What I Experienced in the Conference Room?
The Orientation Programme,
organized by the Academic Staff College, H P University, Shimla, from14th June
2004 to 10th July 2004 for upgrading the teachers with the teaching skills, creating
awareness about the issues pertaining to higher education and giving acquaintance
to the latest IT technologies has proved to be very effective in fulfilling its
mission. The salient features of the programme along with the benefits accrued
to us are as under:
The day started with the warming up session for half-an-hour, which began with
a group song, followed by one minute silence, giving a total feel of Japanese
work culture in Indian environment. This was further followed by reading of previous
day’s reports that gave summarized information of the previous day’s
proceedings, giving a feel of revising the earlier lessons. This was further followed
by the discussion on thought of the day - a real brainstorming session that made
us charged up for the entire day’s activities.
The resource persons from various fields shared their expertise and added knowledge
to our existing knowledgebase. The points emphasized during the technical session
were:
a.
The delivery of the substance
b.
The method of delivery (using various pedagogical tools)
c.
Time management
d.
Interaction and building rapport with the participants
ASC has developed many innovative activities for enriching the programme and some
of them have influenced me.
There was a ‘self-encounter’ exercise, where the participants were to
‘mock teach’ for four minutes and their teaching was filmed. The film
was then shown to all the participants, the participant teaching was asked to
critically analyze himself / herself and other participants also gave their comments.
This was a healthy exercise where we were exposed to our flaws, so that they could
be consciously removed.
Brains Trust was an exercise, where a group of several members sit on the panel
and all the participants would ask them at least one question to any one of them,
which they were supposed to answer. This exercise also proved to be of last moment
revision for the MCQ test, for all the participants. The questions were to be
asked from what all was covered during the orientation programme.
A quiz competition was organized where the participants were questioned on any
/ every topic covered during the orientation programme. This made all the participants
be on their toes throughout the programme as they had to be attentive each and
every moment. The (Multiple Choice Questions) MCQ test at the end of the programme
was scheduled with the same intention.
This was the last activity of the orientation programme, where the participants
were free to come up and show their hidden talents like singing, dancing etc.
which otherwise would never had shared with others. This furthered the process
of bringing the participants closer to one another.
Each session – pre-lunch and post-lunch – were chaired by different
participants daily, and the entire show was managed through the participants.
This was perfect decentralization of work and delegation of authorities. The entire
programme proved to be valuable for all round development as it worked ‘THE
MAVERICK WAY’!!
Smruti
Bulsari
Lecturer, Department of Business & Industrial Management,
Veer Narmad South Gujarat University,
Surat. GUJARAT
Reflections 