Abstract:
This
research paper solely based on secondary sources of information hopes to
intervene in the ongoing debate around such questions which defines the Best
Practices in Teaching, Learning and Evaluation. Also this paper hopes to
encourage conversation about our current challenges in education system
especially Higher Education, and address each of the hereinafter mentioned issues,
from the history of numerous methodologies developed by researchers and
academicians and applied to the search for rationality between the different manuscripts
on school of psychological beliefs and thoughts to our current obsession with building
world class school of mannerism and performance. The paper will also reflect
upon use of ICT tools, interactive & innovative teachings and learning
methods.
This
research paper is an attempt to scrutinize the pool of “Best Practices”
available in the domain of Teaching, Learning & Evaluation
so as to establish a confident approach for the management and all concerned
stakeholders of the academic premises to ascertain a viable augmentation in the
360 degree development of both, the students and the teaching fraternity. This
paper also examines the different barriers in usage and implementation of ICT
tools, interactive & innovative teachings and learning methods and its
response to the target populace.
The research also reveals that as teachers, we need to go through
a thorough transformation and revolutionize our teaching pedagogy with further
inclusion of latest technology to aid the classroom learning process and
evaluation as well.
Introduction:
Whenever I think about the people who have most
inspired me during my life, I return, without fail, to my student days. I can
still remember in particular the teachers who inspired me to value and respect
education system which proved to be life-changer. There positive influences on
me then continue to even this day. This practice of learning from a good
university or college teacher is one that should be shared by maximum of
students in the country today. Not only because fine teachers make one’s
student days challenging, motivating and worthwhile; but because quality higher
education teaching is extremely crucial in enabling our higher education institutions
to produce the critically-thinking, creative, compliant graduates who will
shape our future.
We
are facing significant challenges – challenges too large to be dealt with by
any one country acting alone: the economic emergency; unemployment, mainly for
young people; shifting demographics; the surfacing of new competitors; new
technologies and modes of working. India can no longer rest on its glory. We
need to become more outward-looking, more original, and to put our societies on
a sustainable foothold for the future. The quality of teaching, learning and
evaluation should be at the nucleus of the higher education reform agenda in
our Universities and Colleges – with a focus on curriculum that deliver
relevant, updated knowledge and skills, knowledge which is globally connected,
which is usable in the labor market, and which forms a basis for graduate’s on-going
learning.
Our center of attention, therefore, should be on the quality of teaching, learning
and evaluation for those who enter or who hope to enter higher education in the
future. While widening and enhancing admittance to educational opportunity
across the country is essential, it is also crucial that Indian students have
access to the best possible higher education learning atmosphere.
Our
higher education system is a key building block of our self-governing
societies. The paramount teaching and learning environments encourage students
to develop confidence in their own ingenious abilities, strong community
engagement and a sense of ethical responsibility allied to the humility that
comes from understanding that learning is a lifelong experience that demands a
lifelong inquisitiveness and commitment.
Literature
Review:
This
perceptive of teaching as a high-priority contractual obligation to the
students who are partners in the co-creation of knowledge underpins this
research paper. More than that there is an obligation to the wider society to
be the most effectual centre of severity, the best leavening agent that only a
higher education institution can be. The need for professional training as a
teacher at primary and secondary school level is generally taken for granted
but remarkably, when it comes to higher education there seems to be an all too
common assumption that such professional teacher training is not necessary, as
if it is somehow an idea not fit for the professional academic.
Teaching
and learning in higher education is a shared process, with responsibilities on
both student and teacher to contribute to their success. Within this shared
process, higher education must engage students in questioning their
preconceived ideas and their models of how the world works, so that they can
reach a higher level of understanding. But students are not always equipped for
this challenge, nor are all of them driven by a desire to understand and apply knowledge,
but all too often aspire merely to survive the course, or to learn only
procedurally in order to get the highest possible marks before rapidly moving
on to the next subject. The best teaching helps students to question their
preconceptions, and motivates them to learn, by putting them in a situation in
which their existing model does not work – and in which it matters to them that
it does not work and in which they come to see themselves as authors of
answers, as agents of responsibility for change. That means that students need
to be faced with problems which they think are important. They need to engage
with new questions which are bigger than the course itself, which have
relevance to their own lives and which provoke a lively participation far
beyond simply getting through assessment or exams.
Assessment
of teaching and learning strategies can be sharpened through the interplay of internal
and external quality assurance. The methodological approaches in applying
standards and standardized procedures of external quality assurance carry
useful potential for contributing to quality-rich teaching and learning environments
with dynamic programme design and implementation.
