EDUSAT: Conception, Limitations and Success PUNJAB Perspective

Jagdev Singh Kaleka1, Srishtee Chaudhary2 Head of Deptt.(ECE)1, Lecturer2 Govt. Polytechnic for Girls, Patiala-147003 Deptt. Of Technical Education and Industrial Training, Govt. of Punjab, India Email: kalekajs@gmail.com1, srishtee@rediffmail.com2
development encountered in earlier decades. Both the constraints of time and distance at once become manageable. In order to avoid structural dualism, modern educational technology must reach out to the most distant areas and deprive sections of beneficiaries simultaneously with the area of comparative affluence and ready availability. This is especially true in the present context, for online education that is transforming knowledgedelivery processes and virtual education. The recently arrived e-learning has caused world over profound changes in the way people learn and train, allowing them to do it anywhere, at any time. Through the web a user can access content from any point, off campus or in campus, through a computer and connectivity medium. Web is being used for delivering more extensive content on a particular course. The EDUSAT technology allows asynchronous delivery of various kinds of data presentations including PowerPoint presentations, server-hosted digital data, still pictures and graphical information. The proposal of providing talk-back facility with two-way video over a period of time by ISRO would surely address the important issue of paucity of faculty in higher education. It is heartening to note that the EDUSAT or GSAT-3 will be the first satellite of the Education Satellite System that enables real time education with multimedia and multicasting facility. The real education, however, requires interaction between the students and the teachers. EDUSAT project has ample scope for interaction. This project will play an important role in higher education sector in India more so in engineering and in medical education. Satellites can establish the connectivity between urban educational institutions with adequate infrastructure imparting quality education and the large number of rural and semi-urban educational institutions that lack the necessary infrastructure. Besides supporting formal education, satellite systems can facilitate dissemination of knowledge to the rural and remote population about important aspects of health, hygiene and personality development and allow professionals to update their knowledge base as well. Thus in spite of limited number of

Abstract
Over the last few years, Distance Education has come into its own as the mainstay in the field of education. The integration of satellite technology and education has yielded rich rewards socially, culturally and economically. Leveraging on its impeccable expertise in the space segment, Indian Space Research Organization has ventured into becoming a full-fledged facilitator in providing the satellite for education in India under its ambitious EDUSAT project. EDUSAT is the first exclusive satellite for serving the educational sector. It is specially configured to meet the growing demand for an interactive satellitebased distance education system for the country through audio-visual medium, employing Direct-to-Home (DTH) quality broadcast. The satellite has multiple regional beams covering different parts of India 5 Ku band transponders with spot beams covering different regions, a Ku-band and transponder with its footprint covering the Indian mainland region and 6C-band transponders with their footprints covering the entire country. ISRO in a way is exposing the universities to new opportunities that distance learning technologies could offer for institutions of higher education. These opportunities include facilitating improvements in the teaching-learning process, expanding the geographic reach of an institutions programmes and facilitating more effective service of the student community.

Introduction
Educational Technology (ET) is a systematic way of designing, implementing and evaluating the total process of learning and teaching in terms of specific objectives, based on research on human learning and communication and employing a combination of human and non-human resources to bring about more effective instruction. Modern communication technologies have the potential to bypass several stages and sequences in the process of

trained and skilled teachers, the aspirations of the growing student population can be met through the concept of teleeducation.

Conceptualisation
Indias educational programme got a fillip on 20 September 2004 with the successful launch of EDUSAT, from the launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, AP. EDUSAT is an indigenously designed satellite, which is exclusively devoted to the field of education. This is a path-breaking effort in the concept of tele-education. EDUSAT was placed in the 36,000 km high geostationary orbit and co-located with INSAT-3C and KALPANA-1 at 74 East longitude. The satellite weighing 1950 kg at lift off, including 1110 kg of propellants for orbit raising and maintenance is designed to provide service for seven years. The concept of beaming educational programmes through satellites was effectively demonstrated for the first time in India in 197576 through the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) conducted using the American Application Technology Satellite (ATS-6). During this unique experiment, which is hailed as the largest sociological experiment conducted anywhere in the world, programmes pertaining to health, hygiene and family planning were telecast directly to about 2400 Indian villages spread over six states. Later with the commissioning of INSAT system in 1983, a variety of educational programmes had been telecast. In the nineties, the Jhabua Developmental Communications Project (JDCP) and the Training and Developmental Communication. Channel (TDCC) further demonstrated the efficacy of teleeducation. With the success of the INSAT-based educational services, a need was felt to launch a satellite dedicated for educational service and ISRO conceived the EDUSAT project in October 2002. EDUSAT is specially configured to have multiple beams covering different regions of India five Ku-band transponders with spot beams covering northern, northeastern, eastern, southern and western regions of the country, a Ku-band transponder with its footprint covering the Indian mainland region and six C-band transponders with their footprints covering the entire country. Space based connectivity through EDUSAT system is primarily meant for school, college and higher levels of education and can also support non-formal education. The scope of the EDUSAT programme is planned to be realized in three phases. In the first phase of pilot projects, Kuband transponder on board INSAT-3B, which is already in orbit, is being used. Visveswaraiah Technological University (VTU) is the main beneficiary of this pilot project. Under this project, all engineering colleges of VTU are being

