After the Minister of Education has announced that IITs and NITs will teach engineering courses in regional languages from the next academic session, the IIT-Kharagpur director Virendra K Tewari said that it is about time that higher education institutes equip themselves with facilities and processes to adapt to this new approach. Considering students taking admissions at IITs and NITs come from diverse backgrounds and having different mother tongues, Tewari suggested that institutes should have a regional language hub at their campuses which facilitates bilingual teaching and multilingual educational resources for students. Regional language hubs set up at technical institutes can bring together students requiring language aids and help in language-assisted learning, he suggested. Read | JEE toppers opt for Computer Science over Artificial Intelligence, here's why He also suggested that institutes can use technological aids for this purpose, "AI-based hearing aids which can effectively translate engineering and scientific teaching communication in regional modes in real-time" was one of the suggestions. "In a world taking pride in individualized attention, language barrier to the learning process needs to be resolved through policy development for regional language education," he wrote in a tweet from his personal account. Read | IIT-Kharagpur to set-up Centre of Excellence for Indian knowledge system "While the seminal decision has been taken to start technical education in the mother tongue, it is time that we equip ourselves with facilities and processes to adapt to this new approach in our segment of the higher education system," it added. Regional Language Hubs facilitating bilingual teaching, multilingual educational resources, AI-based realtime translation aids could be the solution to adopt regional languages in technical education. (1/n)@DrRPNishank @EduMinOfIndia @PMOIndia — Virendra K Tewari (@tewari_virendra) November 28, 2020 In a world taking pride in individualized attention, language barrier to the learning process needs to be resolved through policy development for regional language education. The decision of the @EduMinOfIndia & @DrRPNishank in this matter is highly laudable. (2/n) — Virendra K Tewari (@tewari_virendra) November 28, 2020 While the ministry is yet to announce the list of shortlisted IITs and NITs to deliver courses in regional language from 2021 onwards, Tewari has already suggested ways to implement the "new approach" in teaching. In an official statement, he said, "let language not be the barrier to learning".