Quality
teaching and learning has broad horizons, taking place in a research-rich
environment, where the subject matter is driven by the latest knowledge and
research, delivered in a way which encourages students to develop academic
literacy and both subject specific and generic skills which they can apply
immediately in the real world, especially in the labor market. The best
teaching encourages students to be aware of and to draw on the research not
only of the teacher, but also of fellow academics within and beyond the
university or college, including internationally. In this era of increasingly
rapid globalization, the teaching and learning experience for all students must
be globally connected, enabling students to develop an understanding of how
their subject is viewed and pursued in different parts of the world.
ICT Tools, Interactive
& Innovative Teaching and Learning Practices:
Our main task as
classroom teachers who seek to understand what we do and improve at it is thus
twofold. First, we should identify our unique niche—the educational elements that
can only be delivered by a teacher in the classroom. Second, we should create a
classroom experience that will facilitate the delivery of those elements.
In day-to-day life we—and our students—often
interact with experts in different fields; but, for the most part, we only get
to hear their final judgment on things. The students, on the other hand, are
with you, the expert, as you identify and work through a problem. They watch as
you dissect an issue to reveal its internal processes. They observe and offer
comments and suggestions as you respond to a question by approaching it
critically: separating the trivial from the essential, evaluating various
logical possibilities, and weighing several lines of evidence. They cannot
readily get that from TV or the Internet. The classroom offers students a safe,
face-to-face, and academically productive group experience. Other learning
experiences may combine one or two of these qualities, but not all three. For
example, the Internet may be safe and academically productive, but it lacks the
interactive aspect.
The classroom is unique in its ability to provide
direct access to expert and group processes, rather than merely delivering
content. Students will have little memory of—and little use for—much of the
specific course content, but they will remember the dominant class processes,
because these processes apply across a broad range of circumstances and life
paths. In the long run, internalizing the fundamental mechanics of the discovery
process—as well as its thrill and challenge—is more important than any
particular discovery.
Recommendations
& Suggestions:
- Every institution should build up and implement a strategy for the support and on-going upgrading of the quality of teaching and learning, allocating the necessary level of human and financial resources to the duty, and integrating this priority in its overall mission, giving teaching owed parity with research.
- Higher education institutions should give confidence, welcome, and take account of student feedback which could spot problems in the teaching and learning environment early on and guide to faster, more effective improvements. All staff teaching in higher education institutions should have received certified didactic training. Continuous professional education as teachers should become a requirement for teachers in the higher education sector.
- Heads of
institutions and institutional leaders should recognize and reward higher
education teachers who make a considerable contribution to improving the
quality of teaching and learning, whether through their exercise, or
through their research into teaching and learning.
- Curriculum should
be developed and monitored through dialogue and partnerships among teaching
staff, students and graduates, drawing on fresh methods of teaching and
learning, so that students acquire relevant skills that enhance their employ-ability.
- Student recital in
learning activities should be assessed against clear and agreed learning
outcomes, developed in partnership by all faculty members involved in
their deliverance.
Conclusion:
An initial step is to create the conditions in
which the higher education sector gives parity of esteem to both teaching,
learning and evaluation, so that the higher education teacher knows that he or she
has to devote not simply in a command of his or her discipline, whether it is
law, literature or science, but must invest in being a good teacher and will be
rewarded aptly for doing so.
An
improved act in teaching and learning has to be embedded in an institution’s culture
and self-ideation. To build up a quality culture of good teaching and learning,
academic teachers have to be convinced and fully involved in the project. The
institution needs to sustain its teaching staff through various measures,
ranging from continuing education and training offers to individual mentoring
and coaching, and measures that strengthen the cooperation among the team of
teachers, especially in the design, development and delivery of curricula and
in the assessment of student performance.
Asking
students for their feedback on their learning perceptive at the end of the
semester has become common practice in many countries, but it is not always
obvious that their views have any actual impact or conduce to enviable changes.
Higher education institutions need to build environments and feedback
mechanisms and systems to allow students’ views, learning experience, and their
performance to be taken into account.
Teaching
students well obviously implies that teachers produce up-to-date and good
quality material for their lessons. A teacher’s understanding base should not
be restricted simply to his or her own subject, but must also include an
understanding of learning theories – such as mature learning theory,
self-directed learning and self-efficacy – and how to incorporate them into
practice. Teachers must be conscious that different kinds of teaching methods
and educational settings can produce different kinds of learning. Teachers
should be able to face rapidly changing demands, which require a new set of
competences and call for novel approaches to teaching and learning. They should
also be able to stimulate open and flexible learning that will improve learning
outcomes, review and recognition.
Bibliography:
- http://www.nea.org/assets/img/PubThoughtAndAction/TAA_04Win_03.pdf
- http://ec.europa.eu/education/library/reports/modernisation_en.pdf
- http://www.ed.gov.nl.ca/edu/k12/curriculum/guides/health/elementary/process.pdf
- http://www.tefl.net/esl-articles/teaching-learning.htm
- http://www.necsi.edu/research/management/education/teachandlearn.html
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