Two day Faculty Development Program

A two day in-house Faculty Development Program (FDP) was organized by the Internal Quality Assurance Cell(IQAC) of St.Philomena’s College(Autonomous), Mysore to the Post-Graduate teaching faculty of the college at Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara Institute for Management Development (SDM IMD), Mysuru  from July 2^nd to 3^rd, 2019 at SDM-IMD campus, Mysuru.

(Dr.Ruth Shantha Kumari T., Principal, St.Philomena’s College(Autonomous),Mysuru addressing the teacher participants at the inaugural session.  Also seen in the picture are Prof.Othbert Pinto, Director, PG Centre, St.Philomena’s College;  Rev.Fr.Maria Xavier Sunil, Vice-Rector, St.Philomena’s Institutions; Dr.N.R.Parasuraman, Director,SDM-IMD and Dr.R.Jagadeesh, Professor, SDM-IMD)

 The two-day program was meticulously designed keeping in mind the diverse background of the faculty and their varied requirements and also on the essential concepts in a generic way which later may be customized by the respective individuals to suit their discipline of study.

Welcoming the faculty, Dr. N.R. Parasuraman, Director of SDMIMD said that today the quality of education dissemination is a challenging task. It is the responsibility of the teacher to be equipped in every way possible to prepare the students for a better tomorrow.  In this perspective a training  of this kind will go a long way to the  teachers to adopt a new teaching method, he said.

(Dr.N.R.Parasuraman, Director of SDM-IMD delivering inaugural address)

Dr. Ruth Shantha Kumari T., Principal of St. Philomena’s College addressed the gathering and said that for teachers- teaching will be effective when each one constantly learn. And it is through these kinds of training that one can become a good teacher. Today, experimental teaching methodology is so vast and for that one has to keep in touch with current changes to meet the necessity.  In this direction the college has organized  training program to  teaching faculty, she said.  Vice- Rector  of the college Rev.Fr. Maria Xavier Sunil and Prof. Othbert Pinto, Director of PG Centre, St.Philomena’s College were also present.

(Mr.Ronald Prakash Cutinaha, IQAC Co-ordinator, St.Philomena’s College, Mysuru briefing  the programme)

(Prof.Othbert Pinto, Director, PG Centre, St.Phiilomena’s College, Mysore expressing his views)

The first session was engaged by Dr.R. Jagadeesh, Professor, operstions, SDM-IMD on course design, outline, learning objective, approaches, syllabus content optimization, introduction to blooms taxonomy. The session highlighted on introduction to the process of teaching and learning, course design and content design to meet the students’ needs and expectations, teaching and learning styles, pedagogical methods, use of information technology in teaching and learning, innovation and trends in education, blended learning and flipped classroom, learning management system and methods of assessment and evaluation.

(Dr.R. Jagadeesh, Professor, Operations, SDM-IMD conducting the first session)

The second session by Prof.Mohamed Minhaj, Associate Professor, SDMIMD stressed on using IT in Teaching and learning,. This practical oriented session elaborated the use of technology in teaching to reach students effectively. This session has been well planned to include lecture sessions, hands-on sessions in the computer lab, software demonstrations, and group and individual exercises.

(Prof.Mohamed Minhaj, Associate Professor, SDMIMD, handling the second session)

Day second:

The second day morning session was engaged by Dr. R. Jagadeesh on  different teaching and learning styles to enhance the student understanding level. He described new ways of teaching techniques like blended and flipped classroom style to make learning more student centric. This will enable the students who will be given learning material before class. Hence the classroom time will be used to deepen understanding through discussion with peers and problem solving activities.

The contemporary communication technology tools make education and learning process efficient and effective. Hence, learning of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) was also part of this training program. Dr. Sunil M V, Professor at SDIM-IMD, briefed the importance of MOOCs and explained how these online courses allow participants to access with free and with unrestricted participation to any course of their choice. Besides the conventional modes of teaching such as lectures, videos and reading material MOOCs provide a platform for interactive forums, he opined. He pointed out to the effective working of Central Government’s initiative such as SWAYAM.

Mr. Yashwanth, CEO of Virtual University(For online courses) described the benefits of Learning Management Systems (LMS) in the education. This demonstrative session was a glimpse of the advantages of the adoption of LMS in teaching.

Prof. L. Gandhi, Assistant Professor of SDM-IMD handled the last training session. Next to this, there was a discussion on Contemporary Methodologies for Signature Teaching.

The training program concluded with the valedictory address by Dr. Ruth Shantha Kumari T, Principal of St. Philomena’s College and certificates were distributed to each faculty.

This two day training program provided an extensive array of tools and techniques to enable the faculty to improve the teaching and learning processes and it helped participants to acquire the required skills to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning process.