Priorities:Vasireddy Venkatadri Institute of Technology Student Priorities
Contents
Overview
University Innovation Fellows Spring 2017 Pitch Video
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Strategy 1: Redesigning assignments in a student’s beneficiary way
Since every subject final exam allocates few marks to students for the assignments that they submit, we want to redesign the assignment pattern in a more productive way.
As of now, same assignment is being given to all the students of the section. This system has few flaws since it gives a chance to students to copy it from others’ and the difficulty/practical implementation of an assignment is 2 on a scale of 10. This ultimately contradicts the whole idea behind giving an assignment.
What are the obvious flaws because of this?
It is a waste of time, doesn’t make a student to think innovatively or in a problem-solving way and marks are being taken for granted.
How we want it to be?
- Students are divided into random groups as the professor wishes and each group is given a separate set of assignment(Not necessarily a written assignment).
- Time limit for assignment submission should just be enough(not more/less).
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Strategy 2: Industrial awareness through alumni interactions
It is not possible to have industrial tours for all students and also students will not have a clear idea of the industrial environment/opportunity through just 1 or 2 tours. For a student to have a keen idea on what to learn during their UG so that they don’t feel pressurized with problems after they join their workplace and also to have an idea on what skills they need to work on to join their field of intrest, we decided to have more interactive sessions with alumni who are working. They can either be web sessions or we can have them come down to our college if they are free to give seminars that eliminates students’ doubts and confusion regarding their career
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Strategy 4 Re-Designing the College Time Table
The main reason behind selecting this problem is to explore the hidden skills of the students by providing them a time to get exposed to different things like sports, extra-curricular clubs, peer teaching session etc. In regular curriculum, students are not having much time to get exposed to those things. So we plan to re-design the time table of my college, and propose it to our administrators for its best implemention.
How our new time table is different from the regular one?
It provides students an effective Innovation space and allows them to do much more. They are allowed to do more in their area of interest. In regular curriculum, only 3–4 periods are given to extra curricular activities per week. But in re-designed one, the students will have at least two such periods for the day. The new curriculum will have more emphasis on student's exposure to practical learning techniques. Current time table only allows three pairs of periods for the students to spend time and experiment their ideas in labs. The new time table will atleast have a pair of periods per day dedicated to labs or similar facilities on the campus.
Strategy 5 Spreading the concept of "Open Access"
Awareness and contribution to "Open Society" initiatives is one of the most important to methods to check the institutions role and impact on the society. However, in the present situation, the culture of "Open Access" on the campus can be rated as 3/10. With the following strategies, it can be developed to 7/10 in a period one year.
The first step of this strategy is create awarness among the students, staff, and the administration, about "Open Access", its need and importance. To achieve this goal, the major cut will be hosting an OpenCon satellitive event. OpenCon satellite events are hosted a sub regional events of annual OpenCon (similar to TEDx under TED). Again, the 3rd week of October is globally celebrated as Open Access week. During this week, various sessions can be organized for the students.Another important way is to place Did You Know (DYK) posters from Wikipedia, and info with the intersting facts about Open Access and QR codes more information.
After there creating awareness on the campus, the next step is faculty engagement. A workshop for "Intergrating reasearch methodology into Wikipedia and its sister projects" should be organized. All the articles & papers published are to be made sure that they are indexed with Google scholar, and an e-copy is to be sent to R2C. Faculty can be trained to contriute to Wikiversity (Open Education Resource), and intersted faculty can trained on MediaWiki as well.
The step involves student engagement. This step invovled organising Wikipedia Edit-a-thons, and sucessfully form Wiki-club on campus. This part has already been started and is in implementation phase. The next step is to make the Computer Science Engineering students to learn MediaWiki, and take up projects to develop tools, bots, gadgets on MediaWiki. A resolution is to be made across the campus, by students, to release the images related to educational content through CC BY-SA licenses.
The final step of this strategy is administrative engagement. The instituion can form a "Open Access Repository" with all the required resources, and partner with various online databases to access their paywalled content through a collaboration. The college magazine must be incude Open-ed, and is to be published under CC BY-SA.
In the process of implementing this strategy, the by-products are as follows: students involved will enchance thier organizing, and problem solving skills, and the design thinking is adopted to improvise the ways to implement this startegy. Various organizations may also show interest due to the culture, and support can be obtained from goverment as well.
Strategy 6 Re-Designing the Academic curriculum
This strategy is about re-designing the academic curriculum of the college in way that it helps the student to excel more in his/her area of interest. In the present curriculum, students only have the choice to pursue the subjects as mandated by the affialiated University. Though some flexibility is provided at the the end of the gradution course, it is being limited due to certain constraints the college has. Even then, the electives are not so wide enough for the students to excel in their own interest, and these electives are mostly related to their own branch. For students, those who wish to pursue subjects from other streams are unable to do it.
So to avoid the above mentioned students, the primary target of the college must be to attain automous status from the university. Considering the college is autonomous from the university, it'll have the choice to design its own, even to a significant extent. After this, the college has to conduct an extensive survey among the students, staff, stakeholders, and its recruiters. Doing so the college will be able to analyse the need for a particular subject considering the interest of the students in a subject, ease of teaching for the faculty, risks involved can be given by the stakeholders, and the present day requirement of the industry can be understood from the recruiters. After a desiging a curriculum that suits all of the above mentioned categories of people on campus, the college ought to give at least one departmental elective, and one open elective (inter-disciplinary) for each semester. The the number of the subjects given for the choice of electives should be gradually increased as the student moves towards the end of his/her graduation. In this way, the student can will have more chances to secure a job in the field of his/her interest.
As a part of this process, to inculcate design thinking and innovation among the students, the open electives that are inter-disciplinary must insisted upon the students to study on their own. Instead of regular classes, as the students choose the subject from out of their own interest, they should be aksed to work on the subject, and then have an Q&A session with the teacher to clarify their doubts in the process of their learning. This process also helps the student to understand the subject in his/her own way.
Related Links
Spring 2017:
Campus Overview Wiki :Vasireddy Venkatadri Institute of Technology
Fall 2017:
