Q. - Do you think that the educational institutions who follow quality standards get a mileage?
Educational organizations who follow the standard can ensure better alignment of objectives and activities with their policy (including mission and vision), they will be able to enhanced social responsibility by providing quality education for all, they can Personalize learning and effective response to all learners(including learners with special education needs), they can ensure consistent processes and evaluation tools to demonstrate and increase effectiveness and efficiency, credibility of these organizations gets improved and they can demonstrate effective educational management practices and an overall culture for organizational improvement.
All interested parties including learners, parents, staff, regulators, management, researchers, industry & employers all participation to stimulation excellence and innovation for the organizations that follow standard processes.
Q. - Why is India lagging behind in the list of Top 100 Universities in the world?
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Q. - What would be the new criteria to measure quality standards after COVID19?
As we all understand the Health and safety of all interested parties is going to be the most significant aspect now post COVID-19. Achievement of learning outcomes while enhancing skills is going to become more important than merely course completion. Due to the technology enhancement and an increased use of virtual learning, we will have to enable the learners to learn how to learn. This is going to be the new normal in the education sector. A blended teaching approach will be expected from the organizations and educators. Skill enhancement of educators will now play an important role than ever.
The bigger concern, however, on everybody’s mind is the effect of the disease on the employment rate. Recent graduates in India are fearing withdrawal of job offers from corporates because of the current situation. Immediate measures are required to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on job offers, internship programs, and research projects. Due to the emotional stress which the learners and all the other stakeholders are going through, the educational organizations will have to continue to be welcoming, inclusive and respectful so that they help students cope with the stress. A supportive educational ecosystem which is free from any discrimination and biases and which is sensitive towards the current and future needs of the learners will be the most important criteria.
There will be, going forward, a great opportunity to develop new forms of blended education which is more flexible and supports lifelong learning to address the need to upskill and reskill for the digital economy. The demand will be for more work/ vocation relevant courses or learning paths and experiential learning that prepare students for a future where Artificial intelligence, Blockchain, Big Data, Cloud, data analytics and much more is significant. Learning will probably be more of self-learning which is self-motivated.
The lockdowns during the pandemic have taught the learners how to plan their activities well and squeeze in time to pursue their hobbies or skills they always wanted to acquire but had no time for. With lesser travel, lesser likely socializing, and greater work/ study-from-home, there will be more time for such learning indulgences.
Q. - How to judge and maintain quality in Online Education?
To achieve the learning outcomes while teaching online, the organizations need to modify their curriculum and courses to suit the teaching pedagogies that are adopted for online education. In fact the online teaching gives more opportunities to the group of learners and educators for communicating with eachother in a more effective manner provided the educational organizations sensitize the learners and educators adequately on the basic DOs and DONTs of online education.
Just as the quality of classroom teaching is monitored through observations and teachers’ evaluation, similarly, to judge the quality of online teaching, the evaluator must consider the important factors like- keeping the length of the lectures short to enhance engagement rate of students throughout the lessons, monitoring average completion rates, tracking of the learner’s progress, ongoing assessment of the learning through checkpoints in the form of may be a quiz after the completion of each topic/ chapter, use of very simple assessments to ensure the retention of knowledge, paying individual attention to the learners and responding to each of their query and building a community of learners by using the discussion/ chat features of the online platforms to spark the discussions.
Q. - What kind of change can we expect if institutions start practising quality standards?
Institutions that practice standardizationparticularly the management system standard for educational organizations (EOMS) i.e. ISO 21001:2018 ensure better monitoring, measurements and controls of their processes and systems and they establish regular evaluation of the degree to which they are able to meet their learners’ and other stakeholders’ needs and expectations. Through consistent practices and evaluation tools, they can ensure an effective management and better risk controls.
Organizations certified for the EOMS standard increase their credibility by demonstrating their commitment to effectiveeducational management practices, a culture for organizational improvement and a widened participation of interested parties.
Image courtesy - Arti Khosla
ARTI KHOSLA, FOUNDER & CEO, COAE INTERNATIONAL
- Associated with more than 500 educational institutes across the world for the last 23 years
- India Representative at ISO Technical Committee TC 232 as a technical expert of educational management systems
- Empanelled as an Expert- Education and Skill Development Service sectional committee, Bureau of Indian Standards
- Participated in the development of NABET school Accreditation standard and CBSE School Quality Assessment and Accreditation standard
- Trained more than 5,000 education leaders on effective Educational Management Systems across schools, higher education, training & vocational organizations across India, Singapore, UAE and Middle East
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Dr. Sonali Mishra -
An Editor, Author and an Educationist; She is a professor of English in Symbiosis University, INDIA; has strong teaching and research experience of 15 years. Holds MPhil / PhD degree in English Literature; has authored 2 academic books. Member of Editorial boards in 3 reputed journals (IJIEMR, IJRR, Cybernomics) India; Recipient of ‘Young Scientist Award’ 2020, and ‘Best Paper award in an International Conference;