हिंदी
CHANDIGARH 28 JULY 2021
The Internal Quality Assurance Cell of Mehr Chand Mahajan DAV College for Women, Chandigarh organised an Expert Lecture titled ‘NAAC- Revisiting the Quality Benchmarks: An Assessor’s Perspective’. The resource person for this informative lecture was Dr. Nisha Bhargava, Principal, Mehr Chand Mahajan DAV College for Women and NAAC Assessor. With a vision to enlighten the teaching fraternity about the vision, mission and core objectives of NAAC so as to enable institutions to achieve a higher grade, the lecture had over 358 registered faculty members from various institutions across the country including Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.
Beginning the highly eloquent lecture by outlining the benefits of NAAC accreditation, Dr. Bhargava discussed at length the present assessment and accreditation framework which marks a paradigm shift in terms of it being ICT enabled, objective, transparent, scalable and robust. Dr. Bhargava also shed light on the new features of the framework, namely quantitative indicator evaluation, simplified processes, extensive use of ICT, pre-qualifier for peer team visits and third party validation of data. In a highly simplified manner, Dr. Bhargava apprised the audience of the step by step process of NAAC accreditation, elaborating on each step and the important points to be borne in mind during each step. Comprehensively elucidating on the seven criteria for NAAC assessment, namely Curricular aspects, Teaching-Learning and Evaluation, Research, Innovations and Extension, Infrastructure and learning resources, Student Support and Progression, Governance, Leadership and Management, and Institutional Values and Best Practices, Dr. Bhargava dwelt upon each criterion in detail. Dr. Bhargava stressed upon the importance of each criterion for attaining a good grade and said that institutions should be wary of last minute window dressing. Students being at the centre of the teaching-learning process, Dr. Bhargava specifically highlighted the need to adopt innovative teaching methods for holistic development of the students and advocated making evaluation more transparent and criteria based. She also emphasised undertaking research that strikes a balance between the commercial goals and social welfare goals. Creation of an ecosystem for promotion of research and innovation was strongly recommended by the expert during her lecture. The lecture culminated with an interactive session wherein the participants put forth their queries regarding NAAC assessment that were suitably answered by the expert.
