Faculty development in the new globalized era through industry-academia partnership

Abstract

The Academic Staff College (ASC) at VIT University in India is emerging as a Centre of Excellence that caters to the training needs of newly recruited as well as in-service faculty of the University. It was established as a nodal centre to coordinate all the training programs and it caters to the training needs of the faculty who are expected to function as leaders and managers in the classrooms and laboratories to meet the challenges of internationalization and globalization of education, especially technical and engineering education. The mission of ASC is to provide continuous training that is effective, efficient, empowering faculty to become truly motivational in the classroom. The ASC fosters critical and innovative thinking among its engineering and technology faculty and has aligned itself to the 21st Century Learning Skills. The Academic Staff College encourages innovation and creativity among its faculty and supports the introduction of new pedagogical methods and new learning approaches in delivering instruction. It has positioned itself as a forerunner to bring about the paradigm shift from "teaching to learning." New initiatives with particular reference to WIPRO?s Project 1, an academia industry partnership between WIPRO, a global IT and Engineering Enterprise and VIT University has produced a metamorphosis in the teaching learning process at the University. Individual learning has been replaced with collaborative and group learning; lectures have been complemented with role play, simulation, word games and group activities, and with many alternat ive learning approaches. The Academic Staff College has made a giant leap forward in providing the right kind of platform to the faculty wherein the faculty experiment, create, innovate, improvise the Teaching-Learning process and share all their success stories of the classroom strategies and thereby help the faculty community to reenergize and revitalize them to face the daunting challenges of the 21st century learners. The mission of its faculty development programs is to empower the faculty so as to elevate the teaching learning process to new heights to ensure that the faculty no longer remain a mere spectator to the revolution happening in the Global Education Scenario, but become active partners in the process The paper will present some of the new pedagogical methods and learning approaches used in delivering instruction and some specific examples implemented by the faculty. © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education.