Single-window service for students
From K.G. Dutt
Tribune News Service

KURUKSHETRA: The Directorate of Correspondence Courses of Kurukshetra University has introduced single-window service for the convenience of students. It is for the first time in the history of the directorate that such a service has been made available to students.

Earlier, students had to rush from pillar to post to fill various admission forms and deposit fees. It took at least two to three days for a student to complete the formalities, but thanks to the efforts of the Vice-Chancellor, Dr M.L. Ranga, and the new Director, Mr L.C. Gupta, the directorate has made arrangements for sale of prospectuses, submission of forms, preparation of bank drafts and depositing of fees at one counter.

A new counter of the Punjab National Bank has been opened for depositing the fee. The students now will be able to complete the entire process within one hour.Dr Ranga told TNS in an interview that arrangements for guiding the students to fill forms, etc. have also been made.

Two officials have been deputed at the directorate enquiry to assist admission seekers in filling forms and to provide consultancy services.The Vice-Chancellor claimed that prospectuses for the 1998-99 academic session had been made available from July 20 onwards and had been simplified.

The prospectuses contained precise simple information on courses, rules, procedures and instructions. The forms had also been simplified.The Vice-Chancellor disclosed that two new courses, i.e. post-graduate diploma in tour and travel management of one-year duration and a certificate course in computer application, also of an year’s duration, had been started.

Dr Ranga revealed that on a proposal by the new director, the equivalence committee and the university’s academic council, at its meeting held on May 15, had decided that the examinations conducted by various universities or deemed universities or state education boards etc. would stand recognised for admission to various courses.

Earlier, the students had to face great inconvenience due to non-recognition of a number of courses of other universities and boards. As a result admissions had to be cancelled at a later stage either in January or February.

This led to a lot of inconvenience to the students as well as discouragement.The directorate had also been given a facelift. On the consistent efforts of the Vice-Chancellor and the director, the surroundings of the directorate had been to made spic and span.

The directorate used to be a hideout for anti-social elements during the night with doors, windows and windowpanes broken. The records lay scattered in a number of corridors. The directorate emitted odour when one entered its premises and bathrooms, which had not been cleaned for months together. The director told this correspondent that in the current session, lessons for the admission seekers would be got printed in book form.

The new entrants would also be given syllabi at the time of admission. Mr Gupta stated that it has been planned to make personal contact programme more effective. The number of days of personal programme had been raised from one week to 15 days. The working of the directorate had also been modernised with the facility of independent e.-mail. A fax machine (No. 0091-1744-20277/20628) has also been installed. For the first time, an independent enquiry counter had been established (Telephone No. 20385) to attend to queries by students.

Installation of computerised system providing details about every student at the enquiry counter itself was being processed.Mr Gupta maintained that arrangements for availability of students data had been made in the computer section of the directorate.The director stated that persistent efforts were being made to attract more foreign students.

The fee structure for various courses had been streamlined so that students could grasp it easily. Earlier, the practice was to pay fees under different slabs, but now the students were required to pay the total fee in two slabs for all the courses, except M. Phil. Option had been given to the students to deposit fee, in three instalments.

Talking about the study material response-sheets or assignment Mr Gupta maintained that for the purpose, the syllabi of each course had been divided into well-planned lessons. These lessons were prepared by faculty members from different universities, colleges and institutions.The study material was supplemented by response-sheets and assignments evaluated by teachers.

In future, the students would be asked to prepare the assignment and response-sheets on questions indicated at the end of lessons for evaluation, counselling and suggestions by the teachers.Students’ support services had been introduced with a coordinator as its head for expeditious return of the assignment after evaluation.

Response-sheets and assignments checked by teachers and their comments as well as relevant guidelines would be returned to the students within a fixed time.To update the personal contact programme, Mr Gupta disclosed that from now onwards, the programme would include regular classroom teaching, practicals, face-to-face discussions between teachers and students.

In fact very comprehensive changes, keeping in view the requirements of the students and their convenience, had been introduced in the directorate to make its courses more attractive and responsive to the needs of the market.

Teacher education: emerging dimensions
By Amit Kauts

It is said that no people can rise above the level of its teachers. The government and the community, hence, should endeavour to create conditions in which the teachers can give their best to society.

They should have the freedom to innovate, to devise appropriate methods of communication and activities relevant to the needs, capabilities and concerns of the community.To achieve this, “teacher education is considered to be a continuous process and its pre-service and in -service components are inseparable”, by the NPE, 1992.

The government, on the one hand, considered the two aspects of teacher education inseparable and on the other allocated the task of pre-service education to colleges of education and in-service training to government agencies like the NCERT, SCERT, SIE, DIETs and Boards of Education.

This has isolated the functioning of teacher training institutions (producers of teachers) and schools (consumers of teachers).This isolation is illogical and against all principles of management and may lead to further deterioration in the quality of teachers.

This has been time and again pointed out by different committees and commissions appointed for the upliftment of teacher education. It is also one of the points on the draft agenda of teacher education prepared by the NCTE.The MGN College of Education, Jalandhar, took the initiative in this direction under Principal R.S. Kumar.

The college organised a three-day workshop on “Effective teaching for school teachers” in April in which 36 public school teachers of Jalandhar and suburban towns participated.The workshop was inaugurated by Dr R.S. Bawa, Registrar, GNDU. He argued that the media and information explosion was posing a threat to the survival of the teacher who, in turn, should devise self-sustainable strategies to face the same.

