Mumbai: The National Board of Accreditation (NBA) is devising new formats to grant accreditation to technical courses such as engineering, management, pharmacy, computer applications, and architecture. The regulatory body will, among other factors, consider the performance of College alumni, the multi-disciplinary nature of curriculum and projects, and the use of technology, while granting approvals to the courses.
NBA, an autonomous government body, is responsible for periodically assessing the qualitative competence of diploma to post-graduation level programmes offered by technical institutes. The body awards accreditation to courses after evaluating various parameters such as infrastructure facilities, quality of teaching and learning, curriculum design, and review, and support services like library, laboratory, instrumentation, and computer facilities.
Process of new formats on, says NBA Chief Sahasrabudhe
Speaking to FPJ, NBA Chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe said that they have started the process of preparing new formats for pharmacy and architecture courses, and have plans to revise the assessment methodology for other programmes including engineering and hotel management. "We would like to assess whether the learning outcomes set by the institute are delivered. We can't measure that at the time when students graduate. We need to engage with them after they spend two-three years in the industry. We will also need industry feedback on the graduates of the institute," he said.
Sahasrabudhe also said that the courses will also be evaluated on their multi-disciplinary nature. "We will have to see how colleges are using new technologies, especially Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms like Swayam. If a student wants to take up a course, which is not available in the college, are they able to pursue them online? We would also like to check how academic projects are defined and how knowledge of other disciplines is used in them," he said.
Colleges welcome NBA's new moves
The colleges have welcomed the new parameters being introduced by NBA, but they feel that implementing them in the existing structure of technical education will be a difficult task. "These parameters are useful, but it'll be a challenging task to execute them, as most of the teachers have an old mindset and lack training in these new initiatives," said Braj Mishra, Principal, Thakur College of Engineering and Technology, Kandivali.
Mishra said that while colleges have started allowing students to pursue elective courses online, the regulating bodies and universities need to provide more flexibility in the process of teacher recruitment and curriculum. "The new requirements must be accompanied by measures for teacher training. The guidelines for recruiting teachers should also change. The colleges must be provided autonomy to form their own curricula, as the university curriculum restricts them from providing knowledge about emerging fields," he said.
