NIIT Technologies, a leading global IT solutions organisation has been recognised as one of India’s ‘50 Best IT- BPM Company to Work For in 2015’ by Great Place To Work® Institute. Additionally, the company has also been conferred as the ‘Top 5 Large Organizations’ in the IT-BPM domain which include companies having over 5000 employees. The survey conducted by ‘Great Place To Work® Institute’ assessed over 135 companies from the Indian IT-BPM industry through two different lenses: employee survey to gather employees’ experience at their organization and an assessment of the existing policies and progTrustIndex©,rams, captured through the Culture Audit©. Rosita Rabindra, Chief People Officer, NIIT Technologies Ltd. said, “Two years ago the Company embarked upon its biggest cultural change journey to address the changing expectations of its clients. The journey aims at ‘Uplifting Service Levels’ through the Company’s service vision of ‘New Ideas, More Value’. This vision has become the backbone of the key HR practices for the organisation”. NIIT Technologies has scored high on its ‘Inspiring’ and ‘Developing’ practices. The “Inspiring” practice hinges on “Role Models”, employees who have done exemplar work and “Success Stories”, successful work which has delivered quantifiable benefits to the customer. The “Developing” practice focuses on providing the employees with a multi catalyst career development approach.
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WPP and the Indian School of Design and Innovation (ISDI) are jointly establishing the ISDI WPP School of Communication in Mumbai.Located on ISDI’s state of the art campus in the heart of India’s business capital, Mumbai, the ISDI WPP School of Communication marks WPP’s first foray into the Indian education sector. The partnership will help create India’s first professional three-year undergraduate diploma program in communication based on a unique work-study model that will bring together a strong academic and creative curriculum combined with practical application.The admissions process is currently underway through an online application form. The school recently hosted its first Accepted Students day where students and their parents had an opportunity to interact with the leadership team and faculty. The inaugural batch will commence in August 2015 with the first cohort of 60 students.The ISDI WPP School of Communication is WPP’s second education initiative globally. In 2011, WPP in partnership with the Shanghai Arts and Design Academy established the WPP School of Marketing and Communications in China. The program has just successfully completed its fourth year with 220 students enrolled.WPP has helped develop curriculum and will mentor students WPP and WPP companies, which are globally recognised for their in-house training and development programs, have worked closely with ISDI to develop the School’s curriculum and hire full-time faculty.Radha Kapoor, Founder & Director, ISDI, will lead the School’s board of directors.Additionally, senior staff from WPP companies will serve as part-time faculty and act as mentors. Internship and training opportunities will also be provided to students. An Executive Council has also been set up to oversee the smooth functioning of the 3-year program. ISDI is represented by Dr. Indu Shahani, Dean HR College, Radha Kapoor & Siddharth Shahani, Directors, ISDI; and WPP India by Ranjan Kapur, Country Manager, Paul Mower, Country Finance Director and Madhukar Sabnavis, Vice Chairman & Country Head of Discovery & Planning, Ogilvy & Mather.While the list of visiting faculty will be marked by celebrated names such as Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman and National Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather, and Roshan Abbas, Managing Director at Encompass Events, the program directors will include the likes of Madhukar Sabnavis, and CVL Srinivas, CEO at GroupM for South Asia, among others.Commenting on the partnership, WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell said, “Amid strong growth in the wider economy and, more specifically, in our sector, India is facing a pronounced talent shortage, one that is expected to become even more acute in the future.” He added, “As the leading communications group in India and the world, WPP is committed to helping India to further develop the already high level of creative and professional talent in this sector.”Speaking on the supply-demand gap for fresh talent in the industry, Ranjan Kapur, Country Manager – India at WPP, said, “We employ approximately 15,000 people (including associates) and on an average, we need 3,000 new recruits every year, including replacements and first timers and this school is just a small beginning. We hope to expand this to be able to cover a significantly large part of our requirements and turnout 400-500 young men and women every year from our school. Our first batch of 60 students is just the beginning.”Committed to introducing a new education model, ISDI had welcomed its founding batch in July 2013. Founded by entrepreneur Radha Kapoor in association with Parsons The New School of Design, New York, ISDI is at the forefront of Indian design creating new career opportunities in design. The partnership with WPP will help create the right mix of design, innovation and effective communication that will shape the careers of future industry leaders.Ms Kapoor said, “The joint establishment of the ISDI WPP school to nurture world-class creative talents and the development of a new model in the collaboration between colleges and companies is a new exploration on the path of higher vocational education for the ISDI.”