Main Menu

Institutional Best Practice

Best Practice 1: HOLISTIC EDUCATION FOR STUDENTS

Holistic Education for Students

  • To develop intellectual, life skills, emotional, social, physical, artistic, creative and spiritual abilities in students.
  • To prepare students to meet the challenges in life as well as in academics.
  • To encourage and engage students for personal and collective responsibility.
  • To make learning natural, fun, engaging and meaningful experience.
  • To instil curiosity and develop better communication and social skills.
  • To find identity, meaning, and purpose in life through connections to the community, to the natural world, and to spiritual values such as compassion and peace.

A holistic education motivates students to learn about a subject in totality. It implants curiosity and allows students to learn naturally and creatively. It is also attuned to each students individual persona and learning style, in contrast of the current mass educational system. In addition, the institution should also be the place where they are taught to have better understanding about life from a spiritual point of view. The institute encourages spiritual values to be a part of education in college, because we believe a student will learn better only if he/she is explained the purpose of spirituality in life. However, in this hustle- bustle of daily life and pressure to perform there is a challenge to set the mind, body and soul at peace while going about the daily routine. Therefore, incorporating human values such as love, compassion, patience, forgiveness, etc., through spiritual education, students will have a balance between internal and external morals and develop a good character.  Also, emphasizing on spiritual education, students will know that, apart from gaining education to improve one’s material attainment and success, it is also important to have selfless love and respect for the society.

The holistic education is included as part of co-curricular activity and conducted every year for new batch of students. The experts are invited from Prajapita Brahmakumari Eshwari Viswavidyalaya, Gadag, Dr. Satish Hombale, K. H. Patil Institute of Naturopathy and Yogic Sciences, Hulkoti and In-house resource person Mr. S. T Halakatti, Asst. Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Once the admissions are closed for that year, the coordinator will prepare a list of students who will be attending the sessions of holistic education. The sessions are scheduled and conducted at-least once/twice a week based on the academic calendar. According to the schedule, the coordinator will communicate to respective resource persons to inform the dates of the sessions. The institution will provide hospitality to resource persons and also makes necessary arrangements for smooth conduction of sessions.

The holistic education has brought in values, curiosity, emotional growth, improved communication and social skills in students. Students voluntarily participated and conducted various activities like fund raising for flood victims, Blood donation camp to create awareness among students, Swatch Bharat Abhiyan at various temples and college premises, visited and distributed sweets to Special Children School (Physically Disabled Student School), visited and served food to Jeevan Sandya Old Age Home under the banner “Ashraya-Badukige Ondu Daari”, visited government school to motivate students to return to school under the banner Maarali Baa Schoolige.

  • Motivating students to attend these sessions is found difficult initially.
  • Awareness of need to attend spiritual education among young students community is very low.

Resources Required

  • Financial Support
  • Hospitality for Resource persons.
  • An exclusive room with proper environment that suits the holistic education

Best Practice 2: FACULTY INDUSTRY INTERNSHIP

Industry Internship for Faculty

  • To gain experience for adopting current engineering knowledge and technology in teaching or to apply for any new situations
  • To be able to integrate existing engineering knowledge with new industrial applications
  • To be familiar with the working culture and environment in organizations
  • Gain competencies and experience to understand Industry-Academia gaps and bridge them
  • To understand how actually the classroom learning applies to the industry and to what extent

It is imperative that the educator should be abreast with the advances in technology, latest devices, skills and methodologies with which she/he can make classroom level teaching-learning process an interesting one. University curriculum is time framed and not dynamic enough to adopt sudden advances. The obsoleteness of knowledge learnt and inability to adapt to current technology is hindering student from being gainfully employed. The institutions are under a great stress to renew education offered by them, to be as close as possible to the industrial requirement and expectations. Competition in the job sector is rising exponentially and securing entry-level jobs is getting very difficult.

The industry internship for faculty serves as an open window for learning, adapting and adopting. There is ample evidence of tangible and intangible benefits accrued. The institution and the student community experience new perspective in learning along with strong footing in fundamentals and the science behind technology and the courses.

The intangible benefits are:

  • Increased knowledge and confidence levels of the faculty intern
  • Ability to connect technology and its applications in real-world
  • Students learn subjects with a wider perspective and apply them to projects

Following the resolution of the Research and Development from the academic year 2018-2019 and its recommendation for faculty internship, the department plans for deputing staff and invites applications. Based on the need and industries offering such internship on current technology, members of the faculty are shortlisted. The staff member selected is required to plan the date and accordingly adjust academic schedule and other responsibilities. The internship program is for Two/Three weeks therefore such assignment is undertaken in the holidays and successive weekends to avoid the hassles. The staff deputation is on paid leave but on few occasions, all other expenses are also provided. Upon completion of the internship, the faculty is expected to submit a report on the internship details, its content and usefulness. The member of faculty then plans for conducting sessions to train colleagues and students specifically on the area of the internship. It is mutually beneficial for staff, students and institution. The responsibility of deputing faculty for industry internship was taken up by IQAC from the academic year 2019-20.

