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Aspect of 'Quality' in colleges

Jan 28

Written by: Raghu Pandey
28/01/2010 14:16

In most industries like manufacturing or software it is easy to observe and measure the quality of the product or the end result, which clearly indicates the quality of manufacturing processes involved in creating that product. Thus, through tests & observations of the product, it is easy to control the quality of background processes because every attribute of the finished product has a corresponding manufacturing process. However in case of a college, where the objective is to churn out high quality people (students), it is difficult to map the attributes of a student to his or her "manufacturing" processes. That’s because, the end-result is the value addition to students in the form of skill, understanding, attitude etc. We cannot have a one-to-one mapping between the set of values added to students’ personalities and set of processes they have gone through or resources they were provided with.

Desirable attributes in students

Skill -
Understanding -
Theoretical Knowledge -
Professional Attitutde -
Team Work -
Future Ready -
Hard Working -

?
can
we
map
?

Resources/processes used

- Teachers
- Labs
- Library & Study Resources
- Co-curricular Activities
- Course Design
- Environment
- Industry Interaction

Thus if management of a college wants to ensure that quality of their students is high, they cannot rely on just the feedback mechanisms. ‘End results’ in this case, cannot be effective benchmarks. I personally know of so many colleges which have good teachers, well equipped labs, well stocked libraries, amazing infrastructure etc., but still the level of students passing out is mediocre. Therefore colleges will have to use other ways to look at quality issue of their organization. One such criterion is ‘Flow of knowledge & information’. Organizational behavior experts believe that flow of knowledge & information within an organization is as important as flow of blood in our body. Organizations like ISRO are obvious examples. In case of educational systems the importance of knowledge & information sharing is more pronounced. In short, what differentiates a great college from an average one is culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Taking the analogy of human body a little further – it being a successful and time-tested system – observe that one of our most vital organs, the heart, is fully dedicated to ensure proper flow of blood to all the other organs. Similarly the Intra College Portal, through which teachers, students, and administrators of a college can collaborate in day-to-day, becomes a vital asset for that organization. If a college can manage to develop a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing, the overall quality of their students can automatically get ensured.

Please do share your views on how to look at the quality issue in educational institutes and help us see the not-so-obvious bottlenecks which exist in the learning environment of colleges. Your own past experience of graduation or post-grad days in college would be the best source of feedback.

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7 comment(s) so far...

Re: Aspect of 'Quality' in colleges

I and Saurabh spent the last 2 months talking to people from our client colleges and managed to collect lot of relevant inputs.

However i'd consider our exercise incomplete without honest and straight-from-the-heart feedback from those of us who may not be in educational field now, but have spent important years of life in 1 or more colleges.

So people.. open-up and help us shape the future of iBranch service!

By Raghu Pandey on 28/01/2010 18:56

Re: Aspect of 'Quality' in colleges

Taking further the example you quoted about manufacturing & software industries, the quality comes in from skilled people and well defined processes / framework. So even in our education system we need skilled board (starting from VC, director, professor, lab assistance, etc.) and a well defined process framework owned by dedicated oversight board. The responsibilities of the board should be, but not limited to:
- Review of the course curriculum on periodic basis
- Review of the teachers learning matrix; it should be mandatory for each teacher to undergo relevant training(s) in a year. I believe, only if you know, you will be able to share right knowledge
- To keep them updated about new initiatives related to the courses offered; I think going forward initiative like ibranch should be able to help them out in getting relevant and course specific global details.
- Take feedback from the companies who come for recruitment
- Should enforce culture of “What you have” instead of “What you should know”; this may also lead to better research & development.
- Should have set targets for betterment of technology within campus & new inventions / discoveries / patents
- Ensure that communication should never die; which may lead to working in silos, reinvention of wheel, etc

I think each teacher should realize that they are first “Learners” and then “Teachers”. It will be great if we can start calling them “Learners” instead of “Teachers”.

By Dev on 29/01/2010 14:35

Re: Aspect of 'Quality' in colleges

Your intra college portal can help colleges develop a culture of collaboration, but the bottleneck would be teachers because their own level of knowledge is pretty low these days. No wonder they discourage students to raise discussions in the classroom!

