Dr. P. V. Vijayaraghavan, Vice Chancellor, Sri Ramachandra Institute of HE and Research Institute emphasizes on the importance of experiential learning

“But to my mind I think that is where we have to put our thoughts together, how we can sort out this experiential learning for the students,” says Dr. P. V. Vijayaraghavan, Vice Chancellor, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research Institute 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 the way we have evolved in last two and a half years and now we are meeting at this forum where we are inviting the government, academia and industry. What is the takeaway of such conclaves and forums?

I think it’s an excellent initiative that you have taken because ultimately if you want any major national effort to take off and be implemented appropriately, all stakeholders must be involved. So, the government has already come out with the policy and they’ve already announced it and they’re also making a lot of programs in terms of sensitizing people towards this. The academic leaders and academic institutions, faculty members are the next stakeholders who have to be brought into such type of initiatives because they are probably to my mind the most difficult people to change so that is something which I think this type of conclaves, when you are inviting would be able to produce some sort of an effect. Then of course the industry that is a huge concept that you have brought in because many times in the past a lot of efforts have been done purely by the academicians with the government agencies but nothing to do with the industry at all right. So you have brought the industry also on and I was so amazed to find that with the panel discussions you had in between interspersed with quite a lot of industry information because a lot of places the industries are given only stalls and people are expected to go around and see for themselves but to have specific time allotted during the program and asking them to highlight and a lot of industries never talked in a marketing fashion and they did tell some of the basic concepts of why a particular e-learning or LMS system has been brought into account. So, I think overall it has been a wonderful experience.

During the pandemic everybody has transformed a bit or more, under your leadership how has your institute, shoot off or how did you take over this difficult phase of journey?

Actually, Ramachandra has been making innovative changes since 2005, 2006. We were the first ones to have started the integrated curriculum for MBBS and having crossed that we actually were pioneers enough to be consulted by the medical council in developing the competency-based medical education which was announced in 2019. So, adapting to change is nothing new for Ramachandra so when covid came there was always some resistance on the part of the faculty to sort of adapt to smart classrooms, their smart devices and things like that but covid actually helped us to overcome that in a very big way. We moved into the google classroom platform and a lot of our online classes used to be taken but as I was telling even in my panel, the health professions education requires quite a lot of experiential learning. Of course, the virtual reality and augmented reality with even Microsoft like companies have come forward is really helping us to give the students that set up on experience but actual hospital experience I think they missed out to an extent and some of the postgraduate residents did get the covid experience a lot of covid patients got treated and they got to and they also gave them a multi-disciplinary learning there. But to my mind I think that is where we have to put our thoughts together how we can sort out this experiential learning for the students.

We are very happy and glad to tell that we are celebrating our one year of struggling existence and it has been very exciting journey we are celebrating our first anniversary of ArdorComm Media, any message would you like to give to this growing company?

Let me congratulate you for actually starting this company under very difficult circumstances. Many people during covid may not have taken that decision but you did it and having completed one year with so many webinars and so many in-house programs conducted by you. I really think it’s a great initiative and you are contributing to the society and education in a big way and I wish that this will continue in the future as well, wish you all the best.