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“We keep fine tuning our curriculum and we keep changing our pedagogies and we ensure that students get a lot of opportunities to get the best exposure possible with the legal profession,” says Dr. S. Shanthakumar, Director, Gujarat National Law University in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2022’ #ELSAGujarat #ELSAAhmedabad Would you like to highlight and give some light on both of the universities and the field which you represent? See, the National Law University is not something new, we are 18 years old and we have been doing pretty good and amongst all the national law universities we have, we are number five in the country and I think we are doing a good job and our alumni who are placed at every place so they speak volumes about the quality of teaching learning that happens at the National Law University. With respect to Gujarat Maritime University yes this is something unique this is the vision of our honourable prime minister that India being a peninsula with such a long coastline we should take advantage of the geographical characteristics of the country and his Sagarmala project and the vision 2030 with all these things we thought that we need to create a trained manpower for the maritime sector so that is why this Gujarat Maritime University was set up and this is just three years old and we are doing a good job. Currently we have a master’s program in maritime law as well as we offer management programs in port management and the shipping Logistics. How are we reimagining education especially in the sector of law so that the employability outcomes and upskilling happens? Yes, see being a National Law University we are really fortunate to get the best students of the country and that really helps us as teachers to give them what they actually deserve and we also constantly innovate and look into the future and find out what can make our students very competent who will be always in need by the recruiters globally. Therefore, we keep fine tuning our curriculum and we keep changing our pedagogies and we ensure that students get a lot of opportunities to get the best exposure possible with the legal profession. Apart from that lot of skilling opportunities that we provide to them especially the moot courts through which students learn advocacy, research and writing the written submissions. So, these things really help our students in becoming the best in the legal profession. As you know that the name of the event is New Normal Education Leadership Summit and Awards what does the word new normal stands for you? New Normal is like you know previously we were not so open to an online session but currently the acceptance level is almost 100 percent. Previously when we had a few lectures through Skype students were not quite interested and even our faculty members were not so keen in organizing some lectures through Skype that I’m talking about time before zoom and WebEx but now the situation is that now we feel connected globally because of technology so we find a lot of opportunities to get to the best resource persons from all the countries, getting into our classrooms through the use of this technology so this is something which is forced by covid on us and I think we have responded very well and we are taking advantage of this Blended learning which is currently the new normal. What is the outcome or what do we learn and experience from forums like this where the government representatives, private sectors players and the corporate are also there? This is a wonderful platform for all of us to interact because otherwise in a busy day, any day is a busy day for academic administrators so handling universities, handling campuses, handling students, parents and all these stakeholders. So, this is a new normal for us to come together and sit together and over a cup of coffee discuss the challenges which we all face collectively and therefore we can arrive at some common solutions like we can innovate some new solutions to face all these challenges not only by the challenges posed by covid but also by all the technological advancements that’s happening in the field of education what they call as edtech. So, with all these things I think this is a wonderful opportunity and this should be more frequent. I’m happy to share that we recently celebrated our one-year anniversary, so after one and a half year we feel really proud, any message would you like to give for ArdorComm Media Group? Yeah, so congratulations ArdorComm Media for completing one year and I wish you all the best and I wish that ArdorComm Media continues this venture and keeps creating this kind of opportunities for all of us and I feel that you should approach more and more universities and do this program inside the universities so that much more participation can be there. I think that will be a suggestion that I would want to give.  