By Suresh J on 04/02/2010 13:01

Re: Aspect of 'Quality' in colleges

@ Dev - thanks for your detailed feedback! all your points are worth considering for any college management. i however shall take 3 of those for my purpose. point#2 i.e. need for teachers' training and knowledge updation, point#4 i.e. feedback from recruiters to improve quality, and point#7 i.e. ensuring communication never dies out.

points 2 & 4 are the areas iBranch can play an important role by enabling long-term associations between industry and colleges. point 7 is the core value prop of our service.

@ Suresh - we all agree on the need for enhancing the quality of teachers in colleges. however not all teachers are bad, and the main reason why they discourage discussions in classrooms is firstly they are bound by the urgency to finish the course in time, and secondly they themselves need to refer to various books before telling the right thing to the student.

Hence the bottleneck is not the knowledge of the teacher but the strict time-table of the college! A facility like iBranch can definitely remove this bottleneck by enabling asynchronous discussions through forums & blogs.

By Raghu Pandey on 05/02/2010 16:02

Re: Aspect of 'Quality' in colleges

hello Raghu,

Being an Computer engineering student and a professional for 12 years, I think what exactly is causing this mediocrity - the exams system of our engineering colleges.

1. The exams are very theoritical - there is no reward if I spent hours in lab - instead of the lab time, if I read second book, my scoring probability goes very high.

2. Getting internal numbers is very easy - The internals - marking agaist practical and assignments - is always taken for granted. This is exactly the zone where one student learns to apply his thoeritical knowledge into real knowledge - something which embed in the brain and unfortunately, ignored most. Teachers are always under pressure to give at least passing marks on these - even if a student does not show up.

3. Lack of Team related assignments/marking - there are very few assignment in entire degree course where teams are made and their assignment are assesed at team level. The teams should be assigned by teacher by assessing individual skills and nature of assignment and evaluated collectively.

4. You mentioned, strict time-table is a bottleneck - but I don't know of any good quality educational institution which does not have one. About teachers' experience - he has to learn with the students. In any good school/university, when a teacher assigns a task to a team of students, he is not necessarily a master on that subject. He also contributes and in the process he also learns. This type of culture has to still to be grown - the assumption that teacher knows everything (or should know everything) is never right.

In short, more marks to practicals will bring in quality. Otherwise, the first thing we do when we hire intern/fresh graduate is to clean up their theory and give the practical aspects of the things.

By Piyush Jain on 07/02/2010 20:21

Re: Aspect of 'Quality' in colleges

Hi Piyush! Thanks for your detailed inputs. Your points 1, 2 and 3 i feel are designed into our higher education system, but the will to implement and enforce such practices is absent in both - colleges & authorities.

For the purpose of this blog i'd pick your point#4 which stresses on continuous learning for teachers and was also mentioned by Dev in his comment. I feel it'd be great if iBranch can facilitate long-term collaboration between teachers and industry professionals. Its feasible for us and ensures that teachers are well aware about the cutting edge concepts and practical issues of the industry.

I am curious to know more about your concluding statement. How many of those freshers are good at collaborating in day-to-day with colleagues and seniors within the company?

By Raghu Pandey on 08/02/2010 18:49

Aspect of 'Quality' in colleges

Well Since i have been training a lot of Faculty members of Management and Technology Institutions i would like to add few points as well.

1. Most of the Faculty members in the colleges use very outdated method of teaching. Such as Lecture method, rarely does some body use video or demonstration as a method of teaching.

2. The understanding of students psychology and the learning methods are not known by the faculty members which becomes a hinderance in passing on knowledge to all the student.s

3. A lot of emphasis and material to be given to the faculty members on the modern teaching methods and Adult learning techniques

4. For the students there has to be a place where he can know, interact with people from the industry on a regular basis for
a. Difficulty in subject
b. Emotional expression
c. Interview
d. Placement.
e. Opportunities and or assignment or project work.

Thats all i can think right now.

By arvind raikar on 12/02/2010 16:54

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