Page 34 - AQAR Report

Patel and Dr Asha Patel from USA after exhaustive exploration. The content
includes carefully chosen illustrative case studies, TED talks, slideshares and
a range of widely recommended books. • CHARUSAT took this unique initiative in
collaboration with the course patron and developer to consider implementing
this course to teach creative thinking, with two major aspects (i) Training for
the faculty members and (ii) Offering the course to the students. • Initially a
Faculty Development Program was organized to train a group of faculty members
from CHARUSAT with the course strategies and techniques. Their feedback was
considered to improvise upon the course content and transaction guidelines to
make it suitable for the students. Subsequently, the course was introduced as a
mandatory course in the curriculum for fourth semester students of all the
Bachelor level programs offered at CHARUSAT. • The transaction of the course is
planned across 15 weeks (2h per week) and is strategically divided into
components like lectures, videos, individual level activities and group
activities followed by feedback. • Each class includes not more than 30
students to accommodate desired interaction and team work. Group activities are
executed through teams of maximum five students. Students are encouraged to
stimulate thinking on diverse problems and pen down the wildest ideas that
could occur to them on the index cards and post-it notes already provided at
the beginning of the class. At the end of the session the ideas from all the
individuals are displayed for everyone to view and ponder upon. • Uniquely, the
course is not evaluated through the exam. Instead, the evaluation is based on
attendance, participation, homework assignments and feedback. Independent
involvement of the students in the entire process is emphasized upon. • At the
end of the course, the students are made to choose a problem, design and
propose the solution as a team work and present their efforts in the form of a
model or posters. • With a mutually accepted goal of promoting this practice
into the existing educational structure, faculty members from other colleges
and universities have been trained over a period of 3 years, so that the same
can be implemented for their students. CHARUSAT serves as a hub to disseminate
this practice by contributing its faculty members as resource persons and
facilitate the course transaction under the proposed ‘CHARUSAT National
Training Centre for Creativity’. • A tinkering lab has been established on the
campus to enable the students use their ideas to fabricate solutions to the
problems they have picked up. The special infrastructural facility if required
can be availed from an array of research labs developed across different
institutes on the campus. A provision is also made to support any
entrepreneurial idea emerging from young minds motivated through this training.
5) Evidence of Success: • As a unique initiative, the course was approved by
Board of Management and Governing Body, CHARUSAT, under the course structure of
Humanities and Social Sciences • “Anil and Asha Patel Endowment Fund for a
Course on Creativity” has been created at CHARUSAT with the help of a
philanthropic donation of more than Rs. 2.86 crores so far. • About 100 faculty
members from CHARUSAT have been trained under the mentorship of Dr Anil Patel.
As per their feedback this training has largely helped changing their
perception from ‘creativity is inbuilt’ to ‘creativity is skill that can be
taught’. • About 4738 of CHARUSAT since past three years have been trained
through this course, with an encouraging feedback • Under the proposed CHARUSAT
National Training Centre on Creativity joining Dr Anil Patel’s ‘Gyaan Daan’
initiative, over 140 faculty members from other educational institutes like CVM
University, VV Nagar P P Savani University, Surat Uka Tarsadia University,
Bardoli RK University, Rajkot Navrachana University, Vadodara Ganpat
University, Mehsana and Sankalchand Patel University, Visnagar have been
trained. 6) Problems Encountered and Resources Required • Persuading the
universities and educational bodies to accept this course as a value addition
to the conventional curriculum implemented BEST PRACTICE-2 1) Title of the
Practice: Introduction of Digital Paperless Examination System – An ecofriendly
exam reform 2) Objectives: • To adopt a major exam reform through technology-