
Syaamantak Das
Assistant Professor,
Interdisciplinary program in Educational Technology,
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India
About
Prof. Syaamantak Das is currently working as Assistant Professor in the interdisciplinary program (IDP) in Educational Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay ( ET@IITB), Mumbai, India. Prof. Das received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Information Analysis of Educational Texts from the Centre for Educational Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur after completing his Masters in the field of Computer Science from the National Institute of Technology Durgapur and the National Institute of Technical Teachers’ Training and Research in Kolkata. After his Ph.D., he was with the Harris School of Public Policy, at the University of Chicago researching as a Data and Policy Summer Scholar in the field of Education Policy analyzing the impact of the “safe passage program” in Chicago city schools. Prior to this, he was associated with Piramal and WorldQuant. He is currently the Co-faculty-in-charge of the Website and Social Media Team, ET@IITB, and also the Faculty-coordinator for ET@IITB in TechConnect 2022 at TechFest.
Professional Memberships : ACM, SIGCHI
Detailed CV here.
Schedule Appointment
Experience
Position | Year |
---|---|
Assistant Professor, IDP In Educational Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay | April 2022 - present |
Data and Policy Summer Scholar (Educational Data Policy) Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago | Summer 2022 |
Business Analyst [Intern @ Text Data Team], OTC Products, Piramal Enterprises Ltd., Mumbai | October 2018 - December 2018 |
Senior Research Fellow [Doctoral Research Scholar] , Centre for Educational Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur | Jan 2018 - March 2021 |
Summer Trainee WorldQuant LLC. | June 2018 - July 2018 |
Junior Research Fellow [Doctoral Research Scholar], Centre for Educational Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur | July 2015 - Dec 2017 |
Teaching Assistant [Ed-Tech Lab Course], Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, NITTTR Kolkata | Autumn Semester 2014 |
Community Service / Position of Responsibility
Position | Organization | Year |
---|---|---|
Associate editor and editorial board member | SN Social Sciences journal, Springer Nature | November 2021 - present |
Reviewer | 1. IEEE Access 2. Journal of Education, SAGE 3. Social Sciences, Springer Nature 4. Frontiers | 2019 - present |
Founding Secretary | IEEE Computer Society, Student Branch Chapter, IIT Kharagpur | January 2020 - October 2020 |
Departmental Representative | Research Scholar's Council, IIT Kharagpur | July 2019 - July 2020 |

School Pedagogy Assessment Research and Text Analytics (SPARTA) Research Group
We are a newly formed research group in IDP in Educational Technology, IIT Bombay started in May 2022. Our research focuses on human-centered Artificial Intelligence that enhances human capabilities, understands and anticipates an individual’s needs, especially with context to learning. We work with researchers from different disciplines (e.g. Learning Analytics, Information Retrieval) to build quality educational products that help learners to succeed in their quest for learning. The logo symbolizes 'Infinite Syntropy'- reflecting a research journey (the continuous transformation from chaos to a ordered structure).Research Group Website - https://github.com/SPARTA-Research-Group-ET-IITBBroad Research Area:Cognitively informed Artificial Intelligence for Learning OptimizationAnalyzing insights from human perception of information from text data (e.g. how people learn, remember, and make decisions based on textual information) into the design and development of intelligent tools to support learning.Conferences where our research got accepted: ACM Intelligent User Interfaces, Educational Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence in Education.
Our Research Projects
Long-term Research Projects: (Ideally for Ph.D. candidates)Better Textbook Initiative: This is a comprehensive project to improve and optimize learner experience while interacting with a textbook. Currently project is sub-divided into three major goals:
1. Designing an 'phygital' interactive intelligent platform to combine digital advantages of interactions in physical textbooks.
2. Creating cognitively informed questions based on user interaction with learning materials (textbooks).
3. Designing and developing a supportive intelligent conversational tool using learner-interaction data [Project domain: Conversational Artificial Intelligence]Short term Developmental Projects1. Design and Development of a No-code AI Tech Stack for Systematic Literature Review
Short-term Research Projects:
Designing an immersive collaborative active learning experience through Phygital textbooks
[Project domain: Smart textbooks, Phygital textbooks]Identifying learner deficiency in conceptual understanding while answering questions
[Project domain: Question answer generation from restricted and limited search space]
Collaboration Projects
Cognitive level Analysis of tenth standard board examination assessment questions for STEM subjects in India — June 2022 - July 2022.