Dr H.C. Sharma, Director, SIE, spoke on “Learning psychology of adolescents”. He emphasised the role of teachers in understanding the child and inculcating positive attitudes and motivating students to learn. Dr Anand Bhushan talked about the concept of teaching and its relationship with learning. He explained teaching-learning as a process.

Mrs Barinder Gill demonstrated low-cost teaching aids and explained how to improvise wastes to vitalise the teaching-learning process. Dr P.K. Tulsi talked on “Instructional objectives”.Mrs Uttamjit Kaur gave illustrations how a teacher could infuse values in students. Dr Neelima Jerath stressed upon the need for a scientific temper and environment awareness.

She, in the most interesting way, related knowledge/curriculum with day-to-day life situations. She suggested and demonstrated a number of games and classroom activities which could help in developing a scientific temper.It was concluded that continuous co-ordination and functional linkages are to be developed between teacher training institutions and schools to produce quality teachers, as stressed by the Director, NCERT, recently.

It was also suggested that participation of school principals was a must in designing teacher education curriculum.

Colleges heave sigh of relief
From Jupinderjit Singh

THE decision of Punjabi University to abolish the entrance test for admission to postgraduate courses in colleges has paid dividends.Colleges under the university had been demanding the scrapping of the test for the past five years since it was introduced in 1993.

They had argued that few students were able to pass the test. Thus, the number of those seeking admission had fallen substantially.Mr Parminder Singh Sidhu, Principal, Government Mohindra College, Patiala, says the college was the worst sufferer.

Now with the abolition of the test, many students had made a beeline for admission into the college courses instead of seeking admission in the university where they had to sit in the entrance test.

Giving figures, Mr Sidhu said that the M.A. (Punjabi) course, which was without any student for the past three years, had admitted 13 students this year. The number of admissions to M.A. (English) had risen from a mere four last year to 23 this year. Similarly, M.A. (Political Science) had attracted a lot of students.

The admission number has gone up from 9 last year to 34 this year. In M.A. (History) there had been 19 admissions in comparison to 10 last year or MA (Economics) 26 students had been admitted (Last year the number was 10).The university has abolished the entrance test for honours courses in schools as well. English honours, as many as 18 students have been admitted in comparison to four last year.

Mr Sidhu said another reason for the increase in the number of those seeking admission to the college this year is the disparity in the fee structure. For a course in college, if the fee is Rs 1000, it is Rs 3000 in the university.Mrs Rajinder Kaur, Principal, Government College for Girls, said five students had been admitted to M.A. (Folk Art) while there was no student in the course in the previous year.

The seats for M.Sc (Food and Technology) had 80 registered per cent admission. Similar was the case with courses like M.A. (Dance) and postgraduate diploma in dietics. Admissions were still on, she said.Colleges in Sangrur and Bathinda have also showed an increase in the number of admission seekers.

Unusual rush for admissions

KURUKSHETRA (TNS): There has been a sharp increase in the number of admission seekers to different courses of Kurukshetra University, especially science and professional courses, this academic year. The university has seen an unprecedented rush in MA/M.Sc, (Mathematics) course. As many has 480 applicants vied with one another for 50 open and 10 paid seats in the subject.The number of those seeking admission last year was 276. Likewise, the LLB (Professional) three-year course, witnessed unparalleled rush. There were 800 applicants for 40 open and 20 paid seats.For the B.Ed. course, 9,611 candidates sat for the entrance test as compared to 7,929 last year. Similarly, for MBA, 2178 candidates applied for admission for 70 open and 20 paid seats at the campus as well as in S.A. Jain Institute of Management, Ambala, and Maharaja Agarsain Institute of Management, Jagadhari.In all 1,180 students appeared for the MCA entrance test for 40 seats and 108 applicants for 40 seats in the diploma in computer application. Similarly, there were 285 applicants for M.Sc (Software). The number of seats available were 25.Two courses, M.Sc. (Home Science) and MA (Sociology) have been sanctioned by the University Grants Commission which will start functioning during the present session. According to the Vice-Chancellor, 125 candidates have applied for admission for M.Sc (Home Science) while there are 100 applicants for M.A. (Sociology).

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The Directorate of Distance Education has also started two courses. One is a certificate course in computer application and the other Post-Graduate diploma in tour and travel management. The Director of Distance Education, Mr L.C. Gupta, maintained that the courses have been introduced in view of its employment potential. The Directorate is envisaging more such courses to provide greater job avenues to students.

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The Vice-Chancellor has been nominated as member of the UGC’s committee for evaluation of the SC cell of various universities in the country. The committee will also recommend grants for such cells.The Vice-Chancellor has also been appointed member of the committee of UGC to recommend grant for sanction of courses in English for various colleges and universities in the country. He is also a member of the Bhasha Samiti of Saraswati Samman Award of the K.K. Birla Foundation.

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Being a Sanskrit scholar of eminence, the Vice-Chancellor plans to further strengthen the teaching of Sanskrit, Indology and Prakrit at the campus.

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In view of intense competition for jobs, the Regional Engineering College, Kurukshetra, is running a training and placement cell under the charge of a professor. It is learnt that the placement of outgoing students of the college is 50-90 per cent even before they complete their course. According to data available, during 1997, 25 out of 29 students in computer engineering, 69 out of 75 in electronics and communication engineering and 49 out of 65 in mechanical engineering got placement before the completion of the training courses at the campus. Likewise, 32 out of 48 students in electrical engineering and 14 out of 28 in civil engineering got placement through interviews arranged by the placement cell of the college.The Vice-Chancellor said in case of masters in international business (MIB), masters in marketing technology (MMT) and masters in finance and control (MFC), the students got between 80-100 per cent placement