product actually moves from one stage to the next stage and finally, reaches the customer. There can be a possibility of customer returns as well or returns happening at various nodes as well. For example, the customer might not like the product and returns it to the retailer. The retailer might find that a consignment of goods obtained from the distributor is not in proper shape or technically it is not qualified as per their agreement and may send it back to the distributor. Similarly, the distributor may have a lot of dead stock which is stock which has been purchased from the manufacturer, but for some reason is not getting sold in the market and the distributor might want to return it to the manufacturer. So, this is typically the flow of materials that is going to happen. We will look at a very specific zone in itself which is the last mile and this is what we call as the last mile for any supply chain and in this particular last mile if we were to ask the question how is the sale and delivery actually enabled in the last mile of the supply chain and this is where we start understanding the concept of brick and mortar. So, our focus of discussion is going to be at this end of the supply chain where you have a retailer and where you have a customer. So, the question is how can we enable sale and delivery in this part of the supply chain. Now, last mile is a concept as such which is very common nowadays. We have heard of last mile delivery being done by e-commerce parties, we have heard delivery boys who are carrying out last mile delivery. Hence, it is a very popular aspect of supply chain which is visible to any customer nowadays and hence we shall pick up this part of the supply chain for discussion in the context of brick and mortar. So, what do we mean by this? Now, when I consider this particular supply chain typically considering the material flow how is the sale enabled is the question. So, when we consider a brick and mortar concept we have the customer actually moving to the location of the retailer and it could be the most nearby retailer or it could be a retail point which is of interest to the customer right. So, say you are interested in going to purchase some regular grocery items you would go to the nearest or local Kirana store which is present near your house and you would go and purchase the items from there. So, this could be a decision where you are taking into consideration how far you have to travel and you would go and make that purchase. But in other cases it is not necessary where you have to travel to the nearest retail point. You might want to visit a specific store in specific location and make a purchase over there. Let us say it is a vehicle or let us say it is for banking where you require some services to be provided to you at a specific location of the bank and you would proceed to that location. Maybe as per regulations you are supposed to go to certain stores. Let say you have to go for a vaccination drive for a specific kind of a disease then you might have to visit a certain allotted vaccination center so on and so forth. So, it is not necessary it is the nearest retail point, but whatever is the retail point of your choice considering various factors you would go and visit that particular point of contact with the supply chain. So, what is very important to understand over here is that the retailer plays a very very important role in connecting this large part of the supply chain with the customer. So, the retailer is this touch point which is going to be present with the end customer. Now in such a case when the customer is going to visit the retailer or the retail store what can we expect happens over there. So, the customer visits the store and some of the things that the customer is going to do is view and experience the product in person. This is one of the primary reasons that we visit a store. If you were to visit a Kirana store in order to purchase let us say regular staple items like rice or pulses or wheat and other grains you would like to go and see what is the quality of grain which is going to be present and sold by the Kirana store. You might be interested in knowing if the product is fresh and you would also be interested in knowing other aspects let us say the color and you would also be satisfied in seeing whether the product which is being sold to you is weighed properly. So, there are many reasons why you would want to visit this store where you get to see the product in person and not only that you have several choices which may be presented to you right. So, suppose you have gone shopping for some kind of dress materials or dresses you would visit the store which is a retail point in the city somewhere near your house and you would ask the shopkeeper to show you all different styles of that particular dress or dress material and present it to you and you would want to feel and experience the same. You would touch the materials you would feel what is the texture of the cloth not only that you are also going to see whether the size is fitting you properly you would go for a trial in the dressing room and you would check whether it really suits you looks good on you so on and so forth. So, there are all these dimensions to this experience that are going to happen when you are going to visit the retail point. Now, this is a very very important aspect of the dimension which happens in brick and mortar retail and this is one of the major attractions for having to go to a store not only that in many cases it is also possible that this is like a social event for you. You would like to go shopping with your friends or your family and at the same time you would be visiting other places nearby maybe to pick up food or to pick up other items and you are going to have a great experience at the end of the day by doing this particular