'Unemployability among Indian students result of lagging in higher and lower order thinking skills': AICTE's Col B Venkat

To conduct assessments of students and faculty members in Higher Education Institutes, and to create a large group of trained technical teachers, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) announced the launch of the Students Learning Assessment (SLA) programme through PARAKH portal (https://aslap.aicte-india.org/) and expanded the ambit of National Initiative for Technical Teachers' Training (NITTT) by making it accessible for teachers with more than five years of service, respectively.

Col B Venkat, the Director of the Faculty Development Cell of AICTE, is still a serving Army officer from the Technical branch (Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering) with more than 30 years of service experience and handles faculty development related issues, the release of grants, etc. while also being known for working on examination reforms and processes of implementation of NEP 2020.

Col B Venkat who has led the brains behind both the programmes spoke to the Free Press Journal in an exclusive interview about the goals of SLA and NITTT and what it entails while also explaining their existing and future initiatives for students and faculty members to better themselves.

Q. How did a programme like the Student Learning Assessment come about?

A. Back in 2017, in an MOU signed with Stanford University which aimed to study Indian students' lack of employability after completion of technical courses, our students competed with Chinese and Russian students in Higher-Order and Lower Order Thinking skills which exposed that we cannot even mug up and take out answers, which comes under Lower Order Thinking, compared to the Chinese students who were far ahead of our lot. We also came out to be way behind our counterparts in Application, Decision Making, etc. which exposed how our students strictly follow academics rather than having any form of a holistic approach, that includes verbal and non-verbal skills. Having thanked Stanford for the help, we took it upon ourselves to develop the tools needed for the assessment. Which is how we developed the Student Learning Assessment portal also known as Parakh.

Q. How does SLA help in evaluating the students? What does the programme aim to achieve?

A. The broader idea is to not only help our students get employed but also have the ability to generate employment and that is where Student Learning Assessment programme comes in, which is also free of cost. We have developed more than 1.45 lakh MCQ questions, wherein a right answer is followed up with a justification for the same, as this is an assessment and different from an exam in the sense that a student can keep taking it periodically. Questions from specific areas are also included. For example, because of the programme's application in all four major engineering domains for students from all levels, questions on emerging areas of Niche technology, disruptive technology, etc. are also available. To attract management students, we have included questions on Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) and have also focused on Aptitude tests, which apart from verbal and non-verbal mechanisms, have been further categorised into physical, social, mental, integrity, spiritual domains. This is specifically to see if a student is a team player, can work under pressure, has financial integrity, etc. which is what any company will look forward to while evaluating your skills. Assessment makes it clear if the student is performing poorly, average, good, below average, and with a star rating the student can understand where they stand. The faculty can also participate in SLA either as someone taking the assessment or in the role of a guide to their students to see where they are lacking. The students can also look at how they did in the confidential assessment. In the end, assessment should happen with the collaboration between faculty, students, labs, infrastructure, institute, etc.

Q. How is SLA (PARAKH) going to shape up in the coming years? What new steps will be taken to improve its quality?

A. We are now in a position to even put up questions regarding Agriculture, Health, and Legal with the mandate of the National Education Policy (NEP) for assessment of the students. For example, when a Mechanical Engineering student takes the assessment, the questions will be a mixture of core Mechanical Engineering along with Agriculture, Health, Legal, Aptitude, etc. When we did our pilot assessment in September last year, it was funded by the World Bank but now the responsibility of its costs lies in totality with AICTE with more than 87000 students and 1500 plus teachers coming to the portal off which more than 53,500 and 1300+ respectively participating in the assessment and the goal is to have around a million assessment questions from the different core and emerging areas. We are also looking at the inclusion of School, College students from 10th to 12th and a possible expansion under the University Grants Commission (UGC). AICTE is also aiming to have a mobile version of the portal as it can be already accessed through laptops, desktop pcs. Our current questions are based on Bloom's Taxonomy levels 1-3 which are easier but we have to go to levels 4-6 which includes Analytical, Thinking, Design, Applicability based questions as they are more difficult and will bring out the true picture of our students.

Q. National Institute of Technical Teachers' Training (NITTT) is a scheme that was initiated two years ago which recently increased its ambit for faculty who have been working for more than five years? What are some of the reasons for the same?

A. Based on the Gazette notification of March 1, 2019, NITTT came into existence as an initiative as a response to the argument that teachers in Technical Education are not going through any form of examinations, unlike school teachers who have to pass B.ED exams. Eight Pedagogical modules are supposed to be completed by the teachers after which they have to undergo four weeks of industrial training which is followed by a mentor-based training. The programme was released in 2020 for teachers in service for less than five years to bring about regularization but we introduced 12 more models this month to give an optional choice to Assistant and Associate professors for the purpose of promotion. The goal is to have more professional, relevant, and competitive faculty to make them capable of what's to come in the future.

Q. What other existing programmes by AICTE aim to develop the students? Are there other plans in the pipeline?

A. I will lose count of the number of programmes we have put into action in the past few years. No. of scholarships by AICTE have increased in the past few years. Pragati scholarship for example is awarded to girls taking admission in AICTE approved Technical institution at Degree/ Diploma based on merit while Saksham scholarship is awarded to Differently abled students taking admission in AICTE approved Technical institution at Degree/ Diploma. Students are the focal point on which NEP is focused upon and thus professional education has to be provided. Emphasis on regional languages has also been pushed through AICTE For Swayam courses in 12 regional languages, along with translating model curriculums as well. On 3rd Jan, Hon. Minister of Education released undergraduate and diploma first-year books in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Telugu which are written and translated by AICTE and faculty members across the country. We are also working on updating the Exam Reform policy along with Model Curriculum 2018 based on the system's shift to a digital mode of learning. In today's time relevance has shifted because of the inclusion of vocational education into your general education which makes it more important than ever to work on the entry/exit system guaranteed by the NEP. We have to make students capable of doing work or make themselves ready even after one year of the course.

Published on: Tuesday, February 08, 2022, 06:19 PM IST