Day 1

As far as AICTE is concerned as soon as the lockdown began and the pandemic started having its impact we started innovating. Innovation is the name of the game and therefore whether it is support system for the students in terms of creating a helpline where students can come and project their difficulties and the people who will be ready to help, so it a sort of match making exercise which we initiated within first 3 days of the 1st lockdown. And then there are many activities which were ongoing in terms of face to face mode, whether it is faculty development programs for emerging areas like AI, IoT, machine learning, deep learning, robotics, 3D printing, block chain, augmented reality, virtual reality, all of these are very important topics and therefore when incorporated in the curricula, the faculty needed to be trained in these areas and therefore under Atal Academies , April onwards we planned 500 programs so what we did is immediately started using different platforms like the one which we are using now, either Microsoft teams, webex or zoom or google classroom and we started these workshops in big way and thankfully due to the technology instead of the single course which we'd 50-60 faculty almost undertaking the training now we have an opportunity to have even 200-300-400 and even in some workshops it has been 1000 and our reach has increased.

I'm surprised the way teachers have braced the technology because many times when we use to search the teachers for online mooc courses, most of the teachers we afraid of camera because of camera shy. But I'm surprised to see as this covid pandemic occurred most of the teachers and students have transformed themselves to online mode in no time. So I was thinking for your viewers I will discuss small 10 points which every university or every institution must adhere to if they really want to transform from offline to online mode.

• Infrastructure - electricity, device, bandwidth, network. These are the 4 things which are required for online teaching.
• online resources
• online platform of teaching like ms teams, Google meet, canvas, blackboard is there etc.
• capacity building of the teachers with skilling and upgrading
• problems regarding evaluations and assessments. for final year you must have the examinations as you are getting your degree.
• continuous evaluations of the students not just the 3 hour exam.
• online internships and placements of the students
• Collaborations required
• Counselling for students
• reviving the curriculum

Trends in Higher Education Transformation – Curtin Malaysia is an offshore campus Offshore campus of Curtin university Australia which have campuses around the world. Curtin's learning and teaching framework is quite extensive. We have UG, PG and PhD students. On the normal basis we were already using 50% of our content online. So we have a combination of flipped classrooms, distributed classrooms, moocs, enriched online. Institutions need to be agile and responsive to adapt to sector changes in order to remain competitive and sustainable. They need to review course that is current and relevant, and include new learning design practices matched to new instructional design methods that are student-centered. We have to continuously analyze student learning outcomes through continuous feedback and understanding impacts of technology such as AI, data analytics etc. We have to include the development of new literacy and skill sets required for the future of work. We have to include the development of new literacy and skill sets required for the future of work

This pandemic has shuttered the economist around the world and has also battered the education systems in developing and developed countries. Almost 90% of all the primary, secondary and tertiary learners in the world are no longer able to physically go to school and I do not know how long this will continue. This impact has been dramatic and transformative as well, as educators are able to do remote teaching, workable short term solutions. In smaller towns and villages the students face challenges related to the financing and the availability of the IT infrastructure. Covid 19 has caused an disruptive destruction in the higher education not only in India but globally.The Covid 19 pandemic has caused the spotlight on the virtual learning solutions and especially the institutions ability to handle the security threats, network demands, bandwidth etc.We have to help our staff to learn these new skills of online teaching. You need to change if you want to remain relevant. We tried to engage our students, we need to ask ourselves whether engaging the students is sufficient to get the desired learning. This pandemic will cause rebirth of education.Now institutional leaders are realizing that remote learning is just a baby step in experimenting the long journey of online education. And there should be effective engagement of students and teachers.

The one important thing I want to share among all of you is that we should now think that this is the best time we should make a mandatory 1 year skill based program in all 1000 universities. We should embed skills based programs in the universities. We can map the courses and students can pick and join the courses they want to do. Each higher education institution should be made accountable for taking up these programs for their students.

Day 2

Covid 19 has caused severe disruption in higher education. In the world over 1.6 billion students, whether it is school, college or universities are outside their education institutions. In India 33.5 crore students are outside their institutions and this all happens so sudden that our system really don't know what to do, we were not prepared for it. Our faculty have done really good job in engaging the students at their respective points and tried to deliver their content through the respective platforms.

When we talk about uncertainty it is all around us. The covid 19 pandemic has heightened uncertainty for economy, education, relationship and almost every faced life globally. If we talk about education sector, as VC at When we talk about pandemic and it's affect, the most affected was our economy. I can say that we initiated online education after say 1 week of lockdown. Uploading videos, sending content, emails etc to the students. Then online teaching went in full gear, and we have also done assessments of 4th year online. So if we talk about education, we also have to see the society & welfare of the people as well, as many people have lost their jobs across the levels, across the industry. Some of the industries are severely affected. What has happened is all the education system has become online.

Earlier technology delivered education was not considered as competent, as valuable, as standard of physical education, now the covid has compelled us to enter into. The governments, UGC, AICTE, all bodies are telling to go ahead with E-Learning mode. Higher education have moved into e-learning despite not prepared, despite untrained, despite not having technological support. Despite all this they attempted well. In this pandemic 2 things come up -

1. That our health system is poorest among the poor because the country which was claiming that their system is robust they also fail miserably.
2. Education sector, in education sector, its my observation I may be wrong, we have many strives, but the scale in which these strives were required to be done, improving the quality infrastructure, improving the facilities, providing technology to students, nothing has happened on that scale, in the required scale.