exercise. So, this is one of the reasons why a lot of people like to actually go to a store and make purchases. Now, one of the things which is going to happen is you are going to the store you would view experience the product touch the product you would not only do that you might also start discussing and negotiating with the store manager or the store personnel on various other dimensions. So, the dimensions that you could discuss would be what would be the quantity that you want to purchase. Let us say you are purchasing apparel what is the number of dresses that you want to purchase. Suppose you want to look at the colors how many colors you want to purchase. You would want to also decide upon the cost aspect of it. Let us say you are a customer who is a frequent buyer of these products you might discuss with the shopkeeper that I have been coming to your store so many times and I am a loyal customer and hence I think you should give me a discount of let us say 10% on the final bill and this kind of negotiation is something which is going to occur in this kind of a store and even this is also considered sometimes as a social event from a behavioral perspective this is also something that customers like to do when they visit the stores that is to get the full experience of bargaining and negotiating with the store personnel and after that you might also discuss as to what will be the terms related to delivery. For example, if not apparel or perhaps even grocery items you might be going out to purchase electronic goods or appliances maybe a refrigerator or so and you might be interested in discussing not just the cost the warranty period details and also the service after service details but you would also be interested in knowing how this product is going to actually reach your house. This is where you might discuss and negotiate with the retail store as to whether delivery can be carried out and by the store themselves and the product is sent to your house or to whichever location you want to transport this product or do you need to arrange for your own transport and hence if the store wants to really thrive in such an atmosphere it might start looking at providing these services as well in addition to just providing you the product in the last way. So, this is the variety of negotiations that could actually occur in this particular experience. So, some of the optional things that could happen is perhaps you would physically carry the product yourself and take it home for usage for consumption and one of the offshoots of this particular experience that you would have is not just the apparel not just the grocery items or not just the appliances you might show an interest in looking at other items as well which the store has to offer. So, let us say you have gone shopping for yourself for apparel and you chance upon some good apparel and clothes for some relatives of yours may be little children or the elderly and you would feel like purchasing those items given that there is some festival that is coming up or some occasion that is coming up and you would start looking at these items this gives a chance for the shopkeeper in order to come and negotiate with you or perhaps even try to sell those items to you. So, there are all these other possibilities that could occur when you go to a retail point and this is also one of the things that we observe when you go to a retail store you might not end up just visiting one retail store even if you are not satisfied with the kind of products that are present in that retail store you would also visit other retail stores not just that if you have even made purchases you might even do other activities as well. Like I mentioned earlier you would want to visit a nearby restaurant and go for a dining experience you might want to also visit other friends who are around so on and so forth. So, there are many activities social activities that you would tie to this. As a result the success of this store is going to be really dependent on how well this experience is provided to the customer and how well this customer is going to be happy not just with the product, but also with the experience that they have obtained. Now this is the entire concept of brick and motor stores and you would have seen different varieties of stores as well depending upon the nature of the product you might have a store which is just going to have one or two personnel who are operating. This is very common when we go to small Kirana stores or small outlets where a lot of products are actually available, but there is only one person who is the sales person as well as the cashier as well as the person who owns the store and maybe has a helper or two who is helping you with access to the items and in packaging and so on and so forth. But in other larger retail stores organized retail as we call it these days let us say you go to a shopping mall you will see several stores under the same roof not just that if you go to a specific store let us say you have gone to a large store where they sell a lot of different kinds of apparel as well as cosmetics and all different kinds of items related to self-care so on and so forth. You will see that a lot of store personnel are going to be there there will be a great ambience to the store. You have the flexibility of going and visiting different sections of the store picking up items and viewing them yourself this is an experience which is given to the customer and at the other hand for the same kind of products you might have a different kind of a store setting where you are going to visit the store and there will be store personnel sitting at the counter who are going to show you the different kind of apparel as you keep choosing. So, different kinds of experiences can actually be provided in the brick and mortar store. Now considering this