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ArdorComm – Higher Education and Edtech Conclave & Awards 2022

Prof. Bishnu Pal, Dean School of Engineering and Academics, Mahindra University emphasizes on teaching-learning practices

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“I used to be at IIT Delhi for 35 years I never used PowerPoint there but now here I use because of this problem,” says Prof. Bishnu Pal, Dean School of Engineering and Academics, Mahindra University 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 and witnessed how the overall education industries has transformed since last two and a half years what has been the role of your university and how you have transformed your teaching learning practices? Till we have been hit by the covid, we were still in classical mode of teaching but because of the covid we had to innovate and try to maximize for the transfer of knowledge through online mode because there are no students who are allowed to come into the class. So, all the lectures were held online, when it’s the large class it was through zoom and for medium to smaller classes it was by MS Teams. The problem that we eventually experienced is that we don’t know whether the student is really listening to them. You know he’s on but this applies to a percentage of students who are not so serious that they are trying to tell themselves that I am very smart, but that is not true the good students are still attending that we can see in the in the examination. They are delivering in the examination against questions but there are some certain problems that you cannot do it since it is engineering. When you carry out the calculation step by step in that process also students’ brain is working but if you just show directly a PowerPoint right it does not work so well in engineering and most importantly the practical process laboratory classes are very difficult. So, what we did was that we teachers actually carry out the experiment and video recorded then shared with the students but whether they have understood or not that we tested by having some viva voice examinations. How does a blended education overall transform the teacher student dynamics in terms of their relation of grasping the lecture delivery? We have flagged problems there because what you do in a physical class, by just looking at the face of the student you can make out whether what you have told has been absorbed by the students from the face itself will tell. You can walk around those students who are not very serious not listen, you walk towards the end of the class and then you can ask physically you can’t do it on a blended part it’s very difficult. I’ve seen so many people are working so many ed-tech companies are working we have fantastic you know IT people around in the country so I’m very hopeful that there will be a lot of new innovations which will try to minimize these problems. Yes, completely is difficult but I also said at the end there is also a lot of positives of the online like for example you can store your figures already and that you can simultaneously use while you are writing on the board so you have that facility in the class otherwise that was not there. So, these are certain positives, it did not be completely PowerPoint. I used to be at IIT Delhi for 35 years I never used PowerPoint there but now here I use because of this problem. There also is a problem so there are innovations you have to make for every one line you can bring into animation that’s what I do and my US friend says that is a good idea because otherwise students focus on the whole board so these are the innovations. Today is also a very special day for ArdorComm Media as we are celebrating our first anniversary and one year of difficult and interesting struggle of existence, any message would you like to give to ArdorComm Media Groups? The message is you have to continuously innovate today product lifecycle is very short, I’m actually a specialist in optical communication, in telecom the general rule is that 25 years survival of a product but in optical communications during the boom time it happened within five years or four years. You need to develop an impact so this applies also to companies like you who are involved with that. So, you have to continuously innovate come out with new ideas.

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Sam Maniar, Founder & CEO, SmartVisibility Edutech Pvt. Ltd. speaks about their aim to be a decacorn start up

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“We would like to become a decacorn start up not unicorn, the plans are in place,” says Sam Maniar, Founder & CEO, SmartVisibility Edutech Pvt. Ltd. in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm – Higher Education and Edtech Conclave & Awards 2022’ #HEETbengaluru Tell us something about your organizations? Yeah, we are established in 2021, we are into education technology and we have created a learning Application where collaborative learning, social learning come into the picture. The platform is vernacular platform that we are building and it’s a fully customizable and it is adoptable to any languages of Indian and worldwide from Arabic to any Indian languages the system can work. This is a kind of a platform where people can come learn together, understand the user’s behaviour also we track how user is behaving in the system and this is how this system works. How did the idea come to your mind and why only this segment of the technology? I’m in the educational technology since quite a long time, I’m into the IT since 1996, we basically understand work with number of educational projects and understand that where is the market gap and we try to bring that technology into the education field this is how it comes into the picture. What is your plan of scaling up in next five years? We would like to become a decacorn start up not unicorn, the plans are in place we have been incubated by NASSCOM’s 10 000 start-ups and this idea has been validated by number of corporates across the globe and this is how we are working on it and we see like in the near future in 5 years’ time we can become a decacorn start up. What will be the USP where one would love to explore your product rather than any existing product in the same domain? We are fully customizable, vernacular and also artificial intelligence like learning recording behaviour that we are having that put us at edge further compared to our competitors.

