New Arrival of Central Library

Higher education through digital transformation the only way forward in Young India

World over universities are disrupting and innovating on teaching and learning pedagogues. But in India, universities are still characterized by impractical learning, out-of-touch faculty, exorbitant fees (in private universities) and diminishing employment as job seekers outnumber opportunities.

According to Harvard's Prof Clayton M. Christensen, Disruptive Innovation brings to the market a product or service that isn't as good as traditional but is less expensive and user friendly. Online learning is such a technology-enabled option that is making the world reconsider higher education models. Indian universities have talented faculty and good students, but suffer from slow processes, non-digital pedagogues, and theoretical rather than experiential learning.

Disruptive innovation requires education to be in a self-paced mode which can be only available through online "flipped" class rooms, MOOCs, SPOCs (Small Private Online Courses) and still shorter micro-credentials. MITx and EDx run a very popular and affordable Micro-Master's program in management for students who are edged out of admissions or find the costs high. However, completing the course online can get you a job which pays $80-100,000 annually and further allows direct admission to a Masters in MIT with reduced course fees and credits. In fact, Nano-Degrees by Udacity and Badges online are of much shorter duration and teach soft, social and professional skills, much sought after by companies.

According to Ryan Craig ('College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education') students may one day find they don't need a Bachelor's degree to become employable. Thus, self-paced and re-bundling of short courses could soon make the traditional degree college experience sound as "old-fashioned and elitist." While no one is sure of a date by which this unbundling of higher education will happen, clues are available to show an inevitable arrival by 2020's. The 4th Industrial Revolution technologies are blurring lines between the physical and digital. Big Data and digital technology will be game changers such as Li fi in place of Wi Fi (speed of Internet in Gigabytes), Internet of Things, Wearable for Virtual reality, DNA mapping and 3D printing.

It is now important to move towards blended online learning or 'flipping class room' where we have more e-material, audio and video lectures on line and more case studies, projects and practical experiential learning. Nano-degrees by Udacity make you a graduate in 12 months in courses like Artificial Intelligence, VR developer, Self-Driving Car Engineer, IOS or Android Developer etc. in partnership with Amazon Alexa, Google, Mercedes Benz etc. These companies foresee demand through big data analysis for e.g. in 2020, 10 million self-driving cars will be manufactured and would be in use.

We must remember that we have less than 24% Gross Enrollment Ratio in higher education while spending approximately Rs 15,000-20,000 per annum for each student. Out of this, more than 50 % are failures and dropouts producing a dismal 53% of unemployed graduates and 89% unemployed engineering graduates in a population of more than 350 million young in the age bracket of 18-35. It means that we have already wasted 85% of the higher education budget since independence. We must be more cautious about our education strategy for social and ethical harmony of the country as these young must be educated for the welfare and prosperity of India.

MHRD should start working on a common LMS (Dashboards) and Enterprise Resource Programs for ready infrastructure for user friendly assistance to students and faculty for blended learning and for managing 'Big Data'. It should plan to procure mobile learning solutions and tablets with the above so that economically weaker sections in Digital India become technology savvy and get their digital learning assistance in a costumed mode.

New UGC policy: Research scholar could lose registration for plagiarism

NEW DELHI: Soon a research scholar could face cancellation of his or her registration if found to have plagiarised someone else's work and a faculty, if found guilty of the same, could be debarred from publishing any work, denied annual increments and disqualified from supervising any student or scholar.

As part of its effort to have zero tolerance towards plagiarism, the University Grants Commission has drafted a new policy to curb the menace. It says the authorities of higher education institution (HEI) can also take sue mote notice of an act of plagiarism and initiate proceedings. As per the draft policy, three types of penalties would be imposed on those found guilty of lifting someone else's work.

While in case of "Level 1 and 2" offence, the researchers would get a chance to revise their work, "Level 3" offence, which is "60% similarities”, would result in cancellation of the researcher's registration. That's for plagiarism in non-core areas.

However, for plagiarism in core areas, there will be 'zero tolerance'.

As per the new policy, "The core work carried out by the student, faculty, staff and researcher shall be based on original ideas and shall be covered by Zero Tolerance Policy on Plagiarism. In case plagiarism is established in the core work claimed, then Plagiarism Disciplinary Authority (PDA) of the HEI shall impose maximum penalty."

Core work shall include abstract, summary, hypothesis, observations, results, conclusions and recommendations. The draft calls for setting up of PDA, Academic Misconduct Panel (AMP) and installation of software to detect plagiarism, among other reforms at universities and colleges across the country.

As per the new policy, if any member of the academic community has reason to suspect a case of plagiarism, he or she shall report it to the competent/ designated authority of the university. Upon receipt of such a complaint or allegation, the university authority shall refer the case to the AMP, which in turn shall submit a report to the PDA.

All students submitting thesis, dissertation, term papers, reports or any other such documents to the HEI shall submit an undertaking indicating that the document has been prepared by him or her and that the document is his/ her original work and free of any plagiarism.

Every faculty, researcher and MPhil/ PhD student should be provided access to plagiarism detection tools for checking the content of their scripts and the undertaking shall include the fact that the document has been duly checked through a plagiarism detection tool approved by the HEI.

It will also be mandatory for the HEIs to submit to INFLIBNET (Information and Library Network) soft copies of all M Phil., PhD dissertations and theses carried out in its various departments after the award of degrees for hosting in the digital repository under the "Shodh Ganga e-repository" programme.

New Arrival of Central Library

!!!!! Thought of the Day !!!!!

New Arrival of Central Library