networked with 100 nodes. Besides Karnataka, the Y. B. Chavan State Open University, Nasik in Maharashtra and the Rajiv Gandhi Technical University in Madhya Pradesh are covered. In the second phase, EDUSAT spacecraft will be used in a semi-operational mode with at least one uplink in each of the 5 spot beams. About 100200 classrooms will be connected in each beam. Two more states and one national institution will be covered. In the third phase, EDUSAT network is expected to become fully operational. ISRO will provide technical and managerial support in the replication of EDUSAT ground system to manufacturers and service providers. EDUSAT will be able to support about 2530 uplinks and about 5000 remote terminals per link. The major advantages of satellite-based Distance Education include: Simultaneous delivery of lecture sessions to a large number of geographically dispersed people in the shortest time Uniformity of the lecture content Access to the subject expert and his/her lecture material Repeatability of delivery of lectures from the archives Capability to share the same network by different user groups Significant savings in expenditure due to economies in travel, logistics and replication of teaching infrastructure

Network Configuration
The satellite-based interactive narrow casting network has one-way video and two-way audio facility. The network is capable of data transfer from the teaching end to the remote classrooms. The data includes lecture notes, courseware, presentation material, exercises etc. The network consists of three major elements: teaching end, remote receiving sites called classrooms and spacecraft.

Architecture of EDUSAT Pilot Project

Conceptual model of EDUSAT Pilot Project Teaching End: The teaching end consists of a small studio and an uplink earth station. The studio, which originates live or recorded lectures, is linked to the uplink earth station. The lectures (visual images and the audio signal) are transmitted to the satellite from where they are beamed back to earth covering a large geographical area, for instance, entire Karnataka. The 2.4 -meter antenna for uplink has been installed in DSERT Campus that has data rate up to 2 mbps. Receiving End or Classroom: The live lectures are received at classrooms of the engineering colleges. There are two types of classrooms interactive and noninteractive. In case of interactive classroom, the students can interact with subject expert at the teaching end through a voice link via satellite (64 kbps audio return channel). The question and the subject experts response for that question can be heard live in all classrooms. The noninteractive classroom will have receive-only facility and the students can interact with subject expert via telephone line or mobile phone or internet. In this case, normally, the subject expert repeats the question to make others know. There are 100 classrooms (50 interactive and 50 noninteractive) spread across 100 engineering colleges in Karnataka. The 1.2-meter antenna has been installed in each college. Spacecraft: One extended ku-band transponder on INSAT3A has been earmarked for the present EDUSAT Pilot Project. The network will be shifted to EDUSAT after launch and operationalisation of GSAT-3 spacecraft.

Review of hardware, software, and the entire network ii. Coordinate with the organizations involved in implementation. The organizations in this case include ISRO, VTU, KSRSAC and Engineering Colleges. Coordination among these organizations and delivery of programmes to the colleges are quite arduous tasks. The colleges need to totally participate at every stage of project implementation. The other major activities are: Standardizing the feedback formats Circulation of feedback forms or hosting on website Identification of coordinator and technician in colleges Identification of subjects to be delivered Identification of subject experts iii. Implement training. Training to the network technical staff, coordinators, technicians, subject experts and students should take place close to the time of implementation. iv. Conduct tests and dry runs. In order to test quality of broadcast, data transfer, LAN streaming, various feedback mechanisms like satellite, telephone, fax, e -mail and SMS and to understand the ground realities of operational issues a few dry runs are absolutely essential. Constant feedback needs to be collected from colleges. The first check is just to make sure everything is up. v. Optimize technical parameters. Based on the feedback of the dry runs, the improvements or modifications of the MMDE network needs to be done at SAC, Ahmedabad, to ensure everything is working as per expectation. Midcourse corrections will be undertaken after evaluation. vi. Implement the final solution. The improvements or modifications should be implemented at the teaching end and/or receiving classroom end. If there are problems that come up immediately after implementation, the network team should address and fix them. vii. Monitor the transmission and programme. The collaborators will spend a complete semester of four months of time for monitoring the implemented solution and getting the feedback of the programme. That is, impact assessment will be performed. The video content (lecture sessions transmitted from studio) will be hosted on the web. viii. Maintain the network. In our case, KSRSAC is the nodal agency that takes care of operation and maintenance.

