Govt Of Telangana Collaborates With BITS Pilani WILP

The State Board of Technical Education and Training (SBTET), a board created under the authority of the Government of Telangana, has signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani Work Integrated Learning Programmes (WILP) division, in an effort to design, develop, and deploy Technology Enabled Laboratories (TEL) for polytechnics and engineering institutions in Telangana.

The TEL project shall be funded by SBTET and would be executed in multiple phases for a period of two years i.e. from designing the remote and virtual labs in select domains and programmes to developing the software interface and selecting the lab equipment, to developing lab exercises and associated digital content, and finally training several faculty members who shall deploy the labs in few select institutions.

Virtual and remote labs support experiential learning and innovative solutions

With an aim to provide comprehensive experiential learning for the students, over the years, BITS Pilani WILP has deployed about 10 remote labs (physical labs, which are accessible from anywhere and at any time) and 26 virtual labs (that allow for software simulation studies of various phenomena, which may be extremely challenging to study in the real environment or physical laboratories).

The experiential learning that is acquired by leveraging these labs (via simulations, hands-on, and other practical assignments that involve the use of hardware and software) helps students to connect practice with theory — thereby enabling them to foster innovative ideas and solutions to address various challenges and opportunities in the real world.

Affordable, sustainable, flexible, and scalable access to state-of-the-art labs

Besides multiple other endeavours, SBTET also aims to ensure that the students pursuing technical education across the state should have access to quality labs that enable experiential learning. However, the setup of labs is not just about software, cloud hosting, and access control, as it requires significant investments and an entire ecosystem, including vital instructions, license management, and support.

Through this collaboration with BITS Pilani WILP, SBTET intends to develop a system that primarily leverages the scale of operations efficiently (considering that these labs could cater to the learning requirements of thousands of students across the state of Telangana) — so that various challenges, including those related to manpower, logistics, and costs could be mitigated successfully.