“Along with the qualification they are getting real time industrial experience that makes them productive from day one and it is also giving the industry what they need,” says Prof. (Dr.) Avani Umatt, Provost, TeamLease Skills University, Vadodara in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2022’ #ELSAGujarat #ELSAAhmedabad We would like to have some more light on what TeamLease Skills University is actually doing? So, TeamLease Skills University is India’s first skills University and it was established as a public private partnership with the government of Gujarat and the motto of the university is putting India to work. So, what we are focusing on is making our students readily employable with the required skill sets that is required by the industry so we have a very close bond with the industry to understand their needs and to ensure that what we are giving as a part of education meets the needs of the industry. So, we basically focus on three E’s one is the education, education which will cater to the requirement of the domain skills and the practical skills that are required. Employability which is the major gap between education and employment so we focus on ensuring that the candidates get all the employability skills that are required to be readily absorbed and to be productive from day one and the third is employment to ensure that the candidates that have moved out from our University are employable and productive from day one. So, this is what we are working around and we work on a different model where we have a four classroom four qualification corridor where we look at the four classrooms is on campus, on-site, on job training and online and the four qualification that we look are, look at our certificate, diploma, advanced diploma and degree. We acknowledge that every candidate and we emphasize that every candidate goes through on job training to give them so that is one compulsory classroom so the rest of the programs may be offered in a combination of minimum of two or more classrooms where on job training is one of the mandatory classrooms and recognizing that we need to have a provision for lifelong learning. We look at a lot of upskilling also it is not only skilling but we’re also looking at the adult learner on the job who needs upskilling as well so we have a variety of models or variety of programs divided into our regular campus programs, work integrated learning programs and work-based learning programs. The work integrated learning program which forms a majority of our strength is focusing on the apprenticeship model where we have apprentices that are enrolled into higher education. So, along with the qualification they are getting real time industrial experience that makes them productive from day one and it is also giving the industry what they need, trained by the industry partially to ensure that their needs are met. As we have all gathered today in New Normal Education Leadership Summit and Awards, what does new normal for you stand? I think new normal is a word which has been coined after the pandemic but new normal is something that every institute, higher education institute and industry faces every day because of the changing technology, because of the pace at which industry is also changing the requirements are changing. Catering to the needs of the industry is what is the new normal. You have to accept that technology has become a major part of everybody’s life be it the student, be it the employer, be it any of the stakeholders of Education which I personally consider, the student the parent the industry the society, government all of these are the important stakeholders of education and society as a large. So, the New Normal doesn’t only affect a Higher Education Institute it also affects every single one of the stakeholders. So, you have to be in touch with reality understand what is happening in the outside world to incorporate it back into the education and to ensure that our youth is ready for the challenge that they are set out to face the moment they set step out of a sheltered education organization or institution into the real world. So, new normal is a changing every day. What has been the outcome of today’s symposium for you? I think this is a wonderful platform, ArdorComm Media has really taken pain to get the various stakeholders together to have good deliberations where we have been able to understand what other higher education institutes think, what challenges we face and when one or one Institute comes out with a possible solution then the same thing is replicated or can be taken up by other organizations without having to wait for them to face that difficulty. So, you are providing a lot of solutions, this platform has provided excellent networking for the various stakeholders and that is what is needed today. It’s not about now having your own ideas only it’s about being able to learn from other people’s experience and innovate to take your own organization to an elevated state. So, I think it’s a wonderful initiative and I’d like to congratulate the entire team on this initiative.  

“Time has come where we need to evolve, adapt the technology,” says Dr. Saurabh Shah, Provost (I/C) & Dean, School of Technology, GSFC University, Vadodara in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2022’ #ELSAGujarat #ELSAAhmedabad We welcome you in today’s forum, what are your takeaway from this? Thanks for the opportunity given and first of all please accept my heartiest congratulations for hosting such a grand event where it was a wonderful platform for all the leaders to share their experience and in spite being young but the way it was organized it’s commendable and it’s very apt like you talk about New Normal technology interventions and it’s a great opportunity for Ed Tech and Senior leaders to collaborate so it was wonderful experience. In fact a lot of learning and takeaways and you deserve many congratulations thank you. As the event name is New Normal Education Leadership Summit and Awards, according to you what does the word New Normal stands for? Now New Normal is not the buzzword, time has come where we need to evolve, adapt the technology. In fact, we need to evolve new ecosystem where education is re-envisioned and we need to add up new strategies. In fact, many edtech companies are coming up and the way knowledge is delivered is also the entire definition is changed so we see a lot of transformation in the education system and in coming years you will see entirely different education system. So, all are working very hard even we are very keen and surely it will come out with flying colours where learners are at centre and I see a lot of value out of all these initiatives.

