Quality education delivery through Soft SkillsS G Deshmukh

FDP on Promoting Quality in Higher Technical Education , 18 Jan 2016

ABV-Indian Institute of Information Technology & Managementwww.iiitm.ac.in

Basic tenets

• Students need to be engaged

• Students need to participate

• Students to be viewed as co-producer

• Students need to be mentored and developed

• Students to be viewed as learners

• Role of soft skills assume significance for quality delivery !!

Observation

• Traditionally we focus on “only teaching”

• We neglect other aspects– Social relationships (significant others, parents, and peers)

– Environment (students are not conscious that they need time to adopt to a new environment, they should also be aware of environment)

– Physical health

– The best that can be realistically achieved may be to facilitate the development in students of the understandings, skills and attributes that will help them to make a success of their careers.

Skills Expected

• Technical skills : Subject matter

• Ability to ask questions

• Ability to work independently

• Ability to identify with the community

• Soft skills: Leadership, Communication, team work, perseverance , tenacity etc.

Soft Skills

• Communication

• Enthusiasm and Attitude

• Team work

• Networking

• Problem solving & Critical thinking

• Professionalism

Skill Set ..

Hard Skills

• Domain knowledge

• Problem solving aptitude

• Ability to use/handle technology

• Ability to analyze

• Ability to synthesize

• Ability to innovate

Soft Skills

• Ability to communicate

• Ability to work in a team

• Ability to lead and inspire

• Ability to have a positive frame of mind

Basis for need of Soft skill

• Employability surveys (McKinsey, Nasscom etc.)

• Feedback from employers

• Observations from faculty/experts

Soft Skill : Working Effectively as a Team

• Working through and with people

• Thinking “we”, not “I”

• Getting the Team to work together by:– Giving the team the big picture

– Dividing work fairly

– Assigning responsibility to achieve accountability

– Giving recognition

Use of Soft Skills for…

• Developing competencies

• Identifying weak areas

• Predicting the capabilities of students

• Assisting in competency mapping

• Developing positive frame of mind

• Enhancing the pedagogy

• Enhancing Employability of stduents

Insights gained

• Retention span of students is not more than 12 minutes –Thanks to gadgets such as Mobile, Laptop, Internet, TV etc.

• They need to be engaged and teaching learning process to be made more interesting and challenging

• Student need to be engaged in many activities

• New generation expectations and aspirations are different and at times difficult also !

• Soft skills are hard to impart !!

Typical Characteristics of a good teacher

Interventions to promote soft skills• Student forum

• Student festivals

• T&P Activities

• Expert sessions

• Documentary making

• Blogs,Newsletter

• Annual Publication

• Celebrations like – Technology day, Science Day, 15th

Aug, 26th Jan, World Environment Day

• Hindi Pakhwara and so on..

Family of Skills expected

• Coherence : Being consistent with oneself and the surrounding environment , identifying oneself with the

subject, institution and community

• Competency: Technical proficiency, domain knowledge

• Creativity: Nurturing spirit of innovation, doing something novel, out-of-the-box

• Collaboration: with others, similar minded individuals, groups, networking etc.

Premises

• Peer-to-peer interaction facilitates nurturing of soft skills

• Informal mechanisms work !

• An element of creativity /novelty is desirable

• Rather than teachers, mentors play an important role

• Teaching needs to be reduced, Learning needs to be emphasized !

Thank you very much !I would appreciate your comments at

deshmukh.sg@gmail.com