Dr. Lathangi, Dean, Amity Business School elaborates on how they transformed during pandemic

“The strength of the academics is usually when you have a proper classroom, so that they missed out on,” says Dr. Lathangi, Dean, Amity Business School in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm – Higher Education and Edtech Conclave & Awards 2022’ #HEETbengaluru

We have seen that how in past two and a half years the overall teaching learning process has changed, what has been the role of Amity Bangalore and how have you transformed yourself?

I think the past two and a half years initially which started and then in the campus we were a little apprehensive as to how do we conduct because that was a term where we had the semester exam coming up so March we closed on 2020 and we had our exams in the month of May. So we were just about to close our sessions and begin the examination so that was a little crucial so we had a lot of questions and all that but you know the university at Noida, they handled it very well actually they have a very strong IT support and they immediately I would say within one week, fourth day we got a mail and after that the fifth day or sixth day we got online with MS Teams and we had to be trained on that and then all the faculty were little sceptical about it. The software had to be downloaded and all but then we went ahead with that and the examinations also we took it online so that was one thing which I think the students were given training parallelly.

They were all at home and they were not aware of, the question paper pattern was different because the regular question paper we could not use it. So, we had to use something else and then they devised a question paper in that short span. All the faculty were supposed to be uploading their question paper so the technology was so much into us by then. A lot of trainings were given to us even for the classrooms so the next two years we conducted even guest lectures and club activities. We also had some activities like students used to have a dance performance in their homes having it recorded and sent it and sometimes online in the MS Team is open and then we are conducting a club activity and then there is a dance sequence so parallelly they used to connect with one student from here another student from maybe north somewhere. So, they used to switch on these to start there so the camera used to be taken and then the students also really enjoyed it so that was one thing. Yes of course the strength of the academics is usually when you have a proper classroom so that they missed out on.

I would like to share that today is a very special day for ArdorComm Media, we are a media start-up and today we are celebrating our first year of existence, any message would you like to give to ArdorComm Media on first anniversary?

I think it’s a wonderful conclave that you have arranged with all the academicians coming in and a lot of other. I can see a lot of other activities also wherein people are coming up with classroom kind of how to enhance the solutions and artificial intelligence and things like that. I think that’s very good because we don’t get much of time to explore all of this so on one platform when you’re coming up with this it really helps a lot of people actually it’s mutual win-win situation. So, when you sent an invite I was studying all that I said okay how do you people come in where do we fit in then I said oh this is a very good thing, very good initiative. I think many such activities will really help us maybe even whatever we speak, there can be a connect with the industry. So tomorrow you can as well keep in mind that some industry stalwarts can be called like Tata, Birla whatever and then you know they also have business schools and colleges and universities so that will really help us in learning and have that connect.