Musical Mimicry to Learn Audio Processing ProjectBased Learning (PBL) is widely used to promote deep learning, enhance critical thinking, help students create, build and critically evaluate design solutions to a variety of problems. eYantra is an initiative by IIT Bombay that conducts an annual eYantra Robotics Competition (eYRC) for college students. Teams who qualify selection test compete over a period of five months. 208 such teams comprising 832 students were alloted one of the themes. A theme may be regarded as a hardware MOOC where skills get taught through a singleplayer gaming paradigm. This paper describes the methodology implemented in the 7th edition (eYRC2018), where we designed a theme based on Audio processing and Machine Learning. An important contribution has been to show how to design a scalable theme by using automatic evaluation that made it unique compared to other themes. This paper outlines the tasks designed for the competition and describes how technology can support students as they work on a theme so that motivation and thoughts are sustained. We then analyze the effectiveness of our approach based on the performance of teams.

A LearnablebyDesign (LEAD) Model for Designing Experiments for Computer Science Labs India graduates 1.5 million engineering students every year, majority of them from its Tier 2 and Tier 3 colleges where there is severe shortage of qualified faculty and lab infrastructure, and where English is second or third language for most students. To provide affordable virtual laboratories to these engineering colleges, Government of India runs the Virtual Labs project with a select set of participating institutions to create virtual labs required for entire engineering student population of India. The program suffers from two problems: 1) lack of focus on pedagogy and learnability of labs being created, and 2) little ability to scale to more teachers and subject matter experts to produce labs aligned to local contexts. This paper presents a model (LEAD model) for the design of virtual labs for a data structures and algorithms course in computer science and is intended to address the problems stated above. The model encodes the principles of learning in the design and structure of an experiment so that labs can be learnable by design. The model is based on constructivist theory of learning. It uses Bloomu0027s Taxonomy for defining learning objectives and applies Merrillu0027s first principles and Gagneu0027s 9 events of instruction as instructional design methodologies. To ensure tasks in an experiment indeed aid learning, the model requires a mapping between tasks and learning principles to be created and published along with the experiment. The model uses a pedagogy that lays strong emphasis on conceptual understanding without the use of code or program. To demonstrate the efficacy of this model, we present the data analysis of the feedback from early users of one the experiments. Even though limited in scope, data shows that experiments built using LEAD model can aid understanding for the students.