New Year brings in the season of giving and taking greetings and good wishes. The most common of them is ‘Happy New Year to You!’. Does it really ensure or enhance happiness in our life? No guarantee, but our understanding of happiness enhancing factors and facets can help reclaim our health and happiness for a better life. Here is a series to focus on what all we need to know.
nd instructions seemingly spoils the learning-spirit of students and at times they tend to hate the entire business of ‘overly directed learning’. Leaving them alone helps. It encourages self-reflections, self-learning and most importantly breaks the monotony.
How we assess students in our course is diligently linked to how we teach the course. Assessment is a testimony to our teaching. Any assessment devoid of its link with ‘what to assess’, is likely to go haywire. Then comes the question of ‘how to assess.’ Our ability to link it with how we teach determines ‘assessment-of-learning’ vis-à-vis ‘assessment-for-learning.’
COVID-19 pandemic forced teaching and learning to go online in a big way. Teachers and students both embarked upon a journey into several unchartered territories of online world. It all started with difficulties and subtle sense of negation. Then started the phase of explorations, experimentations and adaptation. Finally, as it got extended further, there started a third phase wherein both teachers and students admitted their love for online teaching and learning. This empirical story of exploration through the three phases of negation, adaptation and falling in love with the online teaching and learning reveals perfect demonstration of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’.
Our education system must support and nurture creative economy as a new source of growth and job creation. Curriculum in higher education must support learning for this ever growing sector. Especially when the young generation’s consumption pattern is seemingly growing as well as diversifying phenomenally towards cultural consumption. A significant factor turns out to be their quest for social identity.
Feedback is a magic wand which can open several gates of learning for students. However, the efficacy of feedback as a tool of learning would largely depend upon the manner in which feedback is given as well as the time when feedback is executed. As a faculty we must also learn the art and science of taking and giving feedback, of course both formal and informal.
Respect for environment shall increase many fold if environmental education and concerns is imbedded into curriculum. Higher educational institutions can do much better by adopting 5 Cs framework which allows environmental consciousness to grow equally among faculty and students. It is through the ‘nudging of behavior and attitude’ that a true care for environment can be built and nurtured.
Passion and purpose are central to building an academic culture and they are also interchangeably depending upon each other. Without passion, no purpose can travel a long way, while without purpose, passion alone cannot produce desired results. If we continuously work on these 4 precepts, it is possible to build an academic culture which delivers, thrives and resonate with students and faculty in equal measures.
Indeed, there are bad days in our teaching experience, but, we also have several wow-moments in our teaching. A day to reckon with and a day to remember forever, for many things we did in creating such a wonderful experience in the classroom. Appreciative inquiry allows focusing on positive and happy experiences towards building better teaching plans and of course our future as an effective teacher.
The hallmark to lead our new generation of students in right direction is to strongly demonstrate what precisely we expect them to do. Students get energised and motivated to do more when they see teachers amply demonstrating qualities, in words and in action, which they really wanted students to develop. This is especially highly applicable when it comes to our ‘first generation learner’.
The Learning Corridor 