The Institutions

The Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur is located in the city of Kanpur in the State of Uttar Pradesh, India. IIT-K is one of the oldest IITs that were established in post-raj India under the vision of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

The Commonwealth of Learning is located in Vancouver, Canada. It operates as an international non-government organization dedicated to supporting the 53 states that form the Commonwealth. In this context COL functions to advance the use of open and distance learning for all levels of education and in formal and non-formal settings. It provides technical and policy advice to governments and higher education institutions, and other entities that have an interest or organizational focus on utilizing open and distance learning to widen educational opportunities, particularly to underserved populations.

The Technical Education Quality Improvement Program (TEQIP) is part of the Ministry of Human Resource Development of the Government of India. TEQIP operates to advance technical education in India with particular focus on engineering. It has programs running in approximately 200 institutions across the country. The partnership between TEQIP and IIT, Kanpur was organized through the Knowledge Incubation for TEQIP initiative (KIT). As indicated on the KIT website, the primary goal of the initiative is to, “provide all the teachers (and aspiring ones) the right support to grow intellectually” (KIT, 2014).