Best Practice 1
OBJECTIVES:
THE CONTEXT: The beginning of the year 2020 was marked by a major global public health crisis. The outbreak of coronavirus diseases (COVID-19) has been substantially influencing the life and living of people across the world, especially after the declaration of a global pandemic by the WHO in the middle of March 2020. As soon as the lockdown strategy came into effect to combat the spread of the virus, the education system was greatly paralysed. All educational institutions came to a close and people were advised for home quarantine to ensure social distancing. Within a short span, there was a drastic transition from offline to online mode of teaching, which revolutionised the entire education sector across the world. This radical shift has baffled both the teachers and the students and it has been extremely challenging with mixed dividends. As per a report of UNICEF, 14 % of young Indians had a tough time in this phase and refrained from several activities – the prime reason for this being the economic background of the pupil. A major chunk of the population of India under the demographic dividend has no access to the internet or even smartphones; even if some of them have there is a lack of knowledge of the usages of the same. Teachers too faced several issues in using the new technology for taking classes and providing study materials. We too faced a similar scenario and it was a highly challenging task for both the students and the teachers to acclimatise with the condition in such a short span of time.
THE PRACTICE In the last academic year all of us have witnessed an unprecedented pandemic situation due to COVID-19 virus. The entire teaching-learning method has undergone a drastic change to combat with the unfavourable academic atmosphere. All educational Institutions were closed and the students faced a novel situation of online or virtual classes. This created an added pressure to many as it involved network connection, smartphones, connectivity issues, technological know-how.We conducted several webinars and orientation programmes by experts for students as well asteachers ononline platform like zoom, Google meet etc. for creating awareness in scientific advancement, socio-economic situations in national, as well as global scenario and, simultaneously creating increased acquaintance with the new ICT technologies and its usages. A YouTube channel of the college has been created, so that the values imparted through webinars, online workshops etc. can be broadcasted to a larger audience. Faculty members are encouraged to upload their educational videos in this channel, so that outside students can also take advantage of such materials.
In an endeavour to provide Learning Management Systems for teachers and students, we introduced G-Suite and created alternative educational platform.We used Google classroom and emails for disbursing study materials to students. Our teaching and non-teaching faculties have worked day and night for this purpose. The teachers across the departments have entertained students’ queries relentlessly and guided them.After resuming of offline classes, again it was extremely problematic to restore the normal classes.The blending of online and offline classes proved quite burdensome as there were issues in forming the timetable where pupil has several combination of subjects. We have been conducting survey and feedback from teachers and students which were collected at regular intervals for betterment of the curriculum. To continue with the blended mode of teaching-learning, the entire college is equipped with Wi-Fi connection after the pandemic scenario. We have installed routers in every floor for free internet access for students and teachers for online classes.
The admission process has been going online for the last several years. The enrolment of students in the semesters, submission of marks of internal examinations as well as fees submission has been controlled by our internal college portal, which has, so far, been supervised offline. However, when the institution was under lock-down, an alternative pathway has been created, where, the registration, enrolment of students and fees submission, marks submission etc. are controlled by an online portal.
This paradigm shift in the education sector has come with advantages as well as disadvantages. Some of our students came up with anxiety, fear, depression, suicidal ideation, social withdrawal etc during this crisis period as a result of this sudden shift in teaching-learning process which has been taken care of by thefaculty members of the department of Psychology of our college.
EVIDENCE OF SUCCESS
Best Practice 2
THE CONTEXTThe College has got its rich heritage of nurturing the habit of rendering service to the local and national community. The students are motivated to participate, involve and extend their service towards humanity. All the outreach activities are aimed to improve the holistic personality of the students. The various activities are planned and implemented through the National Service Scheme (NSS) of the college. The interactions and exchange of goodwill of the people provide the students a sense of sympathy and empathy. The college efficiently works towards the development of the students in an academic context and also gives equal importance to these outreach activities. These training, exposure and involvement of students have provided them the experience of social living.
THE PRACTICE
Since its inception, Sarojini Naidu College for Women has been carrying out different sorts of extension and outreach activities through the National Service Scheme(NSS) team with faculty head as NSS Programme officer along with his team members. The whole team consists of about 60 NSS volunteers. The cardinal principle of the NSS programme is that the students and teachers combine together in community service and get a sense of involvement in the tasks of nation building.
NSS activities include functional literacy and non-formal education, tree plantation, participation in Republic day parade, health education and primary health care, first aid awareness, blood donation, AIDS awareness, disaster management (cyclones, floods), women empowerment, road safety, plastic eradication, and celebration of days of national importance and so on. These activities are planned and implemented regularly as a part of social activities to contribute towards the betterment of the society. The practice is unique, since it bestows the best education to the students’ community as it is a part of participatory learning and experiential learning.
EVIDENCE OF SUCCESS
Our NSS cadets have successfully executed various extension activities in collaboration with industry, community and non-government organizations during the past year.