“We are investing heavily now on to the training of our teachers because that’s what the key success factors for implementing NEP 2020,” says Dr. Parag Sanghani, Provost, P. P. Savani University, Surat in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2022’ #ELSAGujarat #ELSAAhmedabad As we are aware that a very beautiful policy by Ministry has come to us in 2020, what is the way forward and initiative from your University under your leadership how are we going to implement it? We have done lot of them, you know initiatives on that like one of the initiatives called Gujjalish where Gujarati and English combined for our diploma programs we have started on that. We are trying to have a language studies different language we have introduced with our universities minor and major specialization has been introduced so many things. We have started a blended learning also, we are the initial few universities from the Gujarat who as part of digital India movement and we have digitized all our examination records and the certificates and we are on the Digi Locker or a national Digital Library so all these has been started and we will now having more pace with the commitment of creating awareness among the stakeholders that’s the parents and students and we are investing heavily now on to the training of our teachers because that’s what the key success factors for implementing NEP 2020. What is your five-year plan going further post pandemics? Post pandemic the New Normal is Blended so we are moving towards that and we are trying to see that how we will able to integrate the various online resources into our curriculums. We try to involve the edtech companies in our education deliveries and we try to enhance the quality of our education and that’s how we will try to improve our rankings, our overall contributions in terms of research and everything to the society so that’s what our plan. As we are aware that the event name today is New Normal Education Leadership Summit and Award, what is the word new normal stands for you? New normal means new thinking, new preparations a new way of delivering the educations and adapting the changing environment quickly to deliver the academic excellence for the betterment of the society and betterment of our country. When we see the kind of gathering which we have today the representation from the government sector from the private sector and even the corporate and edtech companies, how does certain forums help as overall education community? See education it means debating and deliberating so this kind of events, became a catalyst for the deliberations and coming out with the new ideas understanding what the other colleagues are doing in their fields which we generally not do in our normal course so my compliment for organizing these events and it’s a wonderful event.  

“CollPoll is a digital campus platform the goal is anything and everything that happens physically in the campus needs to be supported by a digital environment as well,” says Hemant Sahal, Founder & CEO, CollPoll in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2022’ #ELSAGujarat #ELSAAhmedabad Would you like to highlight some of your case studies or any achievement or milestone pre-pandemic and post pandemic which you have achieved? Yeah so covid did help in establishing the value of technology to higher education institutions but there are also other factors that were driving technology adoption things like the competition has been rising the complexity, for example new education policy brings some reforms which are well awaited but with those reforms also come the complexity change. So, I think the complexity, compliance and then the covid came so technology became a key enabler and a facilitator in higher education. At CollPoll we were prepared for it and we were been working on the platform and the technology for a while and we have the insights, so we scaled up very aggressively. We almost grew by 10 times on terms of the number of Institutions we are working in the last two years. We work with some of the best institutions as well as we work with institutions in the city, in rural areas tier 3 cities. So, you work with a very eclectic set of Institutions and we’re very happy to see the response from education institutions. Would you highlight the services which you offer in CollPoll? So, CollPoll is a digital campus platform the goal is anything and everything that happens physically in the campus needs to be supported by a digital environment as well. So, whether it is an administrative activity which typically we call as ERP or is it a learning activity which you call as Learning Management systems or any workflows in the campus like a student needs a permission from the parent to get out of the campus or a faculty has a problem in the Wi-Fi or the IT. So, we automate thousand plus workflows with the platform and finally we also have a campus engagement platform which helps different stakeholders come together and interact and engage. There are many questions in your mind for any academicians or an educator when they try to finalize any of the edtech players to enroll in their kitty, what are the few pointers which an institution should think before enrolling the major technology partner? So, see it totally depends first of all on what is the institution’s