The educational system has to abandon its babu culture: Prakash Wani

With over 33 years of teaching experience, professor Prakash Wani has co-authored five engineering books and published over 20 papers at national and international level. He has been incharge joint director, technical education, Maharashtra, and member of management council, University of Pune.

He was also the chairman of board of studies for electronics and telecommunication department, UoP. He spoke to Rajesh Rao on the changes required in our traditional method of
education.

Why is it hard for leading educationists to change from conventional to unconventional methods to better our education system?
Traditional educationists following conventional wisdom can go wrong while exercising their responsibilities. What we need is simple changes to improve the present education system.
If you are in the chair and barely making ends meet, the only chance to become successful is to win over the stakeholders or your colleagues. It is frustrating to hear from others that you are unable to immediately change from conventional to unconventional and pragmatic
curriculum. 

Anyone who has modest intelligence, social awareness and positive outlook can internally develop a robust curriculum within a given time frame. With the growing population, policy-makers have started applying serious thoughts on how to fulfill their needs within the available resources.

We have to accept our challenges and develop leadership without mimicking any particular system adopted by others. We need to
ensure that our system caters to our
requirements.

Is the government doing enough to bring in sustainable and quality education? How is the faculty participating?
 The government has realised the present challenges and is providing alternatives to bring sustainable and quality education.

As a result, many from the teaching faculty are getting opportunities to participate in the academic improvement programmes, but freedom always comes with responsibility. Our revision and reform can broadly be divided into academic development and academic administration. Due to government’s flexible approach, many faculty members are getting the scope to share such responsibilities.

For academic developments, we are following the university affiliation concept to design and develop academic curriculum for its effective implementation and evaluation process. This method is less practiced in developed countries, probably due to less student strength.
 
Shouldn’t the education system and faculty get acquainted with modern skill requirements?
It is said that advent of technology renders people with primitive skills jobless and creates new jobs that require new skills. On the other hand, technocrats believe that smart engineering and technology are key drivers for development.

The board of studies and concerned faculty members need to acquaint themselves with technological and modern skill requirements. They should see a problem in holistic manner rather than offer solutions in bits and pieces. It is necessary to create newer alternatives rather than follow traditional procedures. The educational system has to abandon its babu culture and focus on meeting objectives rather than internal paperwork.
 
What steps are we taking to improve our evaluation and assessment process?
The emphasis must be on conceiving online-based examination system to benefit students and be at par with international standards. In view of this, as a first step towards our vision, a compact disc(CD) based examination for one of the computer related subjects under engineering faculty was initiated as a pilot project for all the UoP affiliated colleges in the academic year 2008-2009.

The faculty of engineering being a technical faculty at UoP, have extended its scope for the other subjects of engineering in consecutive semesters and also increased its automation by way of incorporating online examination approach. This has helped to curtail time required for assessment work and definitely helped the university authorities to declare results within time, in spite of increase in number of students and colleges.

Use of information and communications technologies (ICT) to deliver education and training must also have a broader role of delivering learning at lower cost with higher quality.