is what a brick and mortar store looks like what we need to understand is the concept of brick and mortar is not just limited to retail brick and mortar in a sense is only implying one aspect which is the possibility or the scenario in which the customer gets the opportunity to visit the location of the supplier view the products evaluate the products as well as discuss and negotiate with the supplier on the different terms and conditions before actually making a purchase. So, this concept of brick and mortar is not just there in retail it is going to be there in any kind of business to business scenario also. So, the idea of brick and mortar as we see can apply to any section of the supply chain it is not necessary that we have to observe it only in retail and what we can see over here in such a case that it could be that the customer is visiting the retailer this could be an example of brick and mortar in the B2C channel where we call B2C as business to customer relations or business to customer engagements. It could mean that the retailer is visiting the distributor viewing the items and discussing with the distributor what needs to be done they might even send certain you know personnel of theirs to go into inspections of how the products are actually being stored and kept and have some discussions on that as well. It could also mean that the distributor or the retailer for example any of these parties is going to visit the manufacturer and have a look at what kind of products need to be sold, what kind of products need to be manufactured so on and so forth. So, the concept theoretically speaking or broadly speaking can be applied at any level and as you go further upstream of this supply chain it could be a scenario in which the manufacturer is going to visit several suppliers is going to understand what kind of raw materials they are having, what kind of products and components they can supply and make decisions as to what will be the kind of product that needs to be created, how does it need to be put together and how does it need to be sold to the manufacturer or shipped to the manufacturer all of these discussions can be done before the discussion on actual purchase is made. As we can see the concept of purchase at the end of the manufacturer is quite different from the concept of purchase at the end of the customer where the customer is the final consumer of the product while the manufacturer, distributor and retailer are intermediate parties who are going to play a role in ensuring that the customer gets the product at the end of the day. So, the concept of brick and mortar as we see is more popular in the B to C context, but theoretically speaking it applies in any of these contexts and as we progress in our lectures we are going to see how brick and mortar concept in this part of the supply chain can also be viewed in different ways with the advent of the platform economy. More specifically when we see the concept of brick and mortar that we see nowadays has undergone immense transformation mainly because of the rise of the platform economy digitization which I have already spoken about. So, let us look at what are some of the differences or benefits and challenges of having a brick and mortar system within the retail environment. So, first and foremost when we consider the benefit we can obviously see that the primary benefit that is provided by a brick and mortar system is the kind of experience that is provided to the customer which is they can physically check the product and it helps the customer make a very informed purchase decision. So, it is the customer himself or herself who views the product and makes the decision as to whether they want this product or not. So, in many ways these helps in creating a very sound system for the purchase which is you know going to support the business as well as a customer because of the fact that the customer is directly engaging with the product before the purchase is made. The second benefit as we can think the retail store that the customer is going to visit acts as a touch point. So, this is the place where the customer has made the purchase. So, if they find any issues with respect to the product some complaints some after sales concerns that are going to be there they need not contact let us say the manufacturer right. They have already purchased the item from the retail store they also have a history of the kind of discussions they had with the store personnel or the shopkeeper and if they do not like the product they might want to return it within a certain period if they are willing to do so and the retailer is going to take back the product or maybe give some kind of a refund or replacement for that product. So, this acts like a touch point for the customer and again this can add value to the experience for the customer having the satisfaction or the knowledge that there is a human interaction which is going to be present that can help you deal with any kinds of concerns and issues with respect to the product purchased. Now, this specific real time interaction is also very useful because if this information is going to be captured in real time as the interaction is happening in real time you have gone to the store you have seen the product and if you do not like the product you might actually give feedback to the store personnel that they you do not like this product because perhaps you feel that it is overpriced you might very frankly also say that the product does not fit within your budget you might also share information that you know this product is available at a different price in a related store. You might also try out the product if it is apparel or shoes for that matter and you can share information that the product is not working out well because aesthetically it is not looking good on you or there could be