Sam Maniar, Founder & CEO, SmartVisibility Edutech Pvt. Ltd. speaks about their aim to be a decacorn start up Read More »

Dr. Balakrishna P Shetty, Vice-Chancellor, Sri Siddhartha Academy of Higher Education speaks on the importance of skilling

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“The skilling can happen only by including the students in each and every platform,” says Dr. Balakrishna P Shetty, Vice-Chancellor, Sri Siddhartha Academy of Higher Education in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm – Higher Education and Edtech Conclave & Awards 2022’ #HEETbengaluru During this last few years of struggling times how have your university under your leadership sailed off and have made the teaching learning process quite feasible for everybody? We had two problems one is we had a technical college as well as a medical college. As well the technical college doing online program, online education was very easy like technology students are so much enthusiastic they could learn online but as far as the medical college is considered we had a tough time because a doctor has to see the patient it cannot be done online and also surgeries also cannot be done online so talking to the patient interacting with the patient and examining the patient all those things was a very tough time for our students during this covid time but some how we managed by getting all those software where we can see the patient, we can see various diseases online and also we can see something like artificial intelligence and augmented reality, virtual reality. Although some of the software which really helped especially our students so our students could get virtual exposure to the patients. Of course, virtual exposure is not comparable to actual exposure, actual exposure is mandatory interacting with the patient looking at his eyes talking to him feeling him touching him makes a great difference but because of the digital innovations, digital advances our students could get some sort of exposure. The last two years that is 2019 and today we are in 2022 still we are not sure whether another wave is going to come or not but our students and faculty members lived up to that challenge and we could produce best of the students the best of the doctors from our university. Would like to understand what is the focus of the university on skilling rather than the regular academics, regular process? It is easy to talk about skilling, from the President of India to even a student and everybody talks about skilling, re-skilling, up skilling this is the buzzword going on everywhere. The skilling can happen only by including the students in each and every platform, let us say today you have a program we’ll call our students and ask them to do the program now let’s say we had one program on drug abuse and we asked the students to speak about it not the vice chancellor speak about it not the faculty will speak about, the students will speak about. So, skilling is I feel only one methodology involve the student in each and every program of the university program of the institution. I heard that there was one great innovative where one chief minister made one-person chief minister for one day, similarly you should make student a faculty for a day, HoD for a day a Principal for a day or a Vice Chancellor for a day that will be a great thing in skilling not just by talking. How does such kind of forums where you can see the amalgamation of government, academia and industry how does it help the society at large? it helps a lot because we keep speaking because we are experts in giving suggestions and recommendations but we are very poor in implementing. Implementations and sustainability is the biggest challenge for us for that there is involvement there is a commitment there is a moral responsibility for the teacher, faculty and students to do something then only I think something will happen otherwise we will again become the clericals the clerks which were produced in the British government. British wanted Indians to be only clerks, they never wanted a skill because they had the technology there, they never wanted a skill to develop in India. So, we need to have the inclusiveness that is very important. Today we are celebrating first anniversary of ArdorComm Media, any message would you like to give to ArdorComm Media? I’ve been attending so many higher education meetings but I would like to say ArdorComm Media is something unique. I’m not saying because you are asking this question but I’ve been experiencing the way the panels are conducted the way faculty members speak even sometimes I have seen today the student is speaking so these are something different as far as ArdorComm is doing so I request you to continue this, include as many students as possible, student representatives, the stakeholders as much as possible not only the vice chancellor so that involvement, inclusiveness innovations the three eyes is very important.

