Boot Camp at Marwadi University: Developing the next-generation VLabs

Recently, at Marwadi University, the first National Boot Camp was organised on the MHRD Government of India initiative ‘Virtual Labs’. Co-sponsored by GUJCOST, this boot camp was held on Feb 5-9 in co-ordination with Indian Institute of Technology- Bombay. This boot camp imparted a bunch of technical nitty-gritty through expert talks and sessions. While the primary sessions were all about the introduction and importance of Virtual Labs, the camp thereafter progressed into more technical rounds. Let us have a quick look at the highlights of this boot camp organised at Marwadi University.

Day 1 at the Boot Camp, Marwadi University

Mr Pushpdeep Mishra began with the introductory session and elaborated on the aspects of community efforts, labs development, source code on GitLab and Virtual Lab Development workshops in Pune and Vadodara. In the next sessions, Dr Y. P. Kosta, the Provost of Marwadi University in Rajkot, spoke about the technological wonders in his welcome address. The post-lunch sessions covered the topics such as integration of Virtual Labs in the universities, VLabs for Cloud, efficient learning with VLabs, the community efforts and IIT Bombay’s contribution to this initiative.

Day 2 & 3 at the Boot Camp, Marwadi University

The second and third days at the Boot Camp held at Marwadi University covered more technicalities about the Virtual Labs. Various professors of this Rajkot university spoke about the aspects of the development of VLab handout, design tasks, activity schedules, various learning approaches in VLab designs, motivation to build VLabs and its interface explanations. In addition to this, the software-related topics were also covered by the speakers. HTML, Stylesheet, JavaScript, HTML flow control, data types, and conversions are to name a few. The third day was much about circuit design, mathematical simulation, and instructional strategy.

Day 4 & 5 at the Boot Camp, Marwadi University

On the fourth day of this boot camp at Marwadi University, the more emphasis was given on practical execution of the projects. The requirements and pitfalls of Virtual Labs were discussed upon. The efforts of faculty members and students were appreciated for staying on their toes to shape up the VLabs. The last day was more focused on completing the VLab setup and other essential fundamentals of how to use and design the simulators.


This VLabs Boot Camp at one of the best universities in Gujarat was first in India and hence, it also got the electronic media coverage by AbTak and Hello Saurashtra.