Background

Leading State Agriculture/Veterinary Universities (SAU’s) in India have been partnering with ICRISAT and the COL in technology-mediated open and distance learning processes. A workshop organized in December 2005 last focused on the use of Learning Management Systems in support of ODL in agriculture/veterinary education. A roundtable organized by ICRISAT along with the partners in February last led to the idea of forming a grid of education and extension materials of the partner universities. Following these fruitful deliberations, a number of stakeholders especially the technology-based partners such as the IIT and IIIT systems have shown keen interest in this initiative. We see a major opportunity to develop a collection of online tools that will enable participating universities and the extension institutions to take agricultural learning and information resources to even larger numbers of people.

Education grids are increasingly accepted at certain education levels in many OECD countries and the IIT system in India has been promoting a grid of relevant instructional materials. The IIITM-K in Thiruvananthapuram has already launched an “edugrid” along side its well-known project on Kissan Kerala. In this backdrop, there are new opportunities for collaboration between technology institutions and agricultural and veterinary universities.  The upcoming National Agricultural Innovation Project provides an excellent niche for taking this initiative forward.

Keeping these developments in view, ICRISAT organized a consultation with the broad objective of developing a short-term approach to setting up the virtual grid of learning materials in support of ODL in agriculture with the support of the Commonwealth of Learning.

The roundtable had the following specific objectives: 

• To acquaint the SAUs with the developments in technology-resource institutions.

• To identify broad needs in terms of web-based information management and capacity building/training in developing a technology-mediated support system for the ODL processes.

• To develop a short-term or even immediate plan to launch a grid of extension materials.

• To seek informal consent of the participants to develop a multi-partner, multiple-objective concept note for presentation to the NAIP with the goal of setting up an online grid that helps partner SAUs in capacity building, infrastructure upgrades, AND joint development programs with technology-resource institutions.

Summary of the Proceedings

Vice-chancellors, deans and senior directors of Agri and vet universities, ICAR institutes, directors and researchers of leading technology resource institutions of the following institutes participated in the roundtable.

Acharya NG Ranga Agricultural University, Hyderabad

Center for Development of Advanced Computing, Hyderabad

Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver

Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar 

Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram 

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur

Maharahstra Animal and Fisheries Sciences University, Nagpur

National Academy of Agricultural Research Management, Hyderabad

Tamil Nadu Agrilutural University, Coimbatore

Tamil Nadu University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Chennai

University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore

Presentations

In his keynote presentation Prof K R Srivathsan of IITM-Kerala dealt with key parameters for agrarian prosperity and detailed how the KISSAN model (jointly managed by the KAU, State Department of Agriculture and the IIITM-K) is catering to improving farm productivity, profitability and sustainability. He also described the education grid and highlighted the crucial need for development of e-content and its management.

Mr. Anil Bahuman of IIT Bombay demonstrated aAQUA, a Q&A portal developed at the IIT Bombay that is currently used in Maharashtra and Assam. This group proposed the use of Q&A content to create a knowledge base on line that provides for shareability and reuse on later occasions. 

Mr. Murat Singh of IIT Kanpur, presented an overview of the project on Digital Ecosystem for Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods (DEAL). He shared with the group details on how their project was moving ahead with the development of ontology-driven digital infomediation using topic maps and a translation of FAO’s AGROVOC thesaurus into Hindi.

Dr R Nagarajan of IIT Bombay spoke of his work in developing drought vulnerability maps for 12 villages in Addakal region and described how these would help in micro-level planning for drought preparedness. Water availability for cropping is crucial for a drought-prone area.

Dr Mohan Das (KAU) put up front the expectations about the knowledge grid in terms of strengthening professional agricultural education and extension by better networking for knowledge sharing. He also stressed the need for knowledge intensive extension as a means to enhance competitiveness in farming.

Dr R Durai   presented an overview of the ODL program that commenced from April 2005 at the TNAU. The TNAU ODL Directorate has 12 courses developed in the local language (Tamil) and these are being offered to the farming community, unemployed youth, school dropouts and SHGs comprising women. 

