New Delhi: The present digital era marked by knowledge explosion and technological advancements has not only influenced education sector at all levels but raised many issues pertaining to quality teachers, teaching, learning, assessment, teacher preparation and professional development. These issues have been rightly addressed, articulated and stressed through several initiatives taken by Government of India through its appropriately designed and developed schemes such as NISHTHA (for training school teachers), DEEKSHARAMBH (student induction programme), ARPIT (Online training of Higher Education faculty), NRF (to promote research), EQUIP (taking Indian education to global level) , PMMMNMTT ( for quality in education) etc and digital initiatives such as SWAYAM, SWAYAMPRAPHA, e-PG Pathshala etc. It is the matter of privilege & honour for Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri National Sanskrit University ( Central University), New Delhi to have been identified as a resource for commencing Teaching Learning Centre (TLC) for capacity building of teachers especially associated with Sanskrit Education and National Resource Centre (NRC) in the discipline Sanskrit for developing & conducting ARPIT course( Annual refresher Programme in Teaching) through SWAYAM under Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya National Mission on Teachers & Teaching scheme by MHRD, GOI. The University established as Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha (Deemed to be University) has been conferred the status of Central University vide Gazette notification dated 17th April,2020 in accordance with clause 3(1) (b) of the Central Universities act,2020 dated 25th March,2020.
The quality improvement with respect to teaching by providing training to teachers has been taken-up by various Centers established under PMMMNMTT scheme which have successfully trained and updated the competencies of about 3.6 lakhs teachers till now. This centrally sponsored scheme was initiated during XIIth plan with the aforesaid purpose to upgrade & improve quality for effectively managing educational processes and allied matters related to all stages of education. The Teaching-Learning Centres (TLC) established as a strong & viable component of Centres of Excellence for Curriculum and Pedagogy under this scheme focuses on pedagogic content and identifying strategies for enhancing the quality of Teaching-Learning processes. In consonance with this, the vision of the TLC of SLBSNSU (Central University), New Delhi was formulated as a seminal programme to prepare teachers for empowering them to address the needs for designing, implementing & evaluating teaching-learning systems in the field of language education especially Sanskrit. To accomplish & ensure vision to result in expectations, the Centre has successfully organized 13 programmes in phase-III (2019-20) in the form of 07 short durations workshops four 3 days, two 5 days & one 10 days, 01 two days national Seminar on New Education Policy 2019: In the context of Language & Teacher Education and 03 workshops in the shape of working out the guidelines for designing Handbook Development for Teaching Sanskrit at Secondary level. In addition to this, 02 one-month mandatory Faculty Induction Programmes (FIP) for newly inducted higher education faculty were also organized in order to sensitize & motivate the faculty to adopt & move towards learner-centred approaches, ICT integrated learning and new pedagogic approaches to teaching-learning in Higher Education. The intake of beneficiaries consisted of 345 participants out of which 31 were special invitees associated with handbook development workshops.
A major and unique initiative Annual Refresher Programme In Teaching (ARPIT) for online professional development of 15 lakhs higher education faculty using the MOOCs platform SWAYAM was launched by Ministry of Human Resource Development. ARPIT is an ongoing exercise, as NRCs will continuously develop new refresher module in their respective earmarked discipline each year and the learning material have to be uploaded and made available through SWAYAM.
In continuing & augmenting this drive further, National Resource Centre (NRC) of SLBSNSU, New Delhi developed, conducted and completed successfully ARPIT -2019 Course in Sanskrit Pedagogy. The centre organised one day workshop on Sanskrit Pedagogy ARPIT-2019: Modules, Format & Content for guiding identified Resource Persons for developing their modules. All the 40 modules of the course were designed on 4 quadrant approach viz.-e-tutorial, e-text, discussion forum and assessment. The total number of registered learners in this course was 608.
Apart from this, the university has developed 4 MOOCs courses for Consortium of Educational Communication (CEC) on Veda & Bhagwat, Prachin Nayay, Indian Vastu Shastra and Introductory Sanskrit Grammar and 4 online courses for TCS through ION platform on Philosophy, Vedic Texts & Grammar, Literature, Culture & History and Study of Meghdutam. This exemplary record of the university has been widely acclaimed under the able guidance and stewardship provided by the Hon’ble Vice-chancellor Prof. Ramesh Kumar Pandey. Needless to add that his overarching zeal and pledge to elevate the teaching-learning and research standards in the university has led to the emergence of the academic ambience so necessary for attaining the goal of academic excellence.
The TLC of SLBSNSU, New Delhi geared-up and suitably reinforced its resources to combat COVID-19 outbreak and sudden lockdown imposed on the country by shifting and meaningfully using the ONLINE PLATFORM for organising its proposed programmes. The themes of all the 04 programmes of the first quarter of phase-IV were converged & accentuated on building technical and digital competencies for conducting online teaching-learning and assessment which is obviously the need of the hour. As such, the Centre has successfully organised 02 three days online National Workshops for developing and sharpening skills for engendering and creating e-resources in the form of text, image, audio and video. The total number of beneficiaries was 405.
To cap it all, it may be averred that the initiatives taken-up by Govt. of India are timely and opportune in as much as they provide commendable guidelines for addressing the issues related to assuring needed transformation in education. The thrust towards this transformation is evident through perceived concerns in improving teaching-learning, assessment, research, curriculum, teacher preparation and their professional development leading to quality teacher & quality teaching at all the levels of education ranging from primary to tertiary levels. This would not have been possible without the sagacious and visionary leadership of both our Hon’ble Prime Minister and Hon’ble Minister of HRD. The programmes as being implemented & carried-out under the umbrella of government schemes specially PMMMNMTT is a right step towards QUALITY EDUCATION and making the dream come true of India as ‘Vishva Guru’.