“WPP and its companies are known for their world-class internal training programs. WPP will share its experience in developing such programs and making them relevant to ISDI and its students. Upon graduation, students will have a solid academic background and creative skill sets, providing them with good employment opportunities in our industry,” she added.The School will offer students a three-year undergraduate program, wherein, the first year comprises of basic marketing and communication subjects and the second and third year offers students four major specialisations to choose from- Advertising and Communications, Media, Activation and Digital Marketing and Public Relations. WPP Lectures will run from Monday to Saturday, in the afternoons. Throughout the three years, students will be taught and mentored by top professionals from WPP and the industry, will work on live projects, build a portfolio, develop practical work skills, and have the opportunity to intern with WPP companies and get international exposure through student exchange and study abroad programs.Graduates will receive a three year Undergraduate Program certification from ISDI and WPP, in addition to a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology from the University of Mumbai, IDOL (Institute of Distance and Open Learning).Going forward, Mr Kapur says that it will hope to replicate this model in more cities. “We would like to take it forward and open another branch in New Delhi in the future,” Mr Kapur said.
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Global electronic components distributor, Digi-Key Electronics, has announced their partnership with the ARM University Programme to distribute an innovative 'Lab-in-a-Box' (LiB) to higher educational institutions around the globe.Khaled Benkrid, Manager, Worldwide University Program, ARM, said, "This is an important initiative for the ARM University Program as it offers convenient access to the hardware components that go hand in hand with our teaching materials. This is integral to our mission of equipping tomorrow's engineers with the necessary tools to drive the creation of exciting and intelligent products that transform society."The LiB contains ARM-based technology and high quality, rigorous training materials that support electronics and computer engineering courses. Since its launch in February 2014, ARM LiBs have been successfully deployed in hundreds of universities worldwide, enabling an easy migration path for academics wanting to upgrade their existing curricula to state-of-the-art technologies from the vast ARM eco-system.The Lab-in-a-Box package includes hardware development boards, professional software licenses from ARM, and complete teaching materials from the ARM University Programme ready to be deployed in classes. These include lecture note slides, demonstration codes, lab manuals and projects with solutions in source.(BW Online Bureau)
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The future of education is indeed being shaped by digital technology, says Rupesh ShahDigital Education, in the last few years, has facilitated the movement of the paradigm for education beyond hardcopy books and conventional chalkboard classrooms. Over the past decade, the education industry has gone through an array of functional changes in learning methodologies, teaching techniques and in the approach to education itself.The efficacy of new tools and techniques used in education have been repeatedly proved in this time period. Researchers have found that performance of students using digital learning platforms outperforms those using conventional methods by 30 to 80 per cent. Apart from having an impact on performance of students, technology assists in reducing the cost of education. A study on cost effectiveness of digital platforms found a reduction in institutional cost by 10 to 35 per cent by using technological features.The future of education is indeed being shaped by digital technology. Moving through the progression of technological developments, education is on the way to be truly universal. Digital learning has undoubtedly led to a revolution in the education industry and the era is dynamically moving to the next level. The emerging traits in technology will establish itself as the pivot of new age education.MOOCs – Learning over the InternetMOOC (Massively Open Online Courses) is among the premium offerings of technology to the era. It has rendered a new face to distance education ingrained with features such as open access to learning content, online interaction among teachers and students and most importantly, making education more inclusive.The New York Times proclaimed 2012 to be the “Year of the MOOC”, as several top providers such as Coursera, Udacity and edX came to