Mr. Sumit Kumar and Mr. Ramkrishna Reddy, attended the One Week ISTE–AICTE Short Term Training Program titled “Unlocking Gen AI: Concepts, Tools & Research-Driven Applications” held from 24th to 28th November 2025, organized by the Department of Computer Engineering, Don Bosco College of Engineering, Goa, in collaboration with the Directorate of Higher Education and Goa State Higher Education Council. The program opened with a formal inauguration ceremony, graced by Shri Bhushan K. Savoikar, Director of DHE, and Dr. Niyan Marchon, Program Director, TLET, GSHEC. The dignitaries highlighted the critical need for faculty readiness in adopting Generative AI responsibly, especially in teaching, research, and academic innovation.
The technical sessions across the week were thoughtfully structured and academically enriching. On Day 1, Ms. Ruby Mathew delivered an excellent overview of the evolution from rule-based AI to agentic AI systems. Her sessions provided deep insights into tokenization, attention mechanisms, the transformer architecture, and cognitive modes of LLMs. Practical activities on prompt construction, chunking strategies, and RAG-based retrieval enhanced my understanding of how GenAI systems work internally. This foundation was crucial for the advanced sessions that followed.
Day 2 and Day 3 further explored agentic thinking, planning, orchestration with tools like AWS Bedrock Agents, and evaluation metrics, including factuality, latency, and task success rate. Hands-on workshops such as Vibe Coding, conducted by Mr. Kapil Nair, enabled participants to understand embeddings, vector operations, and code models in a highly applied manner. Mr. Saurabh Kanekar’s sessions on prompt observability, model comparison, hallucination detection, and multimodal generative AI were especially useful for teaching and research applications. His practical demonstrations of image, diagram, and poster generation using tools such as VEO3 and ComfyUI were directly relevant for classroom content creation and academic design work.
Day 4, led by Dr. Venkateswaran Mahadeva, focused on productivity applications of Generative AI, including Excel automation, document drafting, slide creation, and plagiarism detection. Tools such as Grammarly AI, Elicit, Turnitin, and ZeroGPT were demonstrated with clarity, helping us understand responsible usage in academic evaluation. These sessions aligned strongly with the brochure’s stated objectives of enhancing faculty competency in ethical, efficient, and innovative adoption of GenAI tools.
On Day 5, participants undertook a field visit to IFB-Verna, which added experiential value by showcasing real-world applications of AI in industry settings. The final technical component of the FDP was the capstone project, where participants worked in teams to design an end-to-end AI solution. This activity consolidated the week’s learning by integrating model selection, workflow design, prompting strategy, ethical considerations, and output evaluation. Presenting our solutions and receiving feedback enhanced both confidence and conceptual mastery.
The program concluded with a formal valedictory ceremony on 28th November 2025, where dignitaries and participants shared their reflections, and certificates were awarded to all eligible attendees in recognition of their successful completion of the FDP, adherence to attendance requirements, and active participation throughout the sessions. The ceremony was graced by Prof. (Dr.) Niyan Marchon, Program Director & Professor, Directorate of Higher Education, and Prof. (Dr.) Mahesh Majik, Professor, Research Development & Innovation, Directorate of Higher Education, who served as Special Guests and Judges for the Capstone Presentations. The event also featured the presence of special invitees Dr. Andrew D’Souza and Prof. Vasant Narulkar. In his address, Prof. (Dr.) Niyan Marchon encouraged educators to embrace AI-driven transformation and foster innovation within academic ecosystems. Prof. (Dr.) Mahesh Majik commended the quality of the capstone projects and motivated participants to pursue interdisciplinary research and meaningful scholarly contributions.
Overall, this FDP significantly enriched my academic, pedagogical, and research capabilities. It equipped me with practical strategies to incorporate Generative AI into curriculum design, student engagement, assessment practices, and academic productivity. The training has strengthened our abilities to guide students and colleagues in adopting AI responsibly and effectively.
Expected Outcome: To develop the ability to embrace AI responsibly, progressively, and effectively within academic curricula, pedagogical practices, and research activities.