Project domain: School Education, Assessment. Summer Research Project with IISER Pune
Sponsored Projects
Design and development of low-cost immersive technology enabled inclusive and accessible OER (open educational resources) textbooks — June 2022 - present.
Project domain: Smart textbooks. Sponsor: IRCC, IIT Bombay
Our Group Ethos
We must be battle ready. The moment we go out, we must be ready to face anything and everything the world may throw at us today, both good and bad.
If you found an interesting problem and haven't started solving it, be ready to read about it's solution in your next literature survey.
We want to be a “people first” research group that focuses on both the academic and personal growth of the members.
We do not expect you to know everything. We expect that you are trying to know.
We celebrate effort. We believe in giving effort till randomness favors us.
Discussions are always open and encouraged. And it can be beyond your current research topic. We talk, brainstorm, and sprint a lot. Our whiteboards are always full.
We expect ideas from you. No matter how small or ambitious it is. Tell us. We will hear you.
Lastly, it’s OK to have a bad day. There is always a tomorrow.
Team Members
Current Team Members
Sunny Prakash Prajapati (Ph.D. ET 2nd Year) - With a background in Product Engineering Design from IISc, Sunny’s research is focused on designing Interactext : an immersive collaborative active learning experience through Phygital textbooks. Research Area: Human-Computer Interaction, Collaborative Learning
Publications: Doctoral Consortium and Poster accepted in ACM IUI 2023. Download additional paper resources. Congratulations!
Scholarship/ Grants: Prime Minister Research Fellowship, Gary Marsden Travel Awards, ACM IUI Student Grants. Congratulations!Priya Lotlikar (Ph.D. ET 2nd Year) - Jointly with Prof. Sridhar Iyer. Priya is working on improving the cyber attack problem analysis skills.
Alumni
Anirban Roy Chowdhury and Nandagopal KS
(UG Intern from IISER Pune, June-July ‘22)
Anirban and Nandagopal worked on a comparative study using Bloom’s Taxonomy to evaluate the cognitive levels of secondary school STEM exam questions in Indian School Boards. This research study investigates the cognitive levels of the questions used for assessment and evaluation purposes in three national school board secondary school leaving examinations in STEM subjects, administered in Indian schools from 2011 to 2020. We used the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy to identify the cognitive levels of 3071 exam questions. The study addresses the gap in the current literature on the non-availability of a comparative study of national school board assessment practices in India. The study provides a comparative analysis of three English medium Indian school boards (ICSE, CBSE, and NIOS) by analyzing what areas/topics the board exams test and which ones they ignore. Based on this analysis we were able to identify trends present in boards/subjects in the 10th standard national level exams in India. This study will help school education stakeholders to get an insight into the cognitive level trend/patterns of assessment questions (preprint and dataset will be available soon). Anirban and Nandagopal are in 4th and 3rd year of a 5 year BS-MS program respectively.
Publications: Vijay augmented their Summer project work and it was accepted as a poster (paper link) in EDM 2023. Congrats Anirban and Nandagopal!
Scholarship/ Grants: Anirban received full Scholarship to attend EDM 2023! Congratulations!Pratik Poojari
(Graduate intern from Mumbai University, July - October ‘22 | Currently pursuing MS in Northeastern University)
Pratik contributed by developing an accessible plugin for the ET IITB website. This plugin will allow people with certain physical limitations to easily access all the information on the website. Pratik received MS offers in Data Science / Information Systems program at Syracause University and Northeastern respectively.Vijay Prakash (M.Tech. ET 2023 | Currently AI Engineer @ Industry)
Vijay developed a new format for multiple-choice questions which allows the learner to identify his/her learning deficiency based on the answer chosen. Research Area: Multiple choice questions, Assessments, and Question generation.
