Academic enrichment committee

Student Enrichment

The concepts of "learning," "personal development," and "student development" are

inseparable. Higher education traditionally has organized its activities into "academic affairs"
(learning, curriculum, classrooms, cognitive development) and "student affairs" (co-curriculum,
student activities, residential life, affective or personal development).
However, this division has little relevance to post-college life, where the quality of one's job
performance, family life, and community activities are all highly dependent on cognitive and
affective skills. Indeed, it is difficult to classify many important adult skills (e.g., leadership,
creativity, citizenship, ethical behavior, self-understanding, teaching, mentoring) as either
cognitive or affective.
Knowledge and understanding are critical, not only to student success, but also to
institutional improvement. To encourage student involvement in learning tasks, thereby
improving institutional productivity and creating the environment under which students are
likely to spend time and energy in educationally-purposeful activities. To endorse talent
development as the goal of education; that is, the college experience should raise students'
aspirations and contribute to the development of skills and competencies that enable them to live
productive, satisfying lives after college.

Guidelines:

 Plan activities that engage students and enhance skills the beyond curriculum.
 Provide real-world activities that connect to the broader community.
 Develop thoughtful activities in both teaching and student level.
 Encouraging faculties in knowledge updation.

Objectives:
 Motivate and engage all students to participate in planned activities.
 Provide differentiated instruction for all skill levels.
 Provide staff training and professional development.
 Integrate technology.
 Research participation as an undergraduate enrichment activity increases the probability
of students persisting in higher education.
 Faculty Enrichment

Faculty enrichment is an essential element of Institutional effectiveness. Faculty

development has a critical role to play in promoting academic excellence and innovation.
Teachers in higher education must be incentivized for undertaking innovations in teaching and
learning approaches.

‘Teacher quality’ is a composite term to indicate the quality of teachers in terms of

teacher characteristics, professional development and recognition of teaching abilities. It is
measured through the training received in teaching and learning processes (certified programs),
quality of assessment and student feedback.

Faculty who engage in professional development experiences benefit also in terms of

increased vitality, better informed in terms of development taking in various spheres of education
and allied fields, innovations and scholarly learning. Moreover, faculty professional development
contributes to the effective use of emerging technologies and establishes a firm foundation for
the overall development of high quality programs and curricula. Areas of innovation could be
curriculum, pedagogy, evaluation, integration of technology, promoting inclusion of
marginalized sections, innovations in funding, collaborations etc. The extent to which the
institution supports faculty development will be strongly reflected in levels of the engagement in
learning activities, conduct of research and ultimately fulfilling the objectives and goals of the
institution.

Vision:

To develop high quality teachers who are able to develop themselves as role models as teachers
and teacher educators in the competitive educational system and the diversified knowledge
requirements of the contemporary society.

Objectives:

 To recognize and identify innovative teaching practices carried by the teachers.

 To promote innovations in teaching and learning.
 To help teachers in capacity building for curriculum designing and scientific assessment
and evaluation.
 To enable the development of skills engaging latest technological devices as aids to
teaching-learning process.
 To strengthen the resource base for the teachers in higher education.
 To develop subject related resources for teacher and professionals of higher education.
 To assemble all support material in electronic form for onward use.
 To build the pool of teachers who engage on the domain knowledge in higher education.
 To disseminate (spread widely) updated subject wise material to the professionals.
 To share practices related to semester system, choice based credit system and continuous
and comprehensive evaluation with a view to constantly improving it.
  To promote learner centeredness and discuss ways of optimizing learning outcomes as
well as adapting curriculum to the needs of society.
 To promote interaction between teaching and research, notably by encouraging faculties
to integrate research results in their teaching.
 To develop innovative programmes that will strengthen the inclusive nature of higher
education by bringing the disadvantaged and marginalized sections of the society.