EDUSAT: The Punjab Implementation

While ISRO will provide the space segment for EDUSAT system and demonstrate the efficacy of the satellite system for interactive distance education, content generation is the responsibility of the user agencies. The quantity and quality of the content would ultimately decide the success of EDUSAT System. To help in this, ISRO, in cooperation with the user agencies, has already organized 5 conferences at regional level and one at the national level to create

Steps for Successful Implementation

i. Prepare the infrastructure for network establishment. This strategy includes the following activities: Setting up of project office Establishment of teaching end that includes studio and uplink Installation of receiving ends or classrooms Making available transponder facility

awareness about EDUSAT and its capabilities. Punjab has become the one of the first states in the country to start education through Satellite Interactive Terminals (SITs) with the launch of a Rs12-crore Educational Satellite Network (EDUSAT). ISRO is the controlling and monitoring body of this project. The implementation of this project includes 1. Setting up of State Hub: to be installed by ISRO. It has been installed and commissioned 2. Three teaching ends: Installation of three teaching ends at PSEB Mohali, Govt. Secondary School Phase 3 B1 Mohali, SSA, Sector 34, Chandigarh. One teaching end installed and commissioned at PSEB Mohali. Two teaching ends to be shipped and installed by ISRO. 3. Three hundred classroom ends. 300 SITs to be installed at the following locations: School Education (147) : 42 Secondary Schools, 90 High & Elementary Schools, 15 Adarsh Schools, Distance Education & Training (62) :01 SCERT, 17 DIETs, 44 BRCs Higher Education (48) : 48 Colleges, Medical Education(08) : 06 Medical colleges, 02 Dental Colleges Technical Education (35): 25 Polytechnics, 10 it is 78 SITs installed. Remaining SITs to be shipped and installed by ISRO 4. Site preparation of Studio and the EDUSAT Directorate. Site preparation of Studios, EDUSAT Directorate, Teaching ends. The work for site preparation of two studios, teaching ends and EDUSAT Directorate has been allocated to MARKFED. 5. Site preparation of the teaching ends and the classroom ends. Site preparation to be done by the concerned departments. The work of site preparation is in progress 6. Content Generation. Development of content for the EDUSAT Programme. Content Generation to be done by the concerned departments. The work of content generation in progress 7. Management and overall maintenance. 8. Manpower deployment: Deployment of Manpower for EDUSAT Directorate. Manpower requirement for the directorate identified and approval taken to recruit to through PICTES. Appointments to be made after the directorate is operational. This project is implemented by Department of School Education through Punjab Information and Communication Technology Education Society (PICTES) Total funds required for this project are 12 Crores. The funds released are Rs. 10.33 crores The present EDUSAT Project allows key elements of interactivity, access, cost-effectiveness and consistency of information to students. One subject expert can simultaneously teach hundreds of students in multiple locations across a vast geographical area. The students of the remote or un-reached colleges can get the live lecture sessions of the best teacher. This initiative, therefore,

addresses the major issue of paucity of faculty members in higher education.

Conclusion
As India enters the new millennium, it is necessary to sustain such kind of effort by continuously tuning it to the fast changing requirement and updating the technology that goes into the making of these sophisticated systems. The challenges continue to grow but that is what attracts and sustains the interests of personnel working in the space programme. Even if a satellite is launched, its meaningful utilization in any sector including education is a million dollar question and raises many eyebrows. The life span of EDUSAT is seven years and it has provided many facilities and possibilities. But the real challenge before us is how to feed this monster and reach out the rural masses especially millions of students teachers and teacher educators in the country. For the successful use of this satellite a rigorous planning is need of the hour and collaborative efforts are essential for designing of the software and its utilization for achieving goals of education.

References
[1] EDUSAT and its Utilisation, Dr. Amarendra P. Behera, Reader Curriculum Group, NCERT, New Delhi. [2] Education and the Significance of Life by J Krishnamurti, www.alternativeeducationindia.com [3] An Experiment in Education, Sybil Marshall, Cambridge University Press 1963 [4] Alternative Schooling in India edited by Sarojini Vittachi and Neeraja Raghaven, published by Sage Publications [5] EDUSAT for education, Dr.M. Velusamy, Integrating technology With Education Conference, 2011 [6] Space technology in education - Indian context, Shyamal Mehta [7] Open and Distance Education through Wireless Mobile Internet: A Learning Model, Jasola, Sanjay & Ramesh Sharma, International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2005 [8] Department of Space: Indian Space Research Organisation, www.isro.org/Edusat [9] Satellite based Distance Education in India, Dr. Jasola, Dr. Sharma, Online Journal of Space Communication. [10] EduSat- E-learning Through Satellite Reaching the Unreached, Mamta Garg , Manoj Kumar Jindal, International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering, Vol 1, No. 2, May 2009.