From project and research-based-learning to innovation, patents and start-ups, VIT University is targetting an international ranking. Sangeeta Yadav tells you more
learning by doing things has become a successful pedagogy and many universities and institutes are incorporating this in their curriculum. One such university is Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) which has been recently awarded with four-star rating by Quaquarelli Symonds (QS), UK, an international ranking agency.
“We’ve changed the methodology and named it curriculum for applied learning where all the subjects are divided into eight modules and one module will be taught by industry experts. Thus every student gets to know how the academic learning is coming into use in the industry,” Dr Anand A Samuel, vice-chancellor, VIT University tells you.
The applied learning system is the need of the hour looking at the Gen Y’s specialised qualities and characteristics. “Today, students don’t like to listen to the lecture for hours. We have modified the system by establishing smart boards, recording lectures and asked the teachers to take the students out and make them participate in activities like hackathon, techathon, race car competition, robotic competition etc. This encourages them to take up new challenges and solve the problem through their own method and present it well to the public. learning in this kind environment creates more value than what they learn in the whole semester in six months of classroom teaching,” Samuel says.
Apart from the industry exposure, the module also has project based learnings system that help students to learn innovations. “Every student is encouraged to take-up five projects in a semester and the teacher guides them to make it innovative. We encourage students to take the concept and introduce something new in it. The project might be a total failure but the teachers get to know how much the student has learnt. For the learning they score marks. This encourages them to come up with new ideas and implement it,” Samuel tells you.
Research-based learnings are also on a rise and students right from the under-graduate level are encouraged to publish their papers in international journals, opening various research avenues for them. “All the teachers are involved in research-based programmes and they collaborate with the UG students to help them in their research papers. Once their research papers get published in a journal, it gets reviewed by some experts outside of India. At VIT, 50 papers have been published so far by UG students, which is not happening at other universities,” Samuel says.
This helps students to prepare themselves at the post-graduate level to come up with better researches. “All the MTech students are been given research topics in addition to their subjects. At the end of the year, they publish the papers. We conduct internal conference and call it Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) conference and encourage all our PG students to publish their findings. We call the publishers from abroad and if they find that the papers are good, they can get published in international journals. Through this, we are getting thousands of publishers every year. We have more than 2,600 plus research scholars doing PhD both full-time and part-time. In bio-technology, we have 121 professors with PhDs and 550 PhD research scholars and you will not find this amalgamation of biotechnology talent in anywhere in India,” he tells you.
The focus now is on their new mission to encourage students to innovate their own product. Through entrepreneurship to innovate, patent and start-ups, students are encouraged to come up with their own products, patent it and launch their company. If the students are not interested in start-ups, the Technology Business Incubator (TBI) that will help them to make it a viable product for manufacturing and so on.
To become a digital university by 2020 is another aim. “Students learn fast and better digitally. We want students to write the exam in tablets and study digitally. By 2020 it should become a common trend in education sector and workplace. We will also have one-week digital campus festival and look up to becoming a digital university. For institutions like ours, entrance exams have become online everywhere and with over 2.2 lakh students appearing for 4,000 seats, the process has become fast and easy,” he tells you.
Under the University Social Responsibility (USR), VIT has adopted villages for field training and help students from the weaker section of the society by providing scholarship. “We have adopted many villages where 32,000 students, who are also active in NSS activities, go to the villages, live there for 10 days and teach the students and the locals. They come up with innovative solutions. There is a scheme in which every year we pick up 60-64 children from the poor districts of Tamil Nadu, who are toppers in Government schools and provide free education, stay and food at VIT. During placements, once our students get placed, we call neighboring colleges and give their students placement as well,” he says.
The university also has Proctor Scheme where every teacher is given 15 students to mentor and counsellors to guide them. “Students go through a lot of issues and need somebody to guide them. We have 10 counsellors to help them. Teachers identify what the student is going through and where their interest lies. If the students are interested in any other course, they can take up two extra papers that will be taken into consideration for their eligibility to make a switch to the other course,” the VC tells you.