The All India Council for Technical Education, India's statutory body for technical education, recently launched Student Learning Assessment (SLA) portal and has been able to enroll more than 84,470 students for the programme. The programme portal https://parakh.aicte-india.org/ which was created based on recommendations made by National Project Implementation Unit (NPIU) and Stanford University’s study, aims to conduct effective assessments of students from higher education institutions and schools.
According to the people involved in the programme, the goal is to measure benchmark levels and gains in academic and aptitude skills by the students in technical programs and to understand the various factors that affect the skill development of students in technical institutes across India.
"Student Learning Assessment is not an exam so the focus is only on testing a student's technical and core knowledge while aiming to see the outcome of over 5 lakh students from AICTE approved institutes. Further, the programme will include schools with a CBSE curriculum and other non-technical bachelor courses such as BA, BCom, BSc, etc. so that they can be provided with this experience at an early age. We want to bring in more students and faculty members as a part of this initiative," said Shivani Jain, a data analyst for the Student Learning Assessment programme.
AICTE will deliberate in further meetings about the steps to take SLA on a broader scale. "Higher education, higher-order thinking skills, application, and industry-based questions need a serious amount of preparation and only specialization in teaching methods will help achieve that. We are trying to rope in industry experts as well to collaborate with them on many such programmes for years to come," Jain told Free Press Journal.
More than 58,000 students and 1170 faculty members have completed their assessments through the portal.