the mainstream. Open online Courses enabled distribution of innovative courses at a large scale. From inception itself, MOOCs have been using innovative pedagogies with distributed learning materials apart from conventional audio and video learning. The courses offered are more relevant to modern needs of the generation. For instance, course such as Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI) was launched in 2011 by Stanford MOOC.As of May 2014, more than 900 MOOCs have been launched by private colleges and universities in the US. More universities and education providers from both public and private sectors will launch their own open courses and set an established platform of education on the internet. Furthermore, an emerging trend is the partnership of education boards with MOOC providers.In mid 2014, SAT, the Scholastic Aptitude Test which is widely used by college admission authority initiated collaboration with Khan Academy, an established MOOC provider. More institutions are likely to collaborate with MOOC providers to form an integrated system of online education. Hence, the shift of conventional education to the Internet will be more intense in coming times.India, one of the forerunners in Information Technology, has launched a national initiative for online distance education. SWAYAM, the MOOC program initiated by Ministry of Human Resource Development is all set to roll out as the official portal for online education in India. SWAYAM stands for Self Webs of Active-learning for Young Aspiring Minds. The platform is a collaboration of top Indian educational institutions such as IIT, IIM and other central Universities. The Ministry of Finance announced a Rs. 100 Crore funding for online learning and virtual classrooms in 2014.Digital Classrooms – Connecting StudentsA new-age education trend is conventional classrooms transforming into digitally enabled ones. The advantages of digital classrooms are many in contrast to traditional classrooms. The teaching and learning methodologies aided by Information and Communication Technology support intensive, collaborative and interactive education.Among other advantages, digitally enriched content and personalized learning are some of the major ones. These classrooms are enabled to deliver instruction through multiple forms of media suitable for different modes of learning. They facilitate gathering of immediate feedback and offer solutions to improve student performance. Digitally enhanced class rooms automate practice of basic skills and offer a collaborative way of learning by encouraging peer group learning.In India, initiative such as Pratham, has been launched in partnership with Vodafone Foundation India. The basic objective of the initiative is to enhance teaching and learning in low income schools using technology as primary tool. The project aims to bring low cost digital learning solutions to 1000 schools in 12 states of India. It is projected that over 50,000 students will be benefited by the initiative.Pratham is customized to fulfill the requirements of primary Indian education landscape. The program also encompasses conducting holistic training that enables teachers to integrate teaching with technology for optimal benefit of students. It will also provide ongoing technical and lesson planning support to teachers.The integration of technology in the classroom, especially in developed countries has led to a blended teaching approach. For instance, new trends such as BYOD (Bring your own device) integrate smart devices such as tablets and phones featuring educational apps with the subject matter expertise of the teacher. Notable examples include initiatives by Google for Education such as Google Classroom and Google Computer Science First.In fact EBooks could soon replace textbooks for an interactive and potentially personalized learning experience in schools. Assessment online platforms nowadays allow for creation of tests that focus on learning outcomes and quick feedback helping chart the progress a student is making. More importantly digital tools promote competency based learning which helps the student to be the focus in the education ecosystem and drive one’ own learning at one’ pace and according to one’s interests.The author is CEO at InOpen Technologies
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The Indian Institute of Technology—Roorkee's decision to expel 73 first year students in one go for poor academic performance has created a flutter. At this juncture, it seems impossible to alter the institute decision as their parents had signed a declaration at the time of admission that poor performance could result in removal from the institute. The premium institute's action, however, brought in the open a deeper problem IITs face in terms of getting quality students. Many IIT professors suggested that the change in the question pattern of entrance examinations brought almost a decade ago should be blamed for the situation. A professor of an IIT also raised questions over the revamped IIT-JEE entrance test which makes it "relatively easier" for a student to crack the objective type questions if "luck favours him". In cases when students are asked to leave, they are given the option to