Dr. M. S. Shyamasundar, Senior Advisor, National Assessment and Accreditation Council, Govt. of India elaborates on the digital transformation in education community

“In NAAC we are giving the very due weightage and we are empowering the education community with a digital transformation which is the order of the day,” says Dr. M. S. Shyamasundar, Senior Advisor, National Assessment and Accreditation Council, Govt. of India 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 a major transformation of education from last two and a half years what has been the role of NAAC as an eye opener to the education industry?

Now NAAC also has taken a different role especially in the era of pandemic because in the pandemic several higher education institutions came across very many challenges they were not able to come for face-to-face interactions that’s why now we have started very many webinars in a short span of time. We were able to organize several thousands of webinars to go for hand holding exercise of all the higher education institutions and also, we have created our website in a very robust way. Our website is self-explanatory and also when they want to ask any questions we have gone for artificial intelligence just like that they can ask any generic questions any time that is 24/7 and apart from that we have introduced the concept called IMS that is Issue Management Service, anytime they can ask any clarification if they don’t get appropriate answer from the artificial intelligence and within 24 hours’ time their queries would be resolved. I think that is one of the USP of NAAC.

Nowadays three words are quite popular ‘Physical Digital and Phygital’, what is the weightage and why?

Now especially in the era of pandemic we are constrained to give more weightage especially for the digital transformation because we there is no other go. Because in the absence of this blended learning maybe about 1.2 billion students across the globe would have been totally deprived from the education. Maybe because of this online learning and blended mode of education all these children have been benefited immensely and in NAAC also we are giving the very due weightage and we are empowering the education community with a digital transformation which is the order of the day.

When everyone keeps on going in one track and keep performing how does assessment and accreditation plays a role in that?

Now we have given due emphasis for data collection because earlier our physical team was going for face-to-face interaction now university should go for proper documentation and they have to put all the documents in order and they have to submit all the documentary evidences well in time and for that about 70 percent of the evaluation would be done based on their documentary evidences remaining 30 percent would be done by the actual peer team and they would be seeing the realities especially with respect to infrastructural development the digital infrastructure in the institution all these things and it’s a blend of both peer team visit and quantitative evaluation also of the data.

How does certain conclave like this where we have industry academy and government makes an impact overall to the communities?

Especially in the Indian context the mental framework is not so good maybe if you go to the any developed countries like US their corporates go after the higher education institutions for their research and innovation but in the Indian context still it has not been strengthened but anyway nowadays the trend also has been changed maybe conclaves like this would be helpful to create a platform to interact with industries by the higher education institutions because both the stakeholders from both industry would come together and they can have a proper dialogue and this dialogue will go in a very long way and which will be helpful to all the stakeholders and in turn which would be helpful for the growth and development of our Indian economy.

As you know today is a special day ArdorComm Media is also celebrating its one year of existence, this is our first anniversary, any message for ArdorComm Media Group?

Yeah within a span of just one year you have taken very many significant initiatives because last time also you did invite me for online program at that point of time also I got the opportunity to speak to stakeholders from industry and academia and this time also I did the same thing. Whatever the initiatives you have already taken please continue with the same set of initiatives and create this type of platforms both for industry and academia and all these people would be benefited immensely. Anyway, at this juncture I wish you all the very best to reach the pinnacles on the on the plateau of all your endeavour.