Covid 19 has affected almost every imaginable industry in the world. The idea for post professional development of sustainable competency, actually now becomes sustainable competencies plus. This plus what comes as save living. Covid 19 has let us to re imagining the competencies which are needed for us to succeed in the world. I would like to quote Peter Trucker, one of the greatest thinkers of 20th century. 40 years back he said that our society will move from more protected and cozy employee society to more challenging and demanding entrepreneurial society. So everybody not need to be entrepreneur but should have entrepreneurial mind.

At present the situation is very difficult as we have to check with the students, faculty, government and ministries as well so that we can do positive things during this situation because everybody is depressed, they are sitting at home idle. During this pandemic when it was started we were having best video content, we were having lot of IT content so we started with that initially, faculty also tried very hard to develop video content.There were a lot of teachers which were not comfortable with IT, so we arranged the faculty development program. Then second was platform, initially zoom was available freely, so we used it.Third was connectivity, we are having students all over the nation and this was challenge as there are some states where connections are not available and this was the big challenge. There were a lot of teachers which were not comfortable with IT, so we arranged the faculty development program.Then second was platform, initially zoom was available freely, so we used it. Third was connectivity, we are having students all over the nation and this was challenge as there are some states where connections are not available and this was the big challenge.

Day 3

One of the question that everybody, or atleast I got the little brief is that how the National Assessment or Accreditation Council related work will be affected with the virus spread and how are we going to cope with it, not only the situation but also the institutions, how will they respond. So my first comment would be we are not in a situation where we know that where the covid 19 infection is going to go? As a scientist I realized, we really in the middle of something that how its going to pan out? We all are trying hard to adopt all of us, not just NAAC, but UGC, examination centers, schools. First of all what does NAAC do, the idea of quality itself to be disseminated to a larger number of people. How to benchmark quality? Our primary job is to get in the college or university or deemed to be university, set some internal national benchmark and ask them to inculcate in their education. NAAC spends alot of time in advising, guiding the institutions that how they can improve. Almost 70-80% of information about institutions is collected through digital mode. So there is no human interaction. We have more than 5000 assessors, highly trained, experienced teachers in higher education. 20% or 25% or 30% NAAC assessment is done physically on the campus. Physical interaction is the international criteria. So NAAC is not only national body, it is part or Accredited as international body.

I'll take about future roadmap. First point when we talk about future is not only proper planning but rather a strategic plan. Strategic plan for me would be a plan which will possibly deal with the aspects of what are the human resources I would need, what are the type of finances needed, how much time, how much aspirations I would have, how will I measure what I have achieved or not.One thing I would like to say about future, particularly for government that they want transparency which is very good, both government and private institutions are very much focused on expansion and the quality aspects because of the NAAC and NBA.Efficiency, speed and diversity all these components are generally very limited. Efficiency we know about government I need not say much, once again their speed is also very slow in terms of any change and decision making.I'm a big fan of distance education. It has a huge potential. The distance education or online education or virtual education or you might call it any education, is the future of education.

I would like to share my general insights about how to embrace the change, then what is happening in higher education.Let me take you all back to 1995, in 1995 I founded my first online learning company. We have courses in English, French, Spanish, and Swedish etc. We had amazing content but did not succeed commercially. The potential clients were not yet ready for online learning so my first general insight is that I you could embrace changes, opportunities too early you will very likely fail. But if you're too late to embrace the change because it is not convenient, because you don't see it then also you'll fail.

Nobody is really sure that this will continue for a year or another 2 years even with vaccine or no vaccine so let me say we will have to adapt the new normal.Nothing changes if nothing changes, so my point is that somewhere a change, changes possibly. Who thought we all would be doing banking virtually and same is with universities, we have to adoptable, we had to change and unless we change ourselves we will not survive so that is the way forward. When I was talking about this I was thinking was VUCA, VUCA is volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Now in these VUCA times we have to be adoptable and keep embracing the changes. Now let us think about the change which would happen, the new world would be the blended one especially in universities.

I take globalization as the extended or expanded form of collaboration embedding other factors as our previous speakers mentioned -adaptability, survival of the fittest, challenges, covid crisis. In today's time if I look at internationalization of education, it is a multi dimensional, multi layered and multifaceted process and it depends on host countries cultures, social and economic values and it can be done in many ways. looking at history 40 years back commercialization of education in higher education in terms of recruitment of foreign students is one and most popular aspect of globalization in higher education.There should be emphasis on inter nationalization of education. The introduction of inter nationalization of education in New Education policy suggests to call global or foreign students is to come on Indian soil and study. But we need to look at other ways also like student exchange, faculty exchange, research work experience which facilitates international experience. Internationalization of curriculum is important for flexible mobility across borders. We need to develop more infrastructure in terms of support services for foreign students on campus itself.

Parity with global standards is urgent requirement in Indian higher education sector for seamless jobs and entrepreneurial ventures

Papers on Higher education

Editor-in-chief in selecting papers and moderator Day 3 summit.

Kushal Qanungo, University Institute of Science, Chandigarh University, Mohali, punjab, India

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