quit the BTech course, and instead opt for a less reputed diploma, where performance pressure is not as much as in IITs. A rule mandating expulsion of students who scored less than five cumulative grade point average (CGPA) for two consecutive semesters was framed last year by the premier institute to ensure quality education on the campus. The IIT Act of 1961, under which 16 IITs have been set up, allows the academic senate of each institute to frame student performance regulations that are legally binding on them. These rules are available on IIT websites and are required to be adopted by students enrolling into the IIT system. However, the trend of warning and expelling poor performers across IITs is not new. In case of IIT, Kanpur, 39 students were expelled in 2010, 14 of them from undergraduate courses, who were asked to vacate the hostel immediately. The students sought intervention of the President but it did not help. It is common in IITs to expel underperforming postgraduate and doctorate students. In 2009, the Supreme Court held that Scheduled Caste/Tribe students could not be expelled from the IITs on the ground of poor performance. A Bench of Chief Justice Balakrishnan and Justices P. Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan had said the IITs must provide them with additional coaching to bring them up on a par with the general category students. The moot point is: India faces serious problems in its higher education system and that unless it is improved expeditiously, the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government’s dream to become a major global player could be adversely impacted. The IITs are plagued not only by faculty crunch but also by a constant exodus of teachers to better-paid jobs. Besides, these institutes also have to attract younger teachers before they opt for more lucrative opportunities abroad. So far, the NDA government has done very little to address the crisis in higher education. The government's first Budget has not delivered achhe din for higher education in the country. The Union Budget for 2015-16 has reduced funds for higher education to the tune of Rs.3,900 crore in its revised budget estimates for the financial year 2014-15. The government has revised the figure to Rs.13,000 crore, as against Rs.16,900 crore for the plan allocation. The crisis in Indian education demands a revival of intellectual traditions that created the J. C. Boses and the C.V. Ramans. The urgent need, therefore, today is that we need a big bang reform in the education system.
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Tata PowerMundra UMPP is promoting Project ShikshaSaarthi, which is an education initiative in the region. One of the teachers who participated in the initiative from Mota Kandagara village, has nothing but praise for it. "I have been a teacher for 11 years in government schools, but I have never felt so confident, so enthused, as I do now," she exclaims, "Coastal Gujarat Private Limited (CGPL) has helped me add tremendous professional value to my portfolio. Attending its teachers' training workshop was an eye opener. I picked up many new and innovative methods of teaching, discussed problems commonly faced by all teachers and jointly tried to find solutions to these problems. The training also boosted my skills in management, research and administrative systems. Now I am ready to tackle any challenge that comes my way!"Partnered with Pratham Education Foundation, NGOs working to provide quality education to the underprivileged children of India, ShikshaSaarthi was launched as a programme set to transform the profile of school education in 84 schools of Mandvi and Mundra Taluka of Kutch, focusing primarily on the six catchment villages that lay within the CGPL site - Tunda-Vandh, MotaKandagra, Nanabhadia, Tragadi and Modva."Quality is our buzzword. At CGPL, our goal is to ensure that every segment of the local community has access to education. But that alone is not enough. The faculty and facilities provided to the students must be of top notch standard," says a senior CGPL official. Thus, training is an integral part of the project. Every team member who seeks to train the others are made to undergo rigorous training before moving to the field, so that everyone conducting the programme is informed and updated with the latest developments in the field. The partners have constituted dedicated teams of Master Trainers (MTs) for language, mathematics and science, trained by Pratham's education experts. They, in turn, train the Cluster Resource Leaders (CRLs) at the district level and finally, the CRLs train the volunteers within their respective cluster of villages. The more efficient and supremely confident SS brigade is the more ready they are to help revive and rejuvenate Kutch's education system.Achievements have been appreciated and shared far and wide and this has been highly motivating for the SS team. As a social enterprise which seeks to improve, strengthen and sustain efforts in the community, it has been a privilege to partner with CGPL, explained the Pratham staff members. And while it is a difficult task, they persevere. "We mould and re-mould our strategy as we move ahead," declares a CGPL member.
