‘Best practices play vital role in quality of higher education’
The Lucknow University vice-chancellor SP Singh held a meeting with the directors and coordinators of various institutes of the university on Monday and discussed what best practices are being followed by them and what better best practices could be brought into the system.
“A practice qualifies as a ‘best practice’ if it results in high-value impact on any aspect of educational activity in an institution. what is best practice may depend on the viewer’s perspective, time and context. Review and improvement of a current practice becomes necessary to elevate it to the status of a best practice, more so in the present-day scenario of fast-paced educational innovations,” said LU spokesperson NK Pandey.
As part of best practices, it was decided to organise pre-counselling of students/parents to educate them on various courses being run in the university so that students may have an informed choice of subjects according to their need, taste and requirements, said Pandey.
“Curriculum is the essential ingredient of any education system regardless of the education level. All other aspects whether teaching, learning and evaluation or research and development, infrastructure and learning resources, student activities and support system revolve around it,” he added.
Best practices related to curriculum design and development play a significant role in the quality of higher education as curriculum has a decisive role in steering the other elements of quality, he said.
Pandey said reviewing and updating curriculum were essential ingredients of any vibrant academic system.
“There ought to be a dynamic curriculum with necessary additions and changes introduced in it from time to time by the respective universities. Designing of the curriculum to suit the clientele is important,” he emphasised.
Revising the curriculum should be a continuous process to provide updated education to students at large.
While in developed countries institutional orientation to community engagement is thorough, it is still at an evolving stage in India. There is, however, a need to give concrete shape to institution-community partnerships, since both higher education and community play important roles in modernising a country’s human resource, he said.
The education process in any discipline of learning ends with examinations.
The entire effort put in by teachers on teaching and the student on learning is centred on getting good results in the examinations.
Several committees and commissions were constituted from time to time to suggest reform in education in general and examinations in particular.
Several institutions have introduced innovative practices to improve quality and efficiency in the various processes of their examination systems, especially in the conduct, administration and evaluation, he said.