Publications:
Vijay augmented the Summer project work of IISER Pune interns and it was accepted as a poster in EDM 2023. Congratulations!
Vijay and Kartik developed Q-GENius: A GPT based modified MCQ generator for identifying learner deficiency. The research paper (paper link) of the project got accepted in AIED 2023 ! Congratulations!
Scholarship/ Grants: Vijay received full Scholarship to attend EDM 2023! Congratulations!Devanshu Saindane (M.Tech. ET 2023 | Currently Data Analyst @ Industry)
Devanshu designed Augmented Reality content enabled Biology learning app - iBioVARse, that can be accessed as a supplementary companion for physical textbooks. Research Area: Embedded Augmented Reality for physical textbooks.
Publications:
Devanshu's proposed system architecture design paper (link) (jointly with Sunny) of i-BioVARse app got accepted in Intelligent Textbooks Workshop track in AIED 2023. Congratulations!
Devanshu's paper about user study (jointly with Sunny) of i-BioVARse app got accepted in International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE). Congratulations!Kartikay Agrawal (IRCC intern Jan-June 2023 | Currently pursuing PhD @ Mehta Family School of DS and AI, IIT Guwahati)
Kartikey, having a background in Data Science and Mathematics from DU, will be working on Question Answer pair generation from user-defined limited search space. Research Area: Information Search, Question answer generation.
Publications:
Kartik's first paper is Q-GENius: A GPT based modified MCQ generator for identifying learner deficiency. The research paper of the project got accepted in AIED 2023 ! Congratulations!
Scholarship/ Grants: Kartikay received fully funded Ph.D. offer from IIT Guwahati - Mehta Family School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. Congratulations!
Courses offered
ET622 - Educational Text Data Analysis ( Autumn Semester 2022, 2023)
Understanding Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Policy making in the context of Education: An interdisciplinary perspective
(IIT Bombay International Winter School Course 2022)ET 614 - Instructional Systems Design (Spring Semester 2023)
Jointly with Prof. Sridhar IyerIntroduction to No-Code Artificial Intelligence - Asian Universities Alliance Overseas Study Program (Summer 2023)
ET606 - Educational Tools Lab ( Autumn Semester 2023)
Our Outreach Program

Project STORIES (Structured Tutorials and Organized Resources for Independent Extensive Studies)
Project STORIES is all about the supporting the journey of the 'last mile learner'. Project STORIES was formed with the idea of providing world-class learning opportunities at no cost to anyone working to improve their lives. This project currently curates a generic curriculum and study timetable for popular topics mostly related to undergraduate STEM students interested in technical research roles in the future. The students can utilize the proposed curriculum and study timetable for each course and can use the reference content for independent study. The generic curriculum contains free and publicly available content which allows the learners to understand the concepts, learn the tools, and get skilled to embark on their journey.
Disclaimer: Project STORIES doesn't collect any financial support through any means. It's a pro bono personal social responsibility initiative.
Open Resources:Books:
Design for Learning - A brief introduction to instructional text.
Doing Research: A New Researcher’s Guide - Describes how to conceptualize, conduct, and communicate research in education. Focuses on developing a conceptual understanding of the research process. Informs beginning and early-career researchers about the importance of performing solid, legitimate research.
Theoretical and Practical Advances in Computer-based Educational Measurement - Presents theoretical and practical innovations in educational measurement. Builds upon earlier findings and brings some of the latest developments in several important fields. A state of the art work written by experiences authors. Introduces a variety of both psychometrical and educational data mining approaches.MasterClass for EdTech Society- Using No-Code Artificial Intelligence tools for Systematic Literature Review
Contact Us
We are looking for: Anyone who is interested in joining us. If you are unsure what to do and how to do it, come and meet us at the address below. We can have a cup of coffee together :-)Prof. Syaamantak Das’s office,
Faculty Cabins,
Interdisciplinary program in Educational Technology,
Old CESE Building (beside Rahul Bajaj Centre / Opposite VMCC)
IIT Bombay, Mumbai 400076
शुभम भवतु (May all that happens to you be good to you)
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