BRIEF SPECIFICATIONS FOR WEB PORTAL FOR USRN

REGIONAL RESOURCE CENTRE (RRC) FOR SCHOOL PRACTITIONERS

Background

The University-School Resource Network (USRN) is a network actively engaged with

addressing issues of quality and equity in school education via enabling linkages with
institutes of higher education. Partners in USRN include Jawaharlal Nehru University,
the Central Institute of Education, the Institute of Home Economics and Gargi College
from Delhi University; Ankur Society for Alternatives in Education and Mirambika of Sri
Aurobindo Society.

Delhi University is hosting the USRN, Regional Resource Centre (RRC) which will
undertake the following activities:

• Organising professional workshops for teacher educators and school teachers and on
issues of curriculum, pedagogy, classroom diversity and subject content

• Instituting academic support through teacher fellowships.

• Facilitating the use of electronic communication amongst teacher-practitioners

and with the teacher educator and academic community by establishing a web-
portal to facilitate on-line communication, course transaction and networking

• Collating relevant curriculum materials, readings, books and Journals with specific
focus on bilingual materials within the Indian context to be made available on the
portal and in print

• Organising public lectures, screening of select films followed by discussions, on

themes related to the interest of network partners and their engagements.

Objectives

The objectives of the web-portal are to:

• Facilitate e-communication, course transaction and networking amongst teacher-

practitioners and with teacher educators and academic community

• Make available e-resources on elementary education, including books, research

papers, journal articles, research study reports, policy documents and commission
reports

• Develop an e-platform for researchers to share their work with academics and
practitioners in elementary education and enable discussion forums for knowledge
sharing and knowledge generation.

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Users

The planned users of the RRC web-portal as are follows:

• USRN members (~ 50)

• School teachers (initially 200, scaleable to 1,000)
• Educational professionals, policy makers and researchers (initially 50, scaleable to
200)
• Parents (initially 50, scaleable to 250)
• Children (initially 50, scaleable to 500)

All members will have basic word-processing and web-browsing skills. At least a third
can be expected to access the system from Internet cafes and dial-up connections. More
than half will be more fluent in Hindi than in English. The number of users is expected to
scale from an initial 400 to over 2,000 in a period of two years. Initially up to 150 users
may be estimated to be using the site simultaneously.

Content

A wide range of specialist and user-generated content is expected to be uploaded on the

site, this includes:

• Curriculum materials
• Readings, articles and research papers
• Teacher education material
• Teaching-Learning materials
• Presentations
• Podcast Lectures

These will typically be uploaded in PDF, MS-Word or MS-PowerPoint files. Images in

JPEG format, sound files in WAV or MP3 and film clips in MP4 format will also be
uploaded but in small numbers.

The initial uploads can be expected to be of the order of 50MB that could scale to 200
MB over two years. Downloads of the order of 20 MB per day can be expected that could
scale to 40 MB per day over two years.

User-generated content will be subject to expert scrutiny before/after it is uploaded to

maintain site quality and integrity.

Functionality and Proposed Services

The Web-portal will provide following interactive functions:

• Library resource such as readings on elementary education, including books,

research papers, journal articles, research study reports, policy documents and

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 commission reports. A panel of academics from across different disciplines will
ensure that the content is authentic, relevant and up-to-date. Efforts will be made to
make readings available in Hindi as well.

• A platform for researchers to share their work with academics and practitioners in
elementary education. It will also invite teacher educators and student-teachers to
share materials generated during pre-service training, such as reports of projects
undertaken by student-teachers during pre-service training.

• Discussion forums for knowledge sharing and knowledge generation on key issues
and concerns between the various stakeholders in elementary education, teachers,
student-teachers, teacher educators and other academics.

• A separate Q&A forum to seek answers to specific queries which may be related to a
particular concept; a reading; a pedagogic approach or any classroom concern with
regard to the textbook, children’s errors or issues of discipline and peer interaction.

• A calendar of forthcoming events, including film screenings, public lectures and

workshops organized by the RRC; meetings, sharing sessions, workshops etc
organized by each of the partner organizations of the USRN.

• E-mail accounts for member users to facilitate interaction. This facility can be
extended to the larger community as the network widens and demands increase.

The proposed services on the portal are therefore:

• Content management by experts/management team

• User uploads in various specified file formats
• User download in various specified file formats
• Podcasting
• E-mail and listserv
• Threaded discussion forums, that are scaleable and whose management can be
devolved
• Online Chat
• Relevant News services via RRC feed
• Calendar and appointment services
• Expert mediated Q&A
• User profiling and Groups
• Push technology for alerts, news and next
• Site-wide search, including in side text, PDF and image documents
• Tracking User Demographics
• Online Help

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Software Platform

The web portal should ideally be supported on an open-source OS, database and Web 2.0
platform, that is database-driven, scaleable, stable, secure, capable of being hosted on a
shared/independent server and managed remotely by a team that has limited IT skills at
low operations and transaction costs.

The front-end will be UNICODE compliant and be able of bilingual (English and Hindi)
content generation and querying. The portal should be optimised for IE 6/7 browsers.

Documentation

Full documentation of the portal implementation and features will be executed via an on-
line bilingual help and an off-line manual, a week in advance of the user training.

Training & Technical Support

The vendor will provide hands-on training to the management team, provide technical
support for content and site management, and train at least two persons to become
proficient webmasters. In addition the vendor will conduct half-day training sessions for
up to 250 users over a period of six months at locations and dates that are mutually
agreeable to the portal management. The vendor will also assist in the choice of hosting
services, domain registration and other management support that may be required from
time to time.

Time Frame

The web-portal will need to be developed and beta-tested in two months. Commissioned
with initial content in four to six weeks. Maintained and handed over to the designated
management team in a further six months along with trained of designated users.
Technical support will be provided for a period of one year from commissioning and can
be extended annually based on performance.

Copyright & Code

All content, code and copyrights relating to the website will vest with the RRC.

Qualified Agencies

Forms or teams that can demonstrate successful execution of content and user-driven
web-sites, with similar features and the competence to execute to budget and time
constraints may present a technical proposal (up to six pages) with details of approach,
features, technology and a budget to include costs against professional fees, costs for
training technical staff and users, costs for domain name and web hosting charges, costs
for managing web portal and technical support.

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Please submit detailed proposals in hard copy and soft copy with all stipulated
requirements definitely by 30th June 2007, at the following address:

Professor Poonam Batra

Co-ordinator,
Regional Resource Centre for Elementary Education (RRC)
University-School Resource Network-Delhi University (USRN-DU)
Room 106, Central Institute of Education Annex
Academic Research Centre
University of Delhi
Delhi 110 007

Phone: 27667434
Email: usrn.du@gmail.com