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Toyota Kirloskar Motor has announced the launch of its distinctive training programme under the Toyoto Technical Education Programme (T-TEP), at St. Joseph's Industrial Training Institute, Mullar, Mangalore, to enhance the technical abilities and employability of Industrial Training Institute (ITI) students in the age group of 16 to 18 years.It will benefit ITIs in building skilful technicians for the Indian automotive repair industry. The current automobile repair industry is characterised by inadequately skilled manpower and lack of professional training for repair and diagnostics. T-TEP is a unique initiative undertaken by TKM, in partnership with ITIs and its dealer partners across India to address this issue.T-TEP, a special training module in which Toyota has tied up with industrial training institutes, was launched in 2006 in India. The programme aims to provide training on the latest automotive technology and service techniques every year to ITI students across India along with providing hands on real time experience within Toyota dealerships.T-TEP, a special training module which was launched in 2006 in India. After a span of seven years, T-TEP is now associated with more than 40 institutes under this program.Till now over 4000 students have been trained under this training programme and more than 2500 have been offered employment opportunities at Toyota Dealerships across India. Introduced in the year 2009, Automotive Body & Paint repair training has been provided to more than 1000 students till now.The Body & Paint repair syllabus has been developed in collaboration with the Department of Training and Technical Education, Government of NCT, Delhi. The syllabus imparts training on basic body and paint repair skills in addition to dealer specific requirements to students, thereby improving their knowledge of repair techniques and facilitating the adoption of latest technology in Body & Paint. Currently Body & Paint technicians have limited information and hands on experience in the usage of correct repair operations and techniques, forcing dealers to recruit manpower from local garages. Toyota along with its supplier partners will provide all necessary support to the institute i.e. training consumables, visiting faculty, training material, tools, equipments etc. Introduced in the year 2009, Automotive Body & Paint repair training has been provided to more than 1300 students till date. Mahesh N Salkar Senior Vice President – Customer Service Group, Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt. Ltd said, “Since T-TEP’s inception in 2006, Toyota-Technical Education Programme (T-TEP) has been a successful platform to develop highly skilled technical workforce, with greater career prospects in the automotive service industry. Tying up with St. Joseph’s Industrial Training Institute, Mumbai is again aimed at preparing students for the emerging automobile industry needs. The special course of Body & Paint Technician is designed keeping in mind the advanced technology required for the automobile market. We thrive to give the best to the students who will eventually contribute to the growing automobile market and service industry.” The special course on Body and Paint Repair would create skilled technicians for the Body and Paint Repair industry - a largely unorganized segment - of the automobile service industry”, continued Mr. Salkar.The T-TEP Body and Paint curriculum, a one year syllabus, introduces students to Toyota’s advanced technology and service techniques. It also includes, on-the-job training, at Toyota’s dealerships. As a part of this program, TKM will also train institute instructors in the latest technology, used at Toyota and the automobile industry. The project is jointly funded by Toyota Motor Corporation and Toyota Kirloskar Motor. Together they provide T-TEP institutes with hi-tech training packages and Toyota service training manuals and materials.T-TEP supports Toyota’s comprehensive human resource development system that extends from training at T-TEP institutes to recruitment and development at Toyota dealerships.T-TEP is widely recognized across the globe for its effectiveness. The programme has been successfully introduced in 419 institutes across 53 countries by Toyota, which includes USA, Australia, Italy, South Africa, China, Vietnam and India.