Dr. Balakrishna P Shetty, Vice-Chancellor, Sri Siddhartha Academy of Higher Education speaks on the importance of skilling Read More »

Dr. Dwarika Prasad Uniyal, Pro Vice-Chancellor, RV University, Bangalore emphasizes on the digitization of higher education

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“We have mandated at our university that minimum 30% of the curriculum needs to be taught by industry experts which means if I have 30 hours, minimum 10 hours need to be taught by industry people,” says Dr. Dwarika Prasad Uniyal, Pro Vice-Chancellor, RV University, Bangalore in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm – Higher Education and Edtech Conclave & Awards 2022’ #HEETbengaluru I’m in touch with you Dr. Dwarika since many of the organizations, past few of the organization which was pre-pandemic and few of the organization which was post pandemic, any achievement under your leadership when you sailed off during this journey? I would rather not say achievement but I think we all had to adapt right, pandemic was once in a lifetime situation which we were facing and we didn’t know how to face it and one of the most important aspect was to how do you redefine, reimagine teaching learning. So, yes you have buildings, you have faculty, you have curriculum but how do you realign all of that learning in a situation where nobody can come to the campus, teachers can’t come, everything has to be closed so it’s not that straight away get into digital part of it right, you have to think through about how and especially where we are teaching liberal education both at Flame and of course at RV now, we have to completely rethink about the pedagogy about the courses to be taught not in the lecture mode. How do you go about making changes in the concept, how do you make changes in the application? How do you make changes in students are doing on their own? Evaluation has to be thought through so that the challenge was to train the teachers and also train the students to be self-learner otherwise it’s always been you know we have given assignment we have to come submit get it evaluated, now nobody is watching you here right now how do you go about making changes there was the question and what we have done is invested a lot in technology invested a lot in LMS, invested a lot in training our faculty, changing in curriculum, engaging with the western universities bringing industry which was very difficult initially because you have to fly them down to a city and today with zoom and other things it was easier for us to bring lot of those inputs so it was I would rather say not as something rocket science but it fundamentally changed the way we looked at teaching learning and how universities need to be of ready for the future. Would you like to focus on certain points like industry interface and the industry interaction especially which could be helpful during the placements for the students? That’s a central part of it right every profession needs to be linked with what is happening in academia at the same time industry needs to be a equal partner, it can’t be a customer right after four years three years two years you come and say we want placements similarly academia, universities, business schools and others have to see industry as somebody who would provide not just internship not just a live project but actively involved in the creation of the curriculum. At the same time also, delivery of the curriculum and today with blended and others it is easy to bring industry experts on a regular basis. We have mandated at our university that minimum 30% of the curriculum needs to be taught by industry experts which means if I have 30 hours minimum 10 hours need to be taught by industry people. It can be through zoom, it can be something else and hence faculty has to rethink faculty doesn’t know everything so you have to bring that industry input and also get it delivered by the industry and work your projects accordingly so that there is a better coordination. So, that is really coming up now and thankfully industry is also very open today earlier it used to be closed, they used to come only during the placements now they are starting from the admissions to orientation to courses they are you know letting their colleagues to go and teach in institutions earlier they were very closed that we will not send our experts to these institutions now they’re very open to send across. We have seen many transformations for many of the educational institutions, how did RV university played a role especially when you thought this pandemic would be an opportunity for you in expanding your horizons nationally or internationally in teaching exchange or maybe effective student exchange? Oh yes, we actually looked at the pandemic as an opportunity to become much more global than we had thought otherwise and because international universities were also looking at Indian footprint, global footprint they were also much more open to engage and hence in last one year’s time we have forged relationship with almost 20 international universities for student exchange faculty exchange joint research and now with UGC allowing us we are moving towards dual degree and joint degree programs. We just signed an MOU with Bryant University from Rhode Island, the dean was here Dr Madan, their provost was very much involved Dr Rupendra there we are working with creating a three plus one model which is three years in India, one year with them in the advanced accounting program. We are working on two plus two programs in the BBA on the business analytics we’re working on one plus one MA in economics is Virginia tech in the initial stages with Bryant we’re looking at joint degree in the executive MBA, where their faculty will come they teach, our people will go to Bryant university. So, thanks to people’s openness to now recognizing online learning, blended learning as a legitimate teaching tool. Even UGC is now allowing it with almost 40 percent through