vision and aspirations. Technology can only play a role when you are very clear as an institution what are your goals what are your aspirations right so I think institutions need to sit down and first define what their vision and aspirations are that’s number one. Second, they need to be very clear what are their budgets and then take it because most institutions make a mistake of having a lens of cost when they look at technology rather than a lens of return on investment. So, that mindset change of looking at the returns rather than the cost is very important because you might spend 100 rupees and get a return of like 150 but if you invest let’s say a thousand rupee and you’re getting a return of 10,000 then it’s far better to invest thousand and get the return on Ten Thousand. So, that’s a change so we do spend a lot of time helping our partner institutions get more aware of how they can look at technology in the long term. So, you’re not just looking down at your feet you’re actually looking far beyond. If you make wrong technology decisions then within a year or two you realize oh it was wrong to all the investment and time that has gone gets wasted and that’s where I think we help institutions in saying be clear about your vision your aspirations be clear about your budgets and then you take a phase wise decision on the technology that you want to take. Would you like to share your five years plan? For us see the 5 years plan is very simple, straight forward, we keep our ears and eyes open and we want to continue to have engagement and interactions with our partner institutions to understand what are the top requirements, how can technology play a better role in improving learning outcomes in improving student success, in improving research output, in bringing an efficiency in administration and whatever are the new opportunities that come our way we want to continue to solve them with technology so that’s the goal. As you know the event name which we are branding is a New Normal Education Leadership Summit and Awards, what is the word New Normal for you stands for? So, I think this is a perpetual process that new normal keeps changing so the one thing that we all have to keep in our mind is that education especially higher education is going through extremely fast-paced transformation. So, the New Normal will keep changing, there is no point defining the New Normal what is very important is to keep your ears, eyes open. Stay true to yourself and be very cognizant of what’s happening and be clear that there is never going to be a permanent New Normal and the New Normal will keep changing and you also need to be that agile and flexible to keep evolving with it. I am proud to share that we successfully celebrated our one years of existence and we celebrated recently our first anniversary, so any message would you like to give for ArdorComm Media Group? Congratulations Chandan and it’s always tough to you know start up and build an organization and I’ve been looking at ArdorComm and I am very inspired that from where you

“Our both the universities and the institutions are working continuously on the research programs,” says Dr. Minal Saxena, Dy. Director, Sagar Institute of Research and Technology, Bhopal in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2022’ #ELSAGujarat #ELSAAhmedabad I would like to understand and know more about your institution if you can throw us some light on it? Our institution is actually a pool of institutions in central India with our very former Institute of Sagar, Institute of Research and Technology in which I am a part since last 20 years and where I have two leading universities Sage University, Indore and Sage University, Bhopal which are the leading universities of central India with their USPs of experiential learning and a research focused curriculum. So, as your Institute name includes the words Research and Technology how important is in today’s era, research plays a role and why skill development is important along with the regular curriculum? Research definitely plays a very important role; our both the universities and the institutions are working continuously on the research programs. We have the AICTE sponsored labs for the advanced computing in both of the universities and our students and faculty members are continuously working on IPR, copyright and patents and the students of SIRT have been a good startup entrepreneurs with government funding in 2018 and 19 and a large number of startup units are there in Bhopal, in Indore so I think our alumnus speaks it all. In this forum when we can witness we have the industry leaders the startups, the corporate, academicians and even the government representatives what has been your experience overall and how does this kind of symposiums helps to the industry? This is wonderful actually post covid challenges towards students, new strategies for students new Ed Tech startups and the New Normal actually it’s the new thing which is coming up and it was a wonderful session starting with the new education policy. So, I think as academicians we are going to witness the change of and transformation of education with these tech tools so thank you very much for inviting me here and making me aware of many things which definitely will be a growing tool for us for the future tomorrow.