The language club Linguista! conducted recruitments for its core team of moderators who play an active role in organizing events and encouragers who assist novice learners for the role. The recruitment process was conducted from February 6-10 online.

The Bootstrap session featured interactions on technical, social responsibility and personality development topics. Dr. Keshavan B K, Dean Engineering, Guest of Honour gave the welcome speech and advised the students to work on inter-disciplinary projects. Dr. K S Sridhar, Registrar, PESU and Dean, Placements presided over the function. He advised the students to consider their inception as a countdown and not the beginning of making a great career. Dr. Veena S, Chairperson, Dept. of Computer Applications, briefed about the 3-day Bootstrap activity. Prof. CNR Rao Scholarships and Prof. MRD Scholarships were awarded to the program toppers of the MCA 2020. Mr. Manish Singh, Founder and CEO, Innovators Bay Technologies, alumnus of PES and chief guest of the event spoke about the technology trends and how the curriculum would help the freshers in making a better career. He also stressed upon innovation and at the same time, pursuing one’s hobbies. The event was followed by bridge course on computer fundamentals conducted by Mr. Santosh Katti, Asst. Prof., Dept. of Computer Applications which covered simple logic building skills, Algorithms and Flowcharts. It was followed by session on Academic Excellence – Motivation to Success, by a professional trainer Mr. Pramod Nataraj, from Disha, a NGO that provides training to students and faculty. He illustrated experimenting with truth. The sessions included Time Management, Stress Management, physical activities and interactions leading to academic excellence and motivational thoughts. The second day of the Bootstrap event included a bridge-course on Data- Structures using C, by Dr. Lekha, Assoc. Prof., Dept. of Computer Applications. It was followed by a visit to an Ashram, Sawan Durbar, off Uttarahalli-Kengeri Road, Bengaluru. The inmates of the Ashram conducted a session on Values of life and demonstrated the concept of service. A group of students were made to till the land for harvesting the rain water and plantation. Another group of students assisted construction of the road using mud and jelly stones. Another group of students cemented the water leakages in the water passages. The students were introduced to honey bee cultivation and the honey extraction process. A workshop on building and hosting online resume was conducted by senior students Mr. Atishay Jain, Ms. Soundarya J and Mr. Tushar Ankit. The students were introduced to web hosting technologies and WordPress. The third day of the Bootstrap activity started with bridge-courses on Data Structures using C, conducted by Dr. Lekha and Introduction to Operating Systems”, by Dr. Thenmozhi, Assoc. Prof., Dept. of Computer Applications. The motivational session Mr. Veerendra R. Sachin, a Corporate Trainer Beyond all limits touched upon preparation for placements and confidence building. He also spoke about ethics during interviews, Team and Time Management and Dreaming big. In conclusion he said, “thinking out of the box and hard work, can make anyone an entrepreneur”. Students, Mr. Siddharth and Ms. Suhruta conducted an IT- Quiz on Kahoot platform. Mr. Parikshit and Mr.Pallav conducted a workshop on Computer Hardware assembly and laptop upgrading challenges. The Department of Computer Applications organised the Bootstrap program for the fresh batch of students of MCA program on November 25, 2021.

Widespread awareness about the issues facing the environment among the students came to the fore with their enthusiastic participation in contests with the theme of Care Nature - Nature Cares. The contests in painting, photography, sketching, poetry also covered singing, slogan writing and poster making. The Department of MCA organised the contests to celebrate the World Environment Day on June 5, 2021.

The workshop introduced the students to building an application using Node.JS, Angular.JS, Express and MongoDB. The workshop also touched upon security and best practices. The workshop started with the basics of Javascript, followed by programming the front-end and back-end design. It included cloud Database connectivity using MongoDB. The interactive workshop was conducted by Mr. Ravi, Engineering Manager, Solutions Engineer and Mr. Aman and Mr. Eyad, Software Developers at Meltwater and alumni of MCA. The Department of Master of Computer Applications (MCA) organised the day long online workshop for its final year students on Aug 29, 2020.

