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I hope that you enjoyed the face to face XXI Annual International Conference on the broad theme, “Achieving Excellence in Higher Education” and Seminar Session on “Quality of Higher Education: Challenges and Opportunities” held from Jan. 4 to 5, 2020 at Deen Dayal Upadhayay College, University of Delhi, Dwarka, New Delhi, India. This probably is the last International Conference of DSPSR in the traditional mode which started its journey since 2000 and the conference of 2021 has been announced to be in the online mode as per the new normal.
The world would remember the year 2020 as the year of lock down at a massive scale in the world due to a tiny virus called Covid 19. Government of India confirmed the arrival of first case of Covid 19 in India from Wuhan, China to Kerala through a student who travelled back to India. The numbers started increasing after that in India and the situation was much worse in other parts of the world. Some of the most developed parts of the world including USA, Europe, UK, etc., were badly affected by the disease.
On March 13, 2020 Shri Naveen Patnaik, Hon’ble Chief Minister, Government of Odisha declared in the assembly “state disaster” under the provisions of Disaster Management Act, 2005. The Government also approved Covid 19 Odisha Regulations, 2020. All educational Institutional were closed till March 31, 2020 in the state of Odisha.
Hon’ble Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi gave a call on March 19, 2020 for Janata Curfew (Voluntary Public Curfew) on March 22, 2020 which became the first ever Janata Curfew (Voluntary Public Curfew) of its own kind followed by nationwide lock down for 21 days from March 24, 2020 imposed by Government of India restricting movements of entire population of India.
We were supposed to travel on March 13, 2020 by flight from Bhubaneswar Airport and we were in a meeting in Sri Sri University on the agenda item about the preparation if the educational Institutions are closed by the Government. While we were in the meeting, we came to know that the Government of Odisha has declared closure of educational Institutions in the state. We immediately cancelled the travel plan and decided to act immediately so that the students of Sri Sri University where I am currently working as Vice Chancellor w.e.f. May 10, 2019. We decided to train all the Faculty Members of Sri Sri University (SSU) so that they can start online classes on Google meet, Google Class room, etc. The training was conducted before they left for the weekend. Online classes started from Monday i.e., March 16, 2020 to ensure that not even a single day of classes are lost for the students. It was found that attendance in the online classes were better.
We also realized our social responsibility aspect and started Facebook live sessions in the University for the benefit of public at large during this tough time. SSU Online was started on March 16, 2020 with the inaugural session on Meet the Experts. I also conducted on March 20, 2020 on World Happiness Day a session on Happiness. After that I personally launched two online four credit Management Development Programmes (MDPs) in the online mode, Happiness & Fulfillment, and Mind Management. Many MDPs and FDPs have been conducted since March so that lives of people who are locked down do not feel left behind and continue their journey of development.
We also realized that Faculty Members need to be trained for Bloom’s Taxonomy to take the teaching learning process to the new heights so that even if it is open book examination, the students would be able to answer the questions only when they have understood the concept well and they have applied. Learning to know, Learning to do, Learning to live together, and Learning to be, which are the four pillars of learning and education as per the UNESCO report of 1996, were ensured in the teaching learning process. Follow up workshops and training programmes were conducted with the Faculty Members to ensure that all the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy i.e., remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate, and create are part of the teaching learning process as well as part of the evaluation process. The proctored end semester examination in the online mode was also conducted as per schedule and the results were declared in time so that the next semester for these students can be started from July 1, 2020 as per schedule.
Whenever a problem shows up, we need to convert that into an opportunity immediately, take decisions with speed which provide win-win solutions for all stakeholders, implement the new normal immediately, evolve the system. Apart from just solving problems, we need to also create new paradigms which take care of current as well as potential problems as well. We need to develop future ready people who are willing to embrace all the challenges, drive change, and lead transformation for the new world order.
I present to you the current issue of DBR and request you to share your feedback to enable us to further improve the quality of DBR.
Rtn. Prof. Ajay Kumar Singh
Editor-in-Chief –DBR
Vice Chancellor – Sri Sri University