The intense has infused new thoughts and insights on how the classroom teaching can be revamped and the learning process can be made pleasant and knowledgeable experience. There is enough scope for retraining and realignment of teaching to suit experiential learning and for a new action plan. There is now ample opportunity for source funding for projects, training, and sponsorship too. All most all departments which had deputed staff for internship had applied for grants and few got them too. This would not have been possible if it was not industry internship for staff. More interactions with the outside world leading to further MoU’s for Internship for students. Placement opportunities for students enhanced. Give better feedback to offer value added programme and input to the University syllabus changes and curriculum enhancement.

  • Encouraging experienced faculty to attend two/three week industry internship was found difficult initially
  • Adjustment of academics and other responsibilities was difficult

 

Resources Required

  • Financial support
  • Laptop with computing facility

Best Practice 3: SINGLE WINDOW SYSTEM

Single Window System

The Institution adapted the single window system at the administrative office for the student to obtain required documents in short period of time and to ease the burden at the counter which reduces waiting time and to assure student of quick receipt of the required document.

The counter in-charge allocated for single window system to ensure the student’s requirement is promptly addressed and directs the application to specific section such as admission, accounts, office section, examination section, scholarship section, department and other sections.

  1. Application is received from the student at the single window counter by the in-charge Receptionist.
  2. The Receptionist verifies the received application.
  3. Receptionist then specifies the time required for preparation of the document to the student.
  4. Application is sent to the respective section for further verification and preparation of the document.
  5. Respective sections will prepare the document and get the approval from the principal.
  6. Principal approves the prepared documents. If finds any queries, he send back the application for further verification.
  7. The approved document is received back at reception.
  8. The acknowledgement is received from the student after the issue of document.

Best Practice 4: COOPERATIVE LEARNING

Title of The Practice: COOPERATIVE LEARNING

The Cooperative learning is an educational methodology in which students work in groups in order to achieve determined purposes or goals. It is achieved by a group of students with common interests according to the motivations levels and needs in a specific area.

The Institution has adapted the following process for cooperative learning.

  1. The mentors are allocated for each group of students
  2. Mentors will select students who show interest in cooperative learning in a common topic.
  3. Each group consists of 10 students
  4. For example in the department of ECE students are divided into groups based on the subjects such as image processing, embedded and IOT, artificial intelligence, DSP, VLSI etc. .
  5. Groups will have discussion on the given topics.
  6. Feedback and suggestions will be given by mentor based on the discussion.

Outcomes:

Cooperative learning helped the students to develop Positive interdependence, Group processing, Appropriate use of skill and individual responsibility. It also promotes Face to face interaction. Which  interns helped the students in placement and Examinations

INSTITUTIONAL REFORMS

REFORM 1: MICRO TEACHING

Micro-teaching is one of the initiatives taken by the REC for improving the quality of the teaching. Micro-teaching is a teacher training and faculty development technique whereby the teacher (experience less than 5 years) review a recording of his/her session for about 10-20 minutes in every academic year. Based on the feedback received from the review committee suggestions are given to improve the teaching level.

This process helps in improving quality of teachers in their teaching skills, communication skills, stage courage, pedagogy, subject knowledge, behavior, mannerisms, body language and attitude. From this micro teaching they can enhance the effective class management skills. It also helps the teachers to learn or create new teaching strategies which will bring back the interest of their students in the classroom.

The process of Microteaching which here adapted as follows

  1. Initially preparing list of faculties who have experience less than 5 years.
  2. Then recording video of teaching sessions of about 10 to 20 minutes.
  3. The recorded videos are sent to their respective department reviewing committee. The review committee of each department consists of Principal, Vice principal, HOD and two senior faculties of department.
  4. The committee reviews the communication skills, stage courage, pedagogy, subject knowledge, behavior, mannerisms, body language, usage of board and attitude.
  5. Based on reviews the feedback is given to faculties for further improvement in their teaching skills.

Faculty members from CSE, CIVIL, TEXTILE, ECE and SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES Departments have undergone microteaching process. The following points were observed by the committee members

  1. Lagging in presentation skills
  2. Maximum usage of Boards
  3. Usage of ICT tools in teaching learning process
  4. Need to work on classroom preparation with examples
  5. Eye-contact with the students
  6. Body language improvement
  7. Lagging in communication skills

REFORM 2: EXPERIMENT BASED LEARNING

The institution has adapted a practice to teach a topic using experiments in the laboratory. Practical awareness is inculcated and students are trained both quantitatively and qualitatively during the lab sessions to enhance their understanding and problem solving abilities. Here concerned faculty decided the topic which is to be thought and implement in respective laboratories and gets the approval from to Head of the department. The common goal is to learn the complicated topic with practical approach in easy enjoyable and understandable manner. The lessons are delivered a topic in classroom but in experiment based learning students can design and build the system.

For example in department of ECE conducted an experiment design and FPGA implementation of finite state machine. Here students already studied theoretically design of finite state machine which is implementing practically in the laboratory. Student will learn experimentally the process of designing a digital circuits and implementation of the same in the FPGA chip.

 

Benefits of experiment based learning:

  1. Improved Skill Set: It is important to learn the theory of a topic or subject, getting out and applying the theory to a practical situation enables to build system.
  2. Increase the understanding capability: By experimental learning students will easily understand the design complicated design concept.
  3. Better Knowledge Retention: Taking a hands-on approach to learn a topic will increase the ability to retain information quickly and longer periods of time. When learning in a theoretical approach our brains attempt to remember words. However, when learning in a practical environment, brain remembering actions and scenarios which find easier to retain.