The International Yoga Day was celebrated at PES University in virtual mode. Over 60 yoga enthusiasts participated online on a video platform, some of them were joined by family members. A demo video was shared with the registered participants before the event. 21 Surya-Namaskaras each comprising 12 asanas were followed by 10 minutes of Shavaasana. Mr. Santosh Katti and Ms. Deepthi, Asst. Professors from the Department of MCA, anchored the event. The event hosted by the Department of MCA was held on June 21, International Yoga Day.

The exponential increase in the distribution and interactivity of multimedia content expects the students of computer applications to update themselves on the developments in networking technologies. The speaker, Mr. Manakamana Mishra made the students of MCA aware of the importance of Networking in academics and how it is helpful in industry. He highlighted the necessity and significance of how the other courses like Data structures, Computer Architecture, Analysis and Design of Algorithms are interlinked. He touched upon the usage of linked list, tree structures, programming skills and networking concepts in real world network applications. The standards of various protocols, he said, across vendors are important to be interoperable. He illustrated a simple problem where a million nodes are connected and the demand was to see that the network never goes down for more than a second. Reducing the down time from 7 seconds to 1 second was a great challenge as he recounted. The Cisco team worked on the underlying data-structure and reduced the downtime. He advised students to practice reading, participate in IETF interactions, comment and suggest ideas at Quagga and present novel ideas for RFC. Answering the queries of students, he spoke about how hands-on knowledge and expertise is more important than mere certifications. He also asked the students to explore more on Machine Reasoning, which is a deterministic approach. He shared insights about Cloud Networking and Cisco Silicon One as requested by the attendees and assured the students of assisting them in their projects and proposals. The session was conducted on CISCO WebEx platform. Mr. Manakamana Mishra, Technical Leader at Cisco, SanJose, USA is an alumnus of PES from the MCA programme. He has been with Cisco for over a decade and presently works on Routing. Manakamana has to his credit 2 patents and 20 patents applications and more than 10 papers with IETF. The department of MCA organised the live streaming of Guest Lecture on May 1, 2020.

Amidst lockdown students of the second and fourth semester of the MCA programme took up the challenge of coming up with Java based solutions in less than four hours. The contesting teams in Javathon 2020, interacted with the mentors on the university’s Impartus video platform on text and audio chat and desktop sharing. Amrutha D won the first prize followed by Zain Baig in the Convert IP challenge. Vishal Prajapat won the first prize followed by Rahul Rajpoot in Resistor Resistance. The event was organised under the guidance of faculty member Mr. Santosh Katti, who also mentored the teams along with other members Ms. Archana and Ms. Deepti. JAVATHON-2020 which was set up on Hackerrank platform and held on April 16, 2020 was conducted smoothly and drew enthusiastic participation amidst the lockdown and interaction challenges. The response has encouraged the students and organising faculty to conduct more such events at the state and national levels.

Students got an opportunity to understand an expert’s perspective on software quality. Mr. V Mani who leads the Metrics team in IBM Quality shared his insights about Software Quality drawing on his deep expertise in process models. He shared insights about software quality definition and assurance, quality metrics, and defect management. The online guest lecture organised by the department of MCA was held on April 9, 2020.

The Department of MCA, during the time of Nation-wide lockdown, has shown a gesture of one-ness. All the staff members and students along with their family members, participated in the call made by our Prime Minister Modiji, to light up lamps/Diyas on 5th April 2020 at 9 pm for 9 minutes.

In the time of social-distancing, all the staff members, students and their family members came together on the digital platform to express their gratitude towards the Doctors for their selfless service in this pandemic season.

The 25 th anniversary of Uday Shankar Ballet and Dance Festival was organised by Shruthi Mandal at Jaipur, Rajasthan, on 26 th February 2020. The event was organised in memory of Sri. Uday Shankar, the legend of Indian Dance and choreographer, Padma Vibhushan awardee and Sangeet Nataka Akademi award winner. It is our pride to announce that, Ms. Chaitra, from 2 nd semester MCA, presented her Kuchipudi dance performance during the event, representing Shambhavi School of Dance Ensemble. Ms. Chaitra is practicing the art for 15 years.

“Time and tide wait for none”, as the saying goes, the students of MCA decided to prove it wrong. It was a new activity on campus that invited students to capture the time and freeze it in the memory lanes of the Department of MCA.

As part of the Extended week day activity, the department had organized the Photography contest. A large number of students came up with their DSLR hanging around to participate. Many of them wanted to try with their mobile cameras. A few of them had even got additional lens to fit in to their mobile camera for the best possible shot.

