The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Raipur, in its pursuit to contribute to the ‘Quality Improvement in Higher Education’ began its 4th six-day ‘Faculty Development Programme’ (FDP) on Monday.
The programme is being held for faculty members at different levels from 15 Engineering institutions from five states — West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Tripura and Chhattisgarh participating in the six-day programme under Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP-II), a Press release issued by the institute here stated.
The day began with a session conducted by Prof. Sanjeev Prashar and Prof. Vinita Sahay. The participants were made to become acquainted with each other through game playing methods so as to break the ice and other barriers that exist among strangers.
After the session, the participants were introduced to the six-day program. Prof. Vinita Sahay briefed about the background of the TEQIP-II and what could be the key takeaways from this programme.
She urged the participants to allow the facilitators to work on them so that they can take maximum benefits of the six days programme. Prof. Vinita Sahay took the students over the journey on participant centered learning. During her session, she stressed on the need for student centric learning and thereby imparting quality education.
She encouraged all the participants to unitedly create a teaching-learning platform for the six-day programme by becoming disciplined students though all are well-established teachers.
In the post lunch session, Prof. Sanjeev Parashar took the participants through the team-building exercise.
Participants were divided into groups and were asked to play the role of a leader and a follower. Through a simple game, Prof. Parashar explained the students about the lacunae that exist among teams and how people can build effective teams.
In the second post lunch session participants were introduced to a ‘live Session’ with counsellor Dr lokesh Singh, AIIMS Raipur.
He elaborated on the causes of stress among students from Higher Educational Institutions such as introduction to a new environment, change in eating and sleeping habits, not having enough money, unrealistic expectations, parental expectations, career indecision, alcohol/drug problems, serious mental illness (e.g., depression, bipolar) etc.
He urged all the participants to transform themselves as counsellors to counsel their students and respond to distressed students. Dr. Singh presented an exclusive framework for students’ counseling.
The framework was a series of certain set of activities viz. ‘listen – Offer support – Give Hope – Maintain Boundaries – Follow up’. Concluding the session, Dr. Singh suggested some of the important ‘Prevention Strategies’ such as Regular refresher courses, Exam preparation assistance, life skill modification training, Mentorship / students’ self-help groups, Yoga / Meditation Games, Extracurricular activities and ensuring good nutrition for students. Case to case discussion were conducted where faculty from different institutes got answers to their queries regarding handing student psychological issues.
The day concluded with project workshop through group activity. All the participants were grouped into five groups and two faculty facilitators were assigned to these groups for guiding the projects.
The sessions on second day will focus on ‘Assessing Self Strengths and Weakness (Psycho-lab)’, ‘Building Effecting Relations with Students’ and ‘Achieving Academic Excellence’.