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Sutanu Guru wonders if Sen makes logic and sense while targeting ModiWhen you are a venerated figure who has won a Nobel Prize, it is almost as if you could issue edicts and verdicts without being questioned. If you also happened to be a sealed, stamped and certified “liberal” who thinks savage hordes are plundering the Idea of India since May, 2014 when Narendra Modi of the BJP won a historic mandate, then you get bonus points for being despondent about the future of a “plural” and “secular” India. Professor Amartya Sen is all this and much more. There has never been any doubt about what Sen thinks about Modi. He has reconfirmed what all of us knew: Sen will lose no opportunity to attack and criticize the Narendra Modi led NDA regime.The latest promises to be a 4,000 word tirade to be published soon by the New York Review of Books. Eager to share his views with fellow Indians (In any case, how many Indians get to read the New York Review of Books?) before its publication in America, Amartya Sen has shared exclusive details in an interview given to Sagarika Ghose and published today in The Times of India. His interview and his words of damnation have already gone viral; with Modi bhakts and Modi baiters as usual abusing each other on social media platforms. The main charge leveled by Sen against the Modi regime was that he was “ousted” as the chancellor of Nalanda University. In his own words, "I was certainly ousted from Nalanda. Some members of the Board, especially the foreign members were keen on carrying on the battle for me but I stepped aside as I did not want to be an ineffective leader. The government may have held up finances or statues had I continued." For the record, Amartya Sen announced in January this year that he does not want to continue as the chancellor of Nalanda University after his term expires later in the year. George Yeo, the former foreign minister of Singapore was nominated as his replacement.These are pretty damning words. And it is no surprise that his allegations have raised a storm even in the midst of the unveiling Vyapam scam. Sen doesn’t stop there. He goes on to accuse the Modi regime of blatantly and brazenly interfering with academic institutions and posing a serious threat to academic freedom and excellence. In his words, again: "Nalanda not a one off incident. Nothing in this scale of interference has happened before. Every institution where the government has a formal role is being converted into where the government has a substantive role."Now, there are many points raised about which there can be no argument. There have been persistent charges of attempts to “saffronize” the entire education and academic system ever since Modi became prime minister and intellectuals, academics and activists are right in pointing out any steps made towards that. They are also right in vehemently opposing it. A sanitized and uniform viewpoint will destroy excellence in academics; just as a sanitized Marxist interpretation has destroyed the credibility of Indian academics. But this author wants to raise a few points that pose serious questions about the intentions of Sen. He is one of the most celebrated liberals in contemporary India and has always argued for keeping open minds while examining an issue. Has Sen himself kept an open mind?Lets come to Nalanda University first. The fact is that credible people have leveled two allegations about the manner in which the affairs at Nalanda University were run. The first was that Sen was presiding over a cozy club of fellow travelers and doling out patronage. The second was that he was neglecting his primary duties as the founder chancellor by staying away most of the time. Three names were “shortlisted” for the post of vice chancellor. One was Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the respected director of Center for Policy Research; the second was renowned historian Ramchandra Guha and the third was an unknown Delhi University professor called Gopa Sabharwal. Many eyebrows were raised Sabharwal was chosen. Whispers of nepotism were legion. In a column for the Indian Express, Ashok Malik reveals, “This was the arbitrariness that both Kalam and Krishna objected to. The manner of selection of the vice chancellor drew negative comments from the CAG as well. Further, it was questioned in Parliament. The CAG also objected to the propriety and procedure of fixing the salary of the vice chancellor. This was done by the NMG, by then re-designated as the interim governing board. The annual salary was fixed at $80,000 (tax-free)”. It is also known that Sen spent hardly any time at Nalanda in Bihar when the new campus was coming up. In an interview given to Business Standard, Ramchandra Guha says, "It is quite possible that, since he so admires Rabindranath Tagore, Amartya Sen's vision for a new Nalanda was inspired by Tagore's setting up of Visvabharati, a university of the world. If so, he seems not to have recognised that while Tagore based himself in the very town where his university was set up, Sen was directing his own effort from afar."Each time someone raised a question, Sen would virtually throw a fit and threaten to leave. An exasperated UPA regime didn’t let him go despite his tantrums. Perhaps that was because Sen had started publicly signaling his preference for Rahul Gandhi as the prime minister of India when Modi became a serious contender!So a humble request to Sen. Please accept that you badly botched up your mandate at Nalanda. Don’t mix your administrative indifference or incompetence with the serious ideological war going on about the future of academics in India. That topic, believe me, is far more important than even a Nobel Prize winner like you.
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