The theme given to the students for the Photography contest was “The Beginning”. From the large number of photos received, a few were shortlisted. The best two photographs were selected for the top two positions. A consolation prize was also declared which had shared the same number of points.

To revive the memories of childhood and enjoy traditional games, the department of MCA organised inter semester Lagori games. The second semester team emerged as the winners in the final game held at PESU RR campus on Feb 11, 2020.

Rasa Prashne 2019, quiz program for school children from Vajarahalli, Srinagar, Veerabhadranagar, Tataguni, Muthurayanagar was organised by the students in the Biotechnology department. Three rounds of quiz were conducted on general knowledge, literature and sports and entertainment. The winners were felicitated with books and gifts. The program was held on the campus on Jan 18, 2020.

The Department of MCA organised a one-day Python workshop for its 4th semester students in association with BITES. The theme of the workshop was “Problem Solving Sessions”. Dr. C P Ravi Kumar, Director, Talent Acquisition, Texas Instruments, Bengaluru, also having worked as Professor at IIT Delhi and IIT Chennai, was the resource person. Dr. Ravi Kumar started the sessions by solving simple mathematical problems. He moved on to working with Lists and various methods on Lists. He raised the real time problems and also provided alternate ways of finding solutions. The handling of Sets and Dictionaries were also made simple to use and implement, deriving at solutions to complex problems. The students also enjoyed working with Functions, Files and Classes which was made easy to understand by Dr. Ravi Kumar. Throughout his sessions, he also highlighted about the significance of indentation in coding, nomenclature of identifiers, purpose of using new editors and more. In the concluding session, he suggested some tips for getting ready for the industry, being open for learning newer technologies, becoming curious for enhancing one’s knowledge and what the industry expects from interns. In a nut-shell, all the students had a great learning experience which also boosted their confidence to work on Python. Dr. K N B Murthy, Vice-Chancellor, PES University and Chairman BITES, gave away the memento to the Guest and also thanked the Dept. of MCA for conducting regular workshops in the benefit of students.

The department of MCA, PES University, organised the 7th CAC, Celebrities and Celebrations, in association with BITES, at the MCA Seminar Hall, PES University, RR Campus, on 7th December 2019. The celebrity of the month was Prof. Naom Chomsky, the living legend and the Father of modern linguistics. Dr. Kavi Mahesh, Director, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Dharwad, was the speaker of the day. Dr. Lekha, Professor from the department of Computer Applications welcomed the guests and introduced the speaker. Dr. Kavi Mahesh, started with the Chomsky’s journey of understanding human language and its varieties. He mentioned about Chomsky’s idea of Cognitive learning. He further expressed his views of learning languages among human beings and animals. The snippet of a parrot responding to a human verbally, became a food for thought to discourse on capacities and capabilities of human and animal learning languages. He also highlighted about the cognitive learning study based on Nature Vs Nurture. He went on to explain how Chomsky analysed the concept to conclude that both have an impact on language learning. He also put forward the popular theory of Prof. Naom Chomsky, which believes, there is one Universal language which follows basic principles and parameters. The study on Universal language theory, took transitions based on rules and certain exceptions. He also clearly explained the Chomsky hierarchy of cognitive learning with a clear distinction between context free and context sensitive languages. Mr. Santosh Katti, Professor from department of Computer Applications gave away the vote of thanks. Dr. KNB Murthy, Vice-Chancellor, PES University and Chairman, BITES, along with Prof. Chennabassppa, Director, SIT Tumkur, and former Chairman, BITES, handed over the token of appreciation to the distinguished speaker, Dr. Kavi Mahesh.

