Lab Initiative
Vriddhi
An eight-week faculty development programme, run online by Vicharanashala — the Lab for Education Design at IIT Ropar.
Most faculty development ends with a certificate and a folder of slides. This one is organised around a different question: what will you do differently in your classroom next term?
Three of the four pillars ask you to produce something and put it in front of a peer. At the end you will have made something you can teach with — rather than watched someone else make it.
The four pillars
All four have to be met. The certificate issues on completion, not on attendance.
Video sessions with activities, on ViBe, at your own pace.
The synchronous hour with other faculty — discussion, not lecture.
Teaching cases. Take a side, argue it, then judge how others argued theirs.
One teaching artifact a colleague could pick up and run next term.
How a case runs
This is the part least like other FDPs, so it is worth showing. Every case runs in the same four moves.
400–650 words. It stands on its own — no clips to rewatch. It gives a teaching practice its full due, states the cost, then walks into a question with no right answer.
Small mixed groups on Zoom take sides and argue. One rule: before you rebut, restate the other person's point until they agree you got it right.
150–200 words: where you landed, the strongest argument against your own view, and one thing you will change in your own class.
Seven pairs of anonymised responses. For each, pick the one showing the more genuine grasp of the other side. Anonymous throughout, and nothing here is graded.
The steelman — arguing against yourself — is the point of the exercise. It is easy to hold a teaching position confidently for years without ever stating the best case against it.
Getting in
The NOC is one page. Two parts of it are your HOD’s rather than yours: that they have no objection, and that this time is feasible alongside your duties. Worth asking early.
Before you apply
Applications run on samagama.in — apply now and you will start on the opening date. After that there is no next intake to wait for: your eight weeks run from the day you begin.