Dr Sureshramana Mayya, Dean, Poornaprajna Institute of Management conducted a Faculty Improvement Programme on the topic, “Technology and Faculty Development” to the faculty of SDM Post Graduate Centre for Management and Research on 7th December 2019. In the one day the programme, he dwelt in detail technology imperatives, digital knowledge, digital natives, digital immigrants, digital wisdom, how the views advocated by Prensky, as to what extent the capacity of digital technology will help us to access cognitive power beyond our innate capacity and how the prudent use of technology is expected to enhance our capabilities.
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| From left, Dr. Seema S Shenoy, Director of the Institute, Dr. Prameela Shetty, IQAC Coordinator and Senior Faculty, in the middle Dr. S Mayya, Dean, Poornaprajna Institute of Management,Udupi |
He also explained in detail the evolving of NAAC parameters and Matrix, the imperativeness of NAAC Assessment, the benefits of higher grading such as linking to funding, the autonomy of operations, graded autonomy, the offering of ODL Courses by those institutions who scored more than 3.26, the compulsions of affiliating University, RUSA and public acceptance, etc. He explained the evolving of the tender process for DVV, the technical expertise sought, the present set of expertise, how to capitalize on the benefits of 100 % ICT based verification and validation process – from IIQA till the result, the system generated process pertaining to IIQA, SSR, DVV, Pre-qualifier and PTV, how the final outcome will be a combination of System Generated Scored (SGS), SSS and PTV, how IIQA, LOI, IEQA – devised to reduce time. He clarified the doubts of participants about the role of the system in allotting the NAAC Officers, DVV Partners for third party evaluation and selection of assessors on the basis of the type of HEI.
He clarified doubts about the new framework as such how institutions are being asked to input the self-assessment data into the software portal hosted by NAAC, how after entering the data by HEI, the timeline is going to click, how it is time-bound, how all these claims are assigned to agencies, how they are required to complete within 15 days, how all these data are verified and validated by “agencies” using PIS and further proofs, their expertise, how to cater to their expectations, past practices, loopholes of this system, how to satisfy them – in detail with the help of live demonstration of NAAC Portal. Clarifying the doubts, he said the method of computation of preliminary score on self-assessment and validation, the criteria for fixing and scheduling of onsite peer review, the basis for advising of the improvement plan, how based on self-assessment and validated data the review team prepares their activity plan for physical review of HEI for the qualitative data and on-site verification.
He explained the ICT Process for Assessors Portal, how they are required to input in the Assessors Portal the details such as Section 1 – General Information, Section II- Criterion Wise Analysis, Section III – Overall Analysis, Section IV – Recommendations and Section V – Metric Wise Scoresheet, how all these are going to exert influence on scores, the role of HEI while showing concurrence on these data inputs, in detail with the help of screenshot of these portals. Dr Mayya tried to explain the NAAC Process, recent changes in the software selection and training of assessors, how NAAC is going towards objective assessment, how the Peer Team Members come with full knowledge of HEI, how they develop strategies in advance including the people to be interviewed and institutional documents to be reviewed, how they come with a Draft PT Report and QiM Wise Score Sheet.
Dr Mayya explained in detail about the impact to be created by PPT presentation by Director, why he himself has to create the PPT, the practical cases of failure of these presentations, how Peer Team will come to listen carefully, the avoiding of the tone of interrogation, how they respect the confidentiality of institutional documents, the understanding of certain premises as such, “the peer team not coming to solving our problems”, how the using of PowerPoint 365 and subsequent getting of design ideas and wonderful benefits of using it with the help of practical examples.
Dr. Mayya gave some tips to combat the ICT Challenge posed by the revised framework of NAAC such as how to cope up with Geotag, how to avoid DVV question of Geotag, how to be strong in moral fibre while submitting these details – all with the help of screenshot of Geotag information. He also dwelt in detail about the Online Survey, how it is a massive change compared to the old system, the role of HEI as regards this Online Survey of students, the percentage of students selected, how NAAC takes over the complete logistics, how the Quantitative Metrics (QnM) of SSR will be sent for Data Validation and Verification (DVV) Process, the details about DVV Deviation Report, how 10% Deviation Report is going to be accepted and prequalified, what happens if deviation is to the range of 10% & 15% – how cautionary advice will be issued, how those HEI are debarred from PTV and the amount will be forfeited, the fate of those institutions who register a deviation of 15% and more and how they will be debarred for one year – all with the help of relevant examples.
He also narrated the drawbacks of the old process and how the revised accreditation helped the institutions to move from qualitative peer judgements to data-based qualitative indicator evaluation, System Generated Scores (SGS) with a combination of online evaluation (70%) and Peer Judgement (30%), how HEI can be benefitted from Automated Evaluation Model with increased objectivity and transparency. He explained the benefits of SDM as a result of the introduction of Key Indicators on Alumni Engagement and Student Satisfaction Survey. He appreciated the NAAC for introducing Penalty provisions for wrong data/information/supporting documents and role of HEI in safeguarding morality.
He also appreciated SDM for clicking the implementation of G Suite for Education covering the entire students and faculty. He reiterated the benefits of total implementation of G Suite for Education such as unlimited email, unlimited G Drive, the advantages of G Sites, other subsidiary benefits as such how IT Administrator of SDM can transform the way the facilities are delivered to campuses, how the Director of SDM will be benefited by streamlining of administration and technology, which will be utilized to deliver those services. He appreciated the Director of SDM and her team and how digital wisdom can be percolated to stakeholders with the the help of comprehensively hosting suite of cloud-driven services that provide productivity, collaboration and communication tools for teaching and learning. SDM will have free unlimited Institution-wide email, a powerful and hassle-free email connectivity for faculties, staffs students and alumni, shared calendars – that can be integrated in our website and will enable collaboration among faculties, staffs, students and parents, Google Classroom – how it makes it very easy for like-minded learners and teachers to connect whether they are inside or outside of the SDM Premises. SDM Faculty can send announcements, create assignments and instantly start class discussions. Students can share valuable resources, seek clarification on any topic and interact real-time with SDM Faculty. Dr. Mayya also explained the benefits of Google Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations and Google Forms – how they are used for creating surveys to seek feedback and much more. Above all, Dr. Mayya retreated that Google provides 24/7 support, audit report, eDiscovery tools, security and administration controls and various other facilities. He appreciated the G Suite Administrator of SDM PG Section and appealed him to undergo a course run by Coursera meant for Google Administrators. He expressed his and institutional benefits such as quick and easy transition to the cloud, data protection capabilities, file exposure threats, email delivery audit (Helps in Student Satisfaction Survey), spam and malware classification, avoiding ransomware threats, easy collaboration and sharing, capability to store and manage large amount of data and make it accessible anywhere, easy implementation and deployment and appreciated the committed faculty of SDM.
He also tried to clarify many doubts of faculty as such left out metrics, doubts arising on various criterion on NAAC Self Study Report, DVV objections, how to reduce DVV clarifications, time available, how to convert IT challenges as an opportunity to get good grading.
Dr. Prameela S Shetty, IQAC Coordinator welcomed and introduced Dr. Sureshramana Mayya to the SDM Faculty. Dr. Seema S Shenoy, Director of the Institute, stressed the relevance of the programme and thanked Dr. Mayya for accepting to come over to SDM to clarify the doubts of faculty. The IQAC of SDM Centre for Post Graduate Centre for Management Studies and Research organized the programme. All the faculty members of the Institute actively participated in the session.