Dr. Dwarika Prasad Uniyal, Pro Vice-Chancellor, RV University, Bangalore emphasizes on the digitization of higher education Read More »

Dr. Latha K. C., Education Officer, UGC- SW Regional Office, Ministry of Education, GOI speaks about how UGC tackled with queries during pandemic

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“I appreciate all institutes who took up our suggestions or our ideas, they were able to cope it up and they made it in a student-friendly way,” says Dr. Latha K. C., Education Officer, UGC- SW Regional Office, Ministry of Education, GOI in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm – Higher Education and Edtech Conclave & Awards 2022’ #HEETbengaluru The way we have sailed across last two and a half years through the difficult times of Covid 19, how did your department respond to it, any message for the community at large? Yes, last two years was horrible and it was like unimaginable for all of us especially for student community they had to face a lot many challenges, they had to come over. We supported as a government agency, UGC was able to support and take immediate actions then and when it was required either by the student community or the faculty community or even at institution level. So, we faced a lot but I’m happy to say that we could come over all of it together in a much better way. The most important thing over last two years, what we learned or what we understood is yes we need technology for our support with the help of technology and with the help of contribution by most of the industries in the mode of technology wise and other things we were able to come out of this situation in a better way which did not alter or completely change the current education system or whatever it is with a slightly new adaptions we were able to come out and we proved that yes together with the help of combination of knowledge as well as technology we were able to achieve that in this pandemic period and we came out successfully. We are thankful for all communities, it might be institutions or it might be faculties or it might be industries or it might be new ideas or technologies which came in demand so with all these helps we came out of it in a much better and nice and safer way. How many universities in your region are there and what were the main queries to the UGC from them? As I handle regional offices like most of the university queries and university issues would be addressed by head office, New Delhi. We do handle colleges like there are around 750 plus colleges that comes under my office we do handle all queries related to these colleges, student faculty as well as we do handle certain schemes over here so all these related issues were handled and certain issues were passed on head office where their involvement was to be there. Then we would pass it on, so yes regularly during pandemic it was like always every day our inbox used to be filled up with queries and questions also most of the times. Especially from student sector sometimes there used to be a lot of panic it might be exam point of view or other things. Yes, we would handle it and we would give the best solution in student point of view and we also requested and also, I appreciate all institutes who took up our suggestions or our ideas or students request or student ideas they were able to cope it up and they made it in a student-friendly way. They were able to come out with a student-friendly way of learning and teaching more so this I am happy and I would like to thank all institutes for this who could help us out or who could help student community in this during this time. When you see the forums or the conclaves like this where we have the representation from government, from corporate and academia, how does it help to the society at large? I would like to congratulate the whole team over here for organizing or bringing out such platforms for exchange of ideas between academy as well as industries. This is a great platform and as NEP point of view yes, it is in scope or we need such kind of platforms more and more for the exchange of ideas between academic section as well as industry section and both together we can achieve much better. So, there could be lot of new ideas or new opportunities that would be brought out through these platforms and it would be helpful for both the sectors. ArdorComm Media which is a media start-up has just completed its one year of existence today so we are celebrating our first anniversary, any message would you like to give to ArdorComm Media? I would like to congratulate, listening to your background story in the inaugural session I was quite amazed, like staying at home with just 12 people you are able to reach out at this stage bringing together so many academicians as well as so many industries in under one platform. So, I congratulate for successful completion and I wish you and I want you to organize more and more of such platforms. You can make it in much specific also if you would like to if you get it to the deeper curriculum part, so you can have that. You can take up one particular topic and you can bring both industry as well as academicians together and have more so I wish to have more and more I wish to see you celebrating 100th with the same speed as well as success and I wish you a great success in future.