some ergonomic issues related to the product let us say to the pair of shoes and you are finding them uncomfortable you can give this direct information without even having made a purchase and this is very valuable market information that can be captured when there is going to be a retail store that is present where the customer can visit the store. So, this is one of the key benefits as well when we think of brick and mortar as a concept. Now, as the customer goes to the store the retailer can actually prevail upon the customer's thoughts and decision making processes and start encouraging the customers to purchase other products. Now, this can help utilize the store to a better extent like I said earlier the success of the store will be dependent upon how good the experience of the customer is going to be. So, if the customer's experience is good with one of the products or a few of the products or even if they do not purchase many of the products that they intended to they might make a better purchase if the retailer is able to convince the customer at that point. Again this is something which can happen in real time with well trained personnel with qualified personnel or with personnel who have a knack for dealing with customers like this and converting them into final customers or end customers who have purchased the product. And finally, since the experience provided through the brick and mortar store can be very good this can help generate customer loyalty over the long run right. So, if you have experienced dining experience in a good restaurant which you had visited recently you were happy with not just the food, but also the ambience you were also happy with the kind of service provided the politeness of the servers the quality of food the aesthetics of the food and the kind of ambience in terms of the music and the lighting and all of this creates a very good memory for you and you are quite happy with this the price also was good. Then you might think of coming back to the store again in the future because a very strong connect has been made with you. Now, this is definitely going to be the beauty of in-person interactions that help generate very strong customer loyalty. This is also going to be present in other environments or service environments as well like I said for example, in banking if the banking experience is going to be very good for the customer where they meet the teller or the cashier and they are going to be able to get their benefits quickly then a good service experience is created and loyalty is created for the bank as well. Let us move to what could be the challenges of this. Some of the challenges that we observe is first and foremost since it is a brick and mortar concept the customer has to actually travel has to make the travel to the store and the store could be far or could be near. So, it is an effort which is going to go into this. So, this is a challenge which can actually make the customer think twice before you know deciding to go out to purchase items. So, this can actually prevent customers from coming forth. The second thing is when the customer comes to the store they would need to spend time. They have to evaluate the products they need to perhaps wait in queue when they are seeing through the products or trying the products or when they are trying to pay for the products they might need to wait in queue they would also spend time in travel. So, it is not just an effort it is also a time component which is going to be there and if they do not have enough time to do this they might not visit the store unless absolutely necessary. On the other hand if you think of the retailers side of things the retailer needs to invest in space space which is required for storing products to showcase the products in a way which is appealing to the customers such that they can purchase it. So, they have to invest not just in the area, but also in the layout in the way the products are going to be shown to the customers in the lighting etcetera. They need to have specific counters and specific areas within the store which is meant for billing and checkout. If the store really wants to encourage customers to come in they might want to provide also parking so on and so forth. Not just this they need to invest in manpower like store personnel for business development for selling the product to the customer labor for material handling cashiers security personnel managers etcetera. And there will be definitely a challenge for the entire supply chain also to depend upon the brick and mortar store and why is that so? The retail stores will be limited in size and they may be not capable of reaching out to too many customers. So, which means at some point in time you need to scale up either you expand the retail store or you need to establish more retail stores. And sometimes if the product demand is not too good your retail store might actually be under utilized and hence it might not justify the costs that have gone into identifying purchasing space purchasing manpower and other resources and other investments which would be related to this. So, constantly you might have to make decisions as to whether you add more stores relocate stores shut down stores so on and so forth. So, this creates issues for the supply chain as well. Now, with these benefits and challenges that we observe with brick and mortar systems we will now move to the next concept which is the role of platform economy which has created a disruption in the way we look at brick and mortar systems. So, in the next session we are going to see how these disruptions have happened and how the variety of channels such as omnichannels, multi channels and dual channels have emerged which give rise to different kinds of business models with the advent of technology. Thank you and see you in the next session.