REFORMATION OF CONTNUING EDUCATION PROGRAM (CEP) - A PERSPECTIVE OF UNIVERSITY AFFILIATED COLLEGES

1. REFORMATION OF CONTNUING EDUCATION PROGRAM (CEP) - A PERSPECTIVE OF UNIVERSITY AFFILIATED COLLEGES Authors: Dr.U.M.Bhushi Dr.S.S.Manvi & Prof.S.B.Dandagi

2. Contents • Preview Of CEP a) Initiation b) Activities 2. A Review of program at University affiliated engineering colleges courses. 3.Prevailing Perspective of CEP’s outcome What Are the Issues? What it is not ? 4. Objective of the paper 5.Methodology 6. CASE STUDY 7. Reformations needed in lieu of the doctoral program 8. Reformations of CEP for the doctoral program

3. Preview Of CEP Initiation Its Activities • Rate of development in any scientific area is High- Specialized knowledge obsolete. • Rapid technological advancement  Engineers and Scientists learn new technologies, update and upgrade their knowledge on an ongoing basis • NEED OF THE HOUR Continuing Education of working professionals of both the academia and in industry is a vital need. • This led to: • Continuing Education Programme for Working Professionals was instituted by the Ministry of Human Resources. • Development(MHRD)in its New Education Policy Government of India in 1988, under ISTE later in 1995, through AICTE.

4. Preview of CEP Cont’d • CE facilitates the manpower training and knowledge upgradation needs of both the industry and academic institutions through various centers • IIT’s • NIT’s(then REC’s) and • other leading institutions of the country.

5. Objectives of CEP • To assist working professionals in the industry in widening their knowledge base and in improving their skills. • To assist the industry to be globally competitive and be at the cutting edge of technology by providing training and expertise in critical areas. • To promote strong industry-institute interaction. • Distance Education Programmes (DEP) • To reach out to more working professionals, they extended to Web based Distance Continuing Education and transmission via VSAT (DEP) • Preparation of Course Modules and Video Packages

6. Activities of CEP The courses range from • Short duration Workshops, Seminar, Short Term Training Programs(STTP) and Symposia • Long term duration of program • Post graduate programs and • Research programs.

7. A Review of program at University affiliated engineering colleges courses. • Most of the engineering colleges are affiliated to a one or few of the technical university. Visveswaraya Technological University of Karnataka has around 115 colleges under its purview of control. • 70% or more these colleges have their primary focus only on undergraduate program and only a few have post graduate programs and still lesser offer doctoral program. • University affiliated colleges are the traditional training grounds of Graduate programs. • Objective of the under graduate programs have an academic mandate, a condition that generally negates research activities. Academic mandate best fits a highly formalized organizational structure with centralized decision-making

8. The academic mandate requires staff to be generalists rather than specialists. • Here the knowledge dissemination is on the basics of engineering curriculum. • Specific area of research may not at all be required and in many cases the curriculum content is marginal less than 2-5% of the entire graduate program of the research work carried out. • One cannot find an explicit relationship between performance in UG program and research activity. This ought not to be surprising that the best academicians are not necessarily the best researchers and doctoral degree holder. • So, there is very little agreement on research priorities and on the knowledge and skills requirement of under graduates.

9. A scholarly innovation fits in an informal organization with decentralized decision-making, that where institutions are autonomous which are hardly around 10% in the entire India. • Research activity typically occurs when staff have specialized knowledge, which they translate into focused research interests and defined research agendas. Finally, staff roles are often not well defined in terms of distinguishing between academic/professional roles and research role. • Thus prevailing culture of UG courseware sends a message that research does add to little institutional support where research is not a core activity and under valued activity.

10. There is limited opportunity for staff to work with graduate students nor is it apparently used to inform and improve practice, and both conditions tend to have a negative impact on research activity. • It is seen as non-productive work because it does not contribute to the expectations of UG students. • Also academic environment in colleges there is little structure to support research Time (more work load) and Infrastructure • Less than 5 percent of staff identify research as a component of their job.

11. Summing up there is a negative impact on research activity in colleges offering UG programs only: • Conditions of academic mandate, • Culture • Nature of work, and • Support for research

12. Prevailing Perspective of CEP’s outcome • In majority of the cases, most of the researched fields donot relate to his or her teaching domain. • There is hardly any relationship between program development and his research activity. • Take away time from their valuable service of teaching. • There is no continuation of research after joining and prime focus is on the undergraduates and to some extent on the post graduate programs.

13. WHAT ARE THE ISSUES? • Need to redefine continuing education practice from the perspective of faculty affiliated to university. • This paper attempts to bring to fore the issues and an attempt to address these issues by delving into the available data. • Deficiencies and weaknesses that exist in current arrangements of the CEP, as well as on much needed strategic directions for change. WHAT IT IS NOT ? • This paper intentionally focuses on barriers to research but, in doing so, does not discount strengths that may be attributed to research conducted in the field.

