School of Agriculture, Uttaranchal University, Dehradun, organized a seven-day online Faculty Development Programme on “Digital Transformation in Agricultural Education: Challenges, Opportunities and Future Directions.” The FDP aimed to enhance faculty competencies in using digital technologies and artificial intelligence for teaching, assessment, curriculum development, and agricultural research. A total of 117 participants, including faculty members of SOA and other institutions, scientists, researchers, and research scholars from across the country, participated. The programme was inaugurated by Prof. (Dr.) Rajesh Bahuguna, Hon’ble Pro-Vice Chancellor, who emphasized that AI is no longer a technology of the future but an essential requirement of the present education system.
Among the external expert speakers, Prof. (Dr.) A.K. Sharma (GBPUA&T) demonstrated AI-enabled platforms like Plantix for crop disease diagnosis and management. Dr. Prashant K. (NIT, Jalandhar) discussed the scope of the Metaverse in agricultural education. Dr. Vipin K. (VCSGU) explained AI tools for image analysis in forestry and agriculture. Dr. Santosh Kumar Yadav (GBPUA&T), Dr. Rajeev Ranjan Thakur (Central Agriculture University, Bihar), and Dr. Mahipal Singh Tomar (AMITY, Punjab) shared insights on predictive models and decision-support systems for crop planning, nutrient management, and farm-level decisions. Dr. Debashis Dash (CVRGU) demonstrated NotebookLM, Gamma, and Stitch AI for preparing lectures, presentations, and teaching materials.
From Uttaranchal University, Prof. (Dr.) Sonal Sharma and Dr. Atin Kumar demonstrated AI tools including NotebookLM, Elicit, Julius AI, Stitch, Google AI Studio, Claude, Consensus AI, Python AI, Mendeley, Figure Labs, and diagrams.net for research manuscript preparation. Prof. (Dr.) Rajesh Singh highlighted cloud computing, big data platforms, Kaggle, and online journal search tools. Prof. (Dr.) Ajay Singh emphasized research integrity, publication ethics, and plagiarism prevention using Turnitin. Prof. (Dr.) Rajendra Prasad explained prompting techniques for AI tools. Finally, Dr. Rajat Singh proposed the vote of thanks to all expert speakers, participants, and the organizing committee.