Dr V Balakrishnan (TANUVAS) gave a short account of the distance education courses developed in collaboration with the COL for encouraging post qualification education in veterinary and animal sciences in India. Three month duration DL courses (independent study - 50 hours; teacher led-20 hours) have been developed and offered to Veterinary Assistant Surgeons, Veterinary Surgeons, clinicians, and Veterinarians working in milk co-operatives, and self employed veterinarians.

Dr P S Lonkar described the experiences of MAFSU in distance education in Veterinary and Animal Sciences. After assessing the needs of field veterinarians, courses were developed in the form of interactive CDs and booklets.

Dr N Sandhya Shenoy  (NAARM) spoke about her experience in an ICT4D project that she led in one of the villages in Nalgonda district, Andhra Pradesh, India.    Mr N Sarat Chandra Babu (C-DAC) spoke of the on-going project for the development of a portal, the India Developmental Gateway, for catering to the information needs in health, education, rural energy and e-governance.

Drs M Sudarshan Reddy (ANGRAU) and G Eswarappa (UAS, Bangalore) briefed group about the activities of the Directorate of Extension Education of their respective universities and expressed their keenness in joining the grid.

Dr M N Sheelavantar who moderated the discussion, in his concluding remarks appreciated the timeliness of the roundtable and expressed his keenness to be part of the proposed educational and extension grid.

Discussion on moving towards an Agri/Vet Knowledge grid in India

 Summary of Discussions

• The KISSAN model of Kerala is an appropriate one to be followed, as it  has been able to achieve the convergence of knowledge generating institutions such as the Kerala Agricultural University and the mainline extension wing of the Department of Agriculture with the expertise of a technology institution like the IIITM-K.  It has been able to provide customized information service to farmers with the help of several databases developed and managed by the consortium.

• Krishi Vignan Kendras (KVKs) are mandated with imparting improved farming skills to women and youth.  They are key nodes in information chain but they have to depend on research institutions and agri/vet universities to update their knowledge base. It is highly desirable to involve KVKs in providing distance extension education services.  They need the content support from the state agricultural universities and agricultural research institutes who form part of the consortium for knowledge grid. Indeed, we will need a broad-based consortium of SAU’s, ICAR institutes, KVK’s and technology-resource institutions to launch and sustain an online grid for rural livelihood security and prosperity in India.

• There is a need to look at the IPR and copy right issues closely while broadly agreeing to place the content in the grid with open access.  The stress is on making information available via portals and the grid, while instruction delivery and certification processes will be strictly in the realm of participating organizations.

• To begin with participating universities/institutions may contribute the course catalogues and syllabi of various courses. One may refer to this database to know what the grid would contain.  The offer from the DEAL Group of IIIT-K to provide adequate web space was acknowledged.

• It is necessary to develop multi-partner projects as they best serve the purpose. This will bring together institutions with strengths in different domains by building a content sharing network across the institutions.

• Trade/market related information service is very crucial and it would not be easy to cater to this demand unless large databases are built with time series market data across various markets of a region.

• Some universities may consider starting a new course on agri-informatics at the post graduate level to cater to the enormous human resource requirement for generating and maintaining agricultural databases.

• Providing information to farmers in their own languages is a challenge.  It is necessary to overcome the language barrier using technology.   In a typical Q&A service, most questions are repeated after certain period of time. Having a good archival and search tool would be very essential for such situations. Further, adding value to farmers’ questions is important to sustain the community interest in the service.

• The National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP) of the ICAR offers a good opportunity for convergence of different institutions having capabilities in various domains.

Following the discussions the group arrived at the agreements below.

• Participating institutions agreed to form a consortium and work towards forming an online grid of agricultural extension and education materials.  It is named AGRID.  It is important to follow global and open standards and Open Source software in all matters dealing with the grid.

• Three core working groups, one each on education, extension and grid technology were formed. TNAU would lead the education core group and KAU, the extension core group. Prof Srivathsan of IIITM-K would lead the grid technology core group.   These groups would look into IPR issues as well as technology issues.

• ICRISAT was given the role to facilitate the further development of a concept note into a proposal.