Implementation Design:

The present education system focuses only on the domain (subject) knowledge of the teachers. It
does not focus on the importance of teaching-learning process, pedagogical content and its
various tools which are very vital to increase the quality of learning experience in the different
educational programmes.

Faculty development programmes include the four possible types of development:

 Personal (interpersonal skills, career development and life planning issues);
 Instructional (course design and development, instructional technology);
 Organizational (ways to improve the institutional environment to better support
teaching);
 Professional (ways to support faculty members so that they fulfill their multiple roles of
teaching, research, and service).

In general all the faculty members need to be provided the opportunities to participate in
professional development programmes in order to enrich their knowledge. Training programmes
before the start of semester can be planned so that the faculties are sensitized about their roles
and responsibilities in college.

It is felt that opportunities to all the faculty members should be provided in attending/conducting:
Training Programmes, Seminars, Conferences and Education programmes in national and
international levels.

The focus on teaching-learning process will engage teachers towards the student concern,
attention and interest. This will make the educational programme more meaningful and socially
relevant.
 Curriculum Enrichment

In education, a curriculum is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that

occur in the educational process. However, there is no generally agreed upon definition of
curriculum. Some influential definitions combine various elements to describe curriculum.
Braslavsky (an international education consultant) states that curriculum is an agreement among
communities, educational professionals, and the State on what learners should take on during
specific periods of their lives. Furthermore, the curriculum defines "why, what, when, where,
how, and with whom to learn."
A typical classroom is filled with students who have varying experiences and backgrounds. Each
requires differentiation to meet his or her needs. Due to technological advances in the society
students will need an enriching challenge. Enrichment keeps students engaged and supports their
accelerated academic needs. Enrichment provides the most appropriate answer to the question in
the relevance framework, “What do you do when the student already knows it?”
The purpose of enrichment is to provide extended learning opportunities and challenges to
students from the basic curriculum. Enrichment gives the student more time to study concepts
with greater depth, breadth, and complexity. Enrichment also provides opportunities for students
to pursue learning in their own perception and strengths. Enrichment needs to be purposeful,
focused, and planned. Enrichment provides students with the chance to acquire mastery of
standards at a deeper level than what is outlined in the required curriculum. Enrichment does not
require a completely different set of lesson plans, but it can be accomplished by making sure
students are asked various questions in the higher levels. Some sentence stems for higher level
questions include:

 What is another way to this problem?

 How can we use this information in another way?
 Why do you think….?
 What might happen if you try….?

Planning Enrichment Strategies for teachers:

Think: If you had more time in your regular class, what else would you like to do with the
students? What else would you like them to explore or learn about?
Ask: In what topics or ideas have your students expressed an interest? What would they like to
learn more about, or have the opportunity to create?
Analyze: Which students have already demonstrated mastery in a concept or topic? Which
students need enrichment opportunities?
Discuss: How can the students be more responsible for their own independent learning? What
assistance will they need?
Plan: How will their enrichment projects be evaluated? What do you want them to learn from
these projects?
Strategize: What issues might arise? What concerns might there be? What do you need to do
ahead of time to make this successful?
Reflect: What was successful this time? Why? What might you do differently next time?

Some General Enrichment Choices

Workshops/Guest Lectures/Seminars/ Conferences

A specialist may help a student with very advanced knowledge in a subject area. A specialist
could be another teacher in a higher grade, a community member, entrepreneur or a trainer.
Institute/Industrial Visits & Internships

Students or teachers can create special interest to visit centers that are embedded in or tangential
to the curriculum. These activities may motivate and give lot of advanced technical ideas of
various disciplines to students.

Mini Projects/Technical events

Students who master content easily can be given more challenging assignments while students
needing more support may have more basic practice and assignments. In this regard, a teacher
can insist students to take up a variety of projects which creates a timeline building relationships
between discoveries or progress in science, math, art and technology which indeed meets the
needs of students with different strengths and interests.
Institution/Department must provide opportunities for the students to share their work with an
audience.