Dr. Latha K. C., Education Officer, UGC- SW Regional Office, Ministry of Education, GOI speaks about how UGC tackled with queries during pandemic Read More »

Dr. S.N. Sridhara, VC, Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, Chennai speaks about the initiatives taken by HITS to make students industry ready

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“Instead of becoming employment seekers they are actually becoming employment givers,” says Dr. S.N. Sridhara, Vice Chancellor, Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, Chennai in an interview with Chandan Anand, Founding Editor, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘ArdorComm – Higher Education and Edtech Conclave & Awards 2022’ #HEETbengaluru As we have witnessed how the industry has sailed off from a traditional mode of education towards the digital mode of education, your views and how did your institute perform in the last two and a half years? It’s an appt question as all of us know already the pandemic has taught a lot of lessons to all the institutions, a few institutions which were ready digitally they could take off and I’m happy to say that Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science is one of such premier institute. The day actually the lockdown was announced the next day we were online because already we had the online platform ready and we were delivering it offline and online together so this is a big lesson for all of us and then we took it further. Any change in the mode of teaching and in the curricula, which could make a student industry ready, how did HITS prepare itself? Yeah there were many challenges during pandemic also the first one has basically many of the faculty members, though they were industry ready in terms of their experience etc they were not able to make use of the online platforms immediately and moreover the online platforms which are available during pandemic were so primitive in the beginning that today I could see because of you know entry of ed-tech companies they have improvised the whole scenario and they have made it easy to use by faculty as well as to the students also and earlier there were no proctoring systems available now the proctoring systems are also available for the exams this is another boon and I should be thankful to the friends from ed-tech company who took all our problems and then interacted very quickly and then giving the solutions. And of course, coming to the way actually we changed our scenario in terms of teaching learning process. Earlier it was only blackboard everybody thought that the physical interaction is only the best way to teach but later faculty started learning a new method of using LMS basically learning management system and also using animations, using flipped classrooms etc and so on. So, the technology enabled learning and teaching experiences have grown multi folded and I think almost all the faculty across the globe have learned this particular technique thanks to pandemic again. What is your focus or stress on entrepreneurship how can we prepare a student for an entrepreneurship mode? Fantastic it’s a very good question nowadays actually everybody is looking at what is your placement and to my surprise actually from past two years and especially after pandemic we are finding that many of the students are actually thinking that they can become entrepreneurs. Instead of becoming employment seekers they are actually becoming employment givers. In my own institution we have a technology business incubator called Hindustan Technology Business Incubator and we have incubated more than 100 companies already through ourselves and of course this has already come into the curriculum. There is one more unique thing what we have done under NEP is that we have introduced the innovation and design course in the very first year so the very first year the students learn to innovate and also learn to operate and also to make some fabrication using niche equipment with that actually as they grow up and as they move on with the higher semesters they learn the basic knowledge as well as the skills also and they are made industry and nowadays I find that most of my Ed-tech company friends here are also very young and I can see that many of them are the young entrepreneurs and they are doing really well so there is a lot of hopes for it and I think joining hands with everyone who would like to make our Atma Nirbhar Bharat as per our honourable PM’s vision. Conclaves like this or the forum like this where we are bringing government, industry and academia how does it help overall to the society or the communities? Yeah, it’s so good actually in the morning session we had two government officials here one from NAAC and one from Government of Karnataka and I am so happy to see that the mindset of these government agencies has changed so much because of the drive being done by our honourable Prime Minister and also the perception happening here and this platform was very good to actually give them an awareness as such not only that their own initiatives but the awareness given through our educational partners like our ed tech companies. They are telling that these are the new technology we have so why don’t you take it and similarly for me as you know from the academia I’m also seeing a lot of opportunities in terms of tech companies which are giving a lot much of technology oriented assistance for us and definitely this is going to be a very good boon to take it further so it’s a win-win situation for all three, academia, the agencies as well as for the industries. Any plan of expansion where a teacher exchange or a student exchange can happen nationally or internationally? Yeah, we have been doing it actually from past 10 years itself we have actually MOU with nearly about 100 universities across the globe and our faculty and students exchange is being happening already but now after they covid I think it is going to be multi-folded increase. There are three reasons for it the first reason students want to go to abroad but basically the expenses are so high so it is not possible to spend whole lot money for the

Dr. S.N. Sridhara, VC, Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, Chennai speaks about the initiatives taken by HITS to make students industry ready Read More »