Meritorious girl students, who are passionate about Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), will get their learning opportunities expanded and the platform scaled up. This will make their learning more relevant and attenuate scientific spirit in the country’s youth. It will be completed by DST (Department of Science and Technology) in collaboration with IBM.

On October 8, 2020, DST and IBM announced their collaboration to scale up two DST initiatives, which are Vigyan Jyoti and Engage with Science (Vigyan Prasar).

Vigyan Jyoti is a programme promoting STEM learning in girl students. It is inspiring them for joining STEM careers by developing a level-playing field for meritorious girl students from grades 9 to 12, who want to pursue STEM in higher education, especially continuing education from the topnotch colleges in the regions where girls are hugely underrepresented.

Engage with Science of Vigyan Prasar, an initiative for building interest and creating a community of practice with students, teachers and scientists, is connecting the high school students to the higher education institutions.

During the announcement of the collaboration, Prof. Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary DST, said, “The partnership with IBM will make these programs of DST and Vigyan Prasar reach the students and teachers in interactive ways on a large scale. Scaling up of the interactive learning platform ‘Engage with Science’ will make learning relevant and foster scientific spirit among the country’s youth, it would address the school students directly who need more knowledge outside the classroom and provide insights into an interactive way of learning, thus helping sift the useful from the useless.”

He also stated, “The engage with Science platform will make students interact, participate and get involved with the sampling and active consumption of S&T content, including Cloud, Big Data, etc. through the usage of digital tools. Vigyan Jyoti initiative by DST focuses on solving the multidimensional problems associated with meager representation of women in Engineering and Technology streams in higher education by building confidence and excitement towards these streams. In 5 years from now, we want to see the proportion of girl students enrolled in engineering and technology streams increasing to one-third of the total.”

Launched by DST in 2019, Vigyan Jyoti programme is inspiring girl students to take up higher education and career in STEM fields. This programme offers scholarships, excursions to nearby scientific institutions, science camps, lecturers from eminent women scientists and career counselling. This program at present is implemented by Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV) in 58 districts, where about 2900 students participate. DST’s partnership with IBM India will further strengthen the activities mentioned and it will expand to include more schools in the future.

Women tech experts, who are working at IBM India will be interacting with girl students for inspiring them to plan a career in STEM under this program. This will give a boost to DST’s initiative for increasing the number of women in technology-related fields.

Sandip Patel, MD, IBM I/SA, “It is the need of the hour to promote gender diversity in STEM education and to create new avenues for cultivating diverse talent. The collaboration with DST will expand our STEM program to girl students pursuing 10+2 courses.”

Aiming to create a robust STEM ecosystem, nurturing critical thinkers, problem-solvers and next-gen innovators, through Inspire Awards – MANAK (Million Minds Augmenting National Aspirations and Knowledge), DST and IBM India’s programme targets to build one million ideas which are rooted in science from school students. DST and IBM India will be working together for integrating and developing Science and Technology in the education ecosystem with short term courses, workshops, mentoring and online science content communication for teachers and students in India.

While the other collaboration, which is launched alongside, IBM will work with Vigyan Prasar, which is an autonomous body under the DST for helping India’s science popularization agenda through several strategic initiatives, including ‘Engage With Science’. It is an interactive platform, which will be built on top of the India Science Over-The-Top (OTT) platform for encouraging and inspiring high school students on pursuing Science & Technology (S&T) for a career.

IBM, as a part of the collaboration, will run the day-to-day activities of the program, which includes student workshops, seminars, and leverage the expertise to mentor the students. Students utilizing the platform will become interactive by communicating with each other, and delve into the sampling and active consumption of S&T content, including Cloud, Big Data, etc. through the usage of gamification tools and AI/ML components.

The programme – ‘Engage With Science’ will have students engaging actively with schools, shoot interactive programmes in the school premise, provide windows of recognition, and liberty to select teachers of S&T subjects. India Science channel will air the programmes and create a fan following and community of teachers and schools.