AMN/ New Delhi
In a bid to meet the challenges posed by COVID-19 and minimize its impact on academic activities, Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) organised a two-day Online Faculty Development Program (6-7 April, 2020) for sharing the best practices and capacity building of faculty members for Online teaching-learning process.
JMI Vice-Chancellor Prof. Najma Akhtar inaugurated the Programme in which more 250 university teachers got connected online.
The idea was further evolved by a team of experts led by Prof. Furqan Qamar, Center for Management Studies, JMI and former Secretary General, AIU.
The program was the first of its kind and attracted phenomenal response from JMI faculty members. Due to limited capacity of the online platform, a total of 200 faculty members out of about 450 registered participants including Deans, Directors of Centres, Heads of Departments, Professors, Associate & Assistant Professors were invited for attending the sessions.
The program was conducted purely through a digital platform. All participants and resource persons interacted from their respective residences. During the experience sharing session, Prof Akhtar interacted with all participants online. She was happy to note the enthusiasm shown by the faculty members towards this student friendly step taken by the university. She noted and appreciated the efforts made by faculty members at their level to support students during these challenging times.
Information and Communication Technology(ICT) related technical sessions focussed on development of appropriate skills amongst teachers to enable them conduct online classes and adoption of Learning Management System(LMS) in the shortest possible time for addressing the curricular needs of the students. Program also had a session on Open Educational Resources(OERs) and remote access to the JMI library.
The technical sessions were chaired by Prof. Furqan Qamar. Throughout the program, Prof. Najma Akhtar regularly interacted with the participants encouraging and motivating them.
Dr. S Kazim Naqvi, Offg Director, FTK-Centre for Information Technology, JMI addressed sessions with the focus on making best use of ICT for maintaining academic continuity in the present situation.
Dr. Tariq Ashraf, University Librarian discussed Open Educational Resources and remote access of JMI resources.
According to Dr Shikha Kapoor, one of the participants, “This intensive program helped us acquire skills/ hone our skills of Google Classroom, use of e-Resources and different tools of the G-Suite to facilitate the teaching learning process. The well planned and conducted program through the Google Meet introduced us to a variety of Google tools that can be used interestingly and innovatively at this very difficult time when Physical Distancing is a must, necessitated by COVID 19. It was a great and a timely initiative by the university to help teachers in teaching as wel as learning. The program gave us an opportunity for not only learning the online methods and tools, but also to interact with each other and raise our concerns and doubts pertaining to teaching – theory as well as practical assignments and their evaluation. “
Other participants were also pleased with this timely and student-friendly initiative of the Vice-Chancellor, JMI and her team and expressed to work with greater resolve to serve the nation in the best possible manner by ensuring continuity of the teaching and learning process through the online platform. JMI will keep on organizing such programs for the remaining faculty members.