Dr. Rekha Srinivasan delivered a talk on designing active learning classroom (ALC) for Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM), a bridge between teaching and learning. She is James S. Swinehart Professorial Teaching Fellow and Senior Instructor in the Department of Chemistry at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), Cleveland, USA. Dr Rekha Srinivasan spoke about integrating active learning strategies in the classroom, using some common and simple active learning strategies in teaching and instructional technologies to support the use of active learning and maintaining the student-attention-span. Dr. Rekha Srinivasan mentioned that pursuit of active research enhances the teachers’ ability to teach effectively bringing out the application areas of the lessons learnt. She circulated a learning style questionnaire, to find out what kind of learner each of them was. She explained that there were three types of learners – audio learners, visual learners and kinesthetic learners. She mentioned that it is important to be aware that in a classroom there will be all the three types of learners and the instruction should cater to all the types to keep the whole class lively and involved. She noted that this can be achieved with a proper mix of auditory instructions, visuals and hands on exercises. Dr Rekha Srinivasan also made all the participants to answer a classroom teaching style survey to know what kind of teacher they were: Traditional (teacher centered), Transitional (teacher guided), Transitional (student influenced), Reformed (student centered). This led to an introspection on the type of teacher each one was. She reiterated that each and every type was acceptable and reflected the type of teaching outlook. Dr. Rekha Srinivasan spoke about new learning techniques such as Concept Maps, Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) Classes and JiTT which could enhance the classroom experience. She also spoke about flipped and hybrid classrooms, and the need to involve the students in group activities to enhance the learning outcomes. She stressed on the need for infrastructural and technological support to support the new age teaching requirements.

The participants in the workshop were inspired to come up with innovative solutions to the prevailing social problems. The exercise helped them overcome the fear of public speaking, hone interviewing skills, try divergent thinking, and work as a team. Mr. Hemanth Gorur, Ms. Nisary Mahesh and Mr. Sunil from Bumblebee academy shared insights about the 5 phases of Design thinking: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. Every team came up with creative ideas and solutions and prototypes to prove their realistic approach to solving social problems. Dr. KNB Murthy, Chairman, BITES and Vice-Chancellor, PES University, encouraged the students to carry their enthusiasm to aim higher in their career. The department of MCA in association with BITES, Board for IT Education Standards organized the 3-day workshop on Design Thinking for MCA students from Nov 11 to 13, 2019.

Students of MCA program had two days of enriching sessions that prepared them for the academic rigour ahead by refreshing their approach to learning. The participants found the visit to Ravishankar Ashram, personality development sessions, group discussions, Yoga and quiz useful in support and direction for their regular learning. The program was organised by the Department of Computer Applications on Sept 20-21, 2019.

The program to identify Leads for the India Mobile Congress 2019 was hosted by the MCA department in association with Qogno Solutions. The 4 day highly interactive program drew participants from across colleges in Bangalore. Each day featured sessions conducted by corporate executives; Mr. Avijeet Dutta, Managing Partner India, TenX2, Mr. Amitabh Nag, Head, Digital India, HP, Mr. Kuttappa, Vice-President, ARM India, Ms. Priya, Vice-President, IDECK. They interacted with the students on topics of 5G technologies, future technological projects and Smart cities. They shared insights about the working of start-ups and its requirements. Mr. Gururaj Nayak, co-founder and CEO, Qogno solutions addressed the students and explained how students would gain from the exposure and opportunities at IMC 2019. Qogno solutions and PES University co-sponsored the program and expenses including travel to New Delhi, for the Leads and a few faculty members. The students are excited to fly to Delhi and be at the forefront of IMC 2019 expo and interact with delegates from leading global companies.

A team of students undertook the initiative of raising awareness about voting. They designed and displayed posters on importance of voting and spoke about the theme. The team helped senior citizens of Little Sisters of the Poor old-age home reach their respective voting booth on the day of election, April 18 and escorted them back after voting. Dr M R Doreswamy praised the efforts of the students of MCA and said, “Our students are like role models for the youth in executing their responsibilities in their own capacity.”

Celebrating the spirit of innovation unleashed by RaspberryPi, the one day event, Pi-DEA featured interesting activities under Events like Pi-Quiz, Pi-Puzzle, Pi-Paint, Pi-Code, Pi-Game and Show-Pi. The online Pi-Quiz attracted worldwide participation. The “init” club of MCA department collaborated with the official Raspberry Pi clubs-Code-Club; CoderDojo for this event held on Mar 14, 2019.

Students got an opportunity to participate in the Akshaya Patra program and attend workshop on Mind and Body.At Gurukula Vidya Peeta, they distributed books, clothes, and stationery and basic coaching in mathematics was conducted by the faculty.Students participated in the activity on September 29, 2018 as part of the Boot Strap program of department of computer applications.