14. OBJECTIVES OF THE PAPER •   Scope of the paper is only the on the research programs offered to faculties colleges of engineering, where the research in that institution is low or nil. • To what extent the knowledge, expertise of research work carried out has been useful to both the faculty, students and institution as a whole which offer UG only. • Keeping education programs, and the requirement of graduates, there is need for redesigning research programs   • A Need to re-look in to these activities as to what extent have the objectives of CEP been met and to what extent have objectives used. How should the activities of CEP be reoriented to the faculties affiliated to University commensurate to their requirement.

15. METHODOLOGY Paper draws the inferences through Deliberations made at various colleges faculties at all levels in the hierarchy Personal interviews and Opinions of the authors Opinions are collected from: Those who have done research Those unwilling to do research and the Management

16. CASE STUDY   Renowned engineering college with an experience of 40 years, having 90% of the faculty with post graduation of which 35% are doctorates. Data was also collected from 3 more institutions where the doctorates were very few less than 5%. And Post graduates too were limited.The inferences have been made from all the observations together.

17. HIGHLIGHTED ISSUES AND PROBLEMS From the review consensus exists on What might be achieved, How to implement change. Directions to have a renewed look at the CEP activities to compatible to the colleges affiliated to universities. SPELT OUT ISSUES  As the saying goes, “what gets measured gets done.” Rightly so, we measure and reward research quite rigorously. However, we give much less attention and rigor in judging and improving teaching—and very little research goes into this task. Value both dimensions of teaching and research, and should be reflected in our use of the terms “teaching load” and “research opportunities.”

18. ISSUES (Cont’d) More importantly research is rewarded more than teaching through promotion and a few additional increments. But professorial responsibilities should be defined to integrate both teaching and scholarship, but in most cases there is a lack of recognition for teaching and intellectual work of, curriculum development, course design for instructional means, community development projects, and so on. Scholarly activity need to be directed to serve a specific educational need learning how we can improve our professional work, directed to better understanding our students; employing technology to enhance instruction and teaching pedagogy and program performance should enhance over time.

19. ISSUES (Cont’d) Are doctorates able to bring about these changes after a gap of 3-4 years, when they revert back to college. Do they really enhance the professionals touch, through this concept of lifelong education and the ongoing improvement of professional practice. It is time to recognize the full range of faculty talent and the several functions that is performed at the institution. Hence, it is proposed enhance this form of intellectual work by the revision of CEP programs which fosters the teaching pedagogy and intellectual excellence at the UG level.

20. ISSUES (Cont’d) The continuing studies should be made within the context of the university’s fundamental values hence A broadened view of CEP is essential, instead of pure research alone, Contributing to the enhancement of teaching learning process to meet the challenges our universities which enhances the value of members of the academic community. To survive and grow, extension organizations, like all good learning organizations, must be resilient, adaptable, and progressive; one way they indicate these qualities is by making the necessary modifications in their goals. Reformations in CEP process have been formalized from the consensus

21. Reformations needed in lieu of the doctoral program   Since the focus of UG is different, the faculties need to be updated with recent changing technologies. So there should be regular course work to be undertaken which are offered from the premier institutes for a semester. This should be made mandatory to all the staff. The course works undertaken should be interlinked based on the streams like Thermal, Design, Production,Management etc. The time period should also be made explicit, so that the staff visit every 2-3 years for a semester. After the course work, staff should be made to design a curriculum, based on the needs of the industry and society and also develop course material for the same.

22. Reformations needed cont’d Selection of the faculty for these programs to be decided by need of the department, not just the interest of the faculty, to enable growth in all streams of the branch under consideration. Selection panel should include a representative of the university, whose responsibility is to ascertain the balance of the department. Also government will need to have policy changes for colleges affiliated to universities in promotion of faculty concerned. Where promotion basis on doctorate has to be relaxed for faculty with 5-6 course semesters (need to be deliberated) in premier institutes as a sufficient for promotion aspects. A regular review has to be done by the CEP on the faculty who have used the facility of CEP, so that the faculty have been contributing to the cause of the educational growth continually in terms of development of teaching aids.

23. Reformations of CEP for the doctoral program: In research-intensive universities, this picture changes drastically when we shift the focus to the research function of the university. In such a case, doctoral programs at least needs another look for the research to make a dent in the organizations/ industry/ society. To make research an viable commodity. Following few revamping in CEP processess are needed:

24. Reformations of CEP for the doctoral program: Following few revamping in CEP process are needed: CEP should provide facilities in terms of continuation of research by providing funds and necessary infrastructure and have accountability measures in terms design of curriculum, publication of papers, patents etc.. CEP should foster the research of the candidate to make it useful for the industry/society by suitably promoting the work under some programs, like having annual forum where the researchers and industry people meet to exchange their ideas. This will facilitate renewed direction for research compatible to the needs of the industry.

25. Conclusions It is time for CEP to delve into theses issues and devise a separate process to make it more useful to the colleges where emphasis is on UG curriculum only. This work is carried forward for a delphi study to garner information from all CEP centres

26. THANK YOU AND FORUM IS OPEN FOR DELIBERATIONS AND OPINIONS