Often, lack of international collaborations and Industry partnerships are cited for quality deficit and a place among the top in international rankings. They benefit the staff, students and the world as a whole. Other benefits include curriculum development and degrees formed out of collaboration with partnering institutions. Additionally, research opportunities and cultural awareness accrue. A partnership’s endurance is an alliance of ideas and goals. It certainly is difficult to forge global partnerships and foster relationships with other institutions, for both seek a value proposition. In spite of this, the rate of internationalization is growing rapidly, with free and trusted communication channels and inexpensive travel.
Domestic students, benefit with an opportunity to travel internationally via any exchange programs that may have been set up, and vice versa for students at partnered universities. An opportunity to understand culture of other nations ensures their marketing success. Students pursue higher education for the preparation it affords for life in the working world. For them, the international collaboration programs help to study, work and travel in an international capacity.
20% of the world’s scientific papers are co-authored internationally. Because of easy communication and travel, academics and researchers find it easier to collaborate with their foreign counterparts, making the exchange of academic ideas much simpler to organize. Scrutinizing, debating, and sharing experience is essential for academic and scientific accomplishment. Even challenging, accepted opinions and ideas is central to development. These However, can be achieved only through international collaborations.
IIT’s and a few other institutes of repute, have forged collaborations with the best of their counterparts. For example, IIT Bombay started with assistance from UNESCO for technical experts and funds contributed by the then Soviet Union, IIT Kanpur created with the assistance of a consortium of nine US research universities and IIT Madras started with assistance from the then West Germany. Still, IIT Bombay is ranked 172nd, IIT Kanpur is ranked 350th and IIT Madras is ranked 275th in QS Global World Rankings 2021. Such partnerships have always contributed greatly to academic and scientific progress. It is a matter of concern that even our best institutions or the best in the world are struggling to find an antidote to the Covid virus sweeping the Globe for the past 9 months. Eventually, one will be found with a collective effort of the research organisations underscoring the value of collaborations.
Our Institutions and Universities must seamlessly track and direct international partnerships through technology. A Software platform like ‘QS MoveON’ allows to manage international mobility and partner activities, empowering universities to update processes, improve workflows, and maximize available resources.
Has the Pandemic disrupted these collaborations? A simple answer seems to be yes. It has completely stopped all travel of students and faculty between universities, completely disrupted student internships, and all research, whether industry or Institute collaborated, so much so that even the primary objective of academics is in disarray. How will the future pan out?
Adversities bring out the best in human beings. With a little help from technology, institutions have forged ahead with online teaching and students have taken to it, though many, not willingly. Technology is found wanting at places where its reach is restricted with many other factors, collectively called the digital divide.
Teacher quality is now more in focus than ever before. Inhibitions being broken in the asynchronous mode; students are more prone to complain now. Besides an obvious deficit in quality quotient, several teachers are not even trained in the use of technology. As the online paradigm enters its 6th month, both the teachers and the administrators are realising that more have dropped out or are on the verge of dropping out. A serious debate must now be, what next?
One solution is to aggregate good teaching content and provide an immersive experience by appropriate handholding. Good teachers with domain expertise, presentation skills and access to effective technology create good content. Can a system as large as 1000 universities and 45000 colleges ever dream of doing this? Is it feasible? The answer lies in collaborations of a different kind. Two instances stand out.
First being, identified faculty in various disciplines must be facilitated to create content. Faculty in Physics from IIT Delhi, or faculty in Mathematics from Presidency college in Chennai can all come together creating an experience to cherish. A new department of content Management or (DOCM) under the Ministry of Education could possibly handhold. The necessary state of art technology/recording centres could be established in each of the district headquarters to provide the technology support. Such content when ported on a common learning management system (LMS) like Moodle, suitably customised and maintained by the DOCM could be beamed to all students, or at least to those who are bereft of such learning.
Such a DOCM can even address the digital divide. Availability of devices and bandwidth in certain areas is far from satisfactory. Services of BSNL, NIC and other agencies can come handy. Sanitised mobile vans with PC’s and smart devices and access points to all remote locations, or have no PC’s or smart phones must be made available. If a maximum throughput and minimal interference is required for conduct of nationwide teaching or even conducting examinations, channels 1, 6, and 11 in the 2.4 GHz ISM Band are the best choices. DTH Channels can reach the villages. Cable TV Network must be cajoled to provide education content during certain hours of the day.
Second is to aggregate third-party content like that of EdX, Coursera or Udemy or similar, in various disciplines, subscribed by DOCM and ported on the common LMS, advantage being low cost to student. It is unthinkable that all those thousands of colleges and universities will ever individually subscribe to this content, cost to student being prohibitive.
A collateral advantage of such a partnership is that the multi-point entry-exit option, accumulation of credits, the credit bank concept, designing one’s own Degree or Diploma, provided for in NEP, become meaningful and realisable. Physical entities of our Institutions/Universities would still remain in the physical space. What will be created will be a synergetic Virtual University where all of them can collaborate in multiple ways. A 50 GER envisaged in the next fifteen years may even be realised in the next five years. One can even aggregate similar research, thereby optimising the funding options. Can we then collaborate to create a Virtual world of learning?