To those who were an integral part of this journey...

Much of what you have seen and read in this portfolio may not have been possible without the help and support of some very important people in my personal and professional life, both past and present. To them I owe a huge debt of gratitude.

I would like to dedicate this E-Portfolio to my friend and dear colleague, Arindam Das, a very special person and my first “E-tutor” who introduced me to the mysteries and complexities of Word Star 4 and the virtual world in 1995. His stern advice to me was, – “When in doubt, go to ‘HELP’ or F1 and don’t attempt messing with any file that has an ‘.exe’ suffix!”

Thank you AD! I’ve come a long way down the E-path and I’ll owe you always for showing me the way.

My heartfelt thank you and acknowledgement to the Academic Management Team at Pearl for making it mandatory for me to do this programme, I promise I will never again question their decisions on Faculty Development.

To my colleagues in the B&T department – thank you - for all their help and support, encouragement and faith that I wouldn’t/couldn’t/shouldn’t stumble and fall or drop-out!

Thank you to Anuradha Modak – my course co-ordinator and support system for handling course work and administration while I struggled to balance work and study.

Thank you to my ever optimistic HOD Nandita Abraham – for putting up with my fears, feelings of inadequacies when the going got tough, cheering me on and making me believe in myself and being the ‘skilled tutor’ who I could observe and learn from.

Thank you to Shazia Amanat, for sharing her PDP portfolio from her PGCHE experience with the 2008 cohort and her copies of Moon, Biggs and Ramsden, and constantly rallying me on by saying that if she could complete her PGCHE, then I most certainly could!

A big thank you to my mentor Tarun Panwar for showing me the way, critiquing my work and advising me on how to balance my work with my learning.

To Tripti Gupta a big thank you for always having the time when panic attacks would strike and self doubts would plague me. Her gentle advice, meticulous eye for detail, constructive feedback and calm persona probably makes her one of the best mentors a student can ever have.

Thank you Preeti Dewan, my E-mentor for knowing me so well and challenging me to present my work in its present form, for spending her Sunday evening going through my work page by page and reverting with her comments so that I could submit my work on time.

Thank you to my course mates (especially Sunita Gupta) and learning set members for reliving ‘the agony and the ecstasy’ of being students again, of sharing tips and notes on writing the assignments, of patiently sitting as observers in classes, borrowing and sharing books and read materials and being part of a journey that has been fun and memorable.

A special thank you to my students for being such an important part of this journey - without them none of this would have been possible.

This acknowledgement would be incomplete without my grateful thanks to my family – my husband Vijay – for taking care of household chores whilst I ‘studied’, my sons Anirudh and Kunal, and daughter-in-law Namita for not demanding my time and attention, my Dad – for staying glued to the TV and keeping himself entertained, and most importantly to my sister, Semanti for long distance editorial and proof reading inputs from Mumbai on my assignments and believing in me always.

Thank you all.