Best Practices

Title of the Practice

Creating Responsible Citizens: Let us do it together

Objective

At Sacred Heart College sincere efforts are made to inculcate a social consciousness in students through a framework of response, experience, experimentation, instruction and inspiration. Creation of responsible citizens emphasises the role of community life that knits together the members of the college, the faculty, the students and the management in a unity of purpose which fosters and keeps alive among all members a sense of belonging and partnership.Students being the future of our country, it is imperative that they learn how to interact socially, face adverse and uncomfortable crisis situations and develop humanitarian values like sympathy, empathy and love for fellow human beings which are the core values of education.

The Context

The institution has always believed that the concern for the “other”, the overcoming of the self (individual, nation, class, race or creed) is the essence of morality. The floods of August 2018 wreaked extensive havoc all over Kerala and caused huge monetary and non-monetary losses. Sacred Heart College was also extremely affected and was immersed in nine feet of water for 3 to 4 days. The entire ground floor of the main academic building which housed the Principal’s and Bursar’s Office. Administrative Office, Reception area, Physics Department, classrooms and labs, Centre for Excellence, Chemistry labs, Computer Science Department, classrooms, labs, IQAC, the library and canteen block, the self-financing block etc were inundated in water for almost a week. Once the water receded it was a heart-rending sight to see the college with layers of soggy mud and all equipment and furniture in irretrievable condition. The initial and most daunting challenge was to clean and sanitise the college premises and salvage any expensive equipment, books, furniture, computers, chemicals and other liquids used in the Chemistry labs, equipment used for Physics and Chemistry practicals and physical fitness and sports equipment. It was at this juncture that the unity of purpose in facing adverse situations was exhibited. Students, staff and management joined hands together to undertake the herculean task of cleaning with help from the army, NGOs, local body and other educational institutions. This was at huge risk since water-borne diseases, poisonous reptiles, insects of all kinds and thick coating of slimy mud had to be dealt with.

The Practice

The Departments of Physics, Chemistry and Computer Science were three of the departments which were severely affected by the floods since their labs were on the ground floor. All the laboratories and staffrooms were submerged for a week causing permanent damage to costly equipment, chemicals and computers in these labs. In addition,the furniture, computers and other equipment in the Principal’s office, administrative office and Centre for Excellence were also subject to extensive destruction.Soon after the water receded, the students and staff cleaned the labs, the equipment, furniture, computers and the books which could be salvaged with the help of volunteers. Days had to be spent to clean the garbage and mounds of mud in the labs. Many of the equipment were cleaned carefully and dried in the sunlight with the assistance of students. After drying, the students and staff checked the equipment, repaired as many as possible and applied anti-rust protective coating. This remarkable effort on the part of the students could help in retrieving a lot of equipment including CROs, potentiometers, spectrometers, power supplies, microscopes, telescopes deflection magnetometers, IC trainer’s kit etc. Most of them are still in good condition. The Departments could conduct the undergraduate practicals with the repaired equipment and some new additions. The students, staff and the management were fully involved in bringing back the college to it’s former glory and invested their time, hard work and money with single-hearted devotion and total cooperation.

Evidence of success

• The college was able to start function normally by January 2019.
• The undergraduate practical sessions could be conducted.
• Staff and students learnt the basic lesson that in unity there is strength.
• The whole endeavour was an exercise in patience, cooperation, harmony, brotherhood, commitment, hard work, love and humanity.
• It was also a kind of learning by doing and interactive learning for students.
• The practice helped students and staff to deal with adverse situations, learn the modalities of minimal living, adjustments and mental and physical preparedness.
• The practice was a classic example of the role of community life which knits together the members of the college and thatthe essential marks of such a community life are an active orientation towards participatory concern, openness, commitment and building of character alongwith shaping of vision and outlook in the community a student shares and participates in.
• All these activities were in line with the motto of the college ‘Light shines in darkness’ and the mission and vision of the institution to serve humanity and imbibe the ethos of social sensitivity and spiritual sublimity among students.

Problems Encountered and Resources required

• Paucity of financial resources.
• Risk to health and lives of students and staff
• Necessity for constant monitoring.
• Mental stress and tension.
• Loss of working days and classes.
• Huge financial aid was necessary for cleaning operations itself with no assistance from external sources.
• The help of army, NGOs, local bodies and other institutions had to be sought because of the sheer enormity of the operation.

Notes

Some suggestions for future initiatives in this direction as deliberated by the IQAC.

• Educate students and staff to deal with adverse situations like natural calamities which are caused by climate changes which are here to stay.
• Arrange awareness classes, training programs etc to teach the college community to face any kind of natural or man-made disasters or emergency situations.
• To create an emergency fund for use during such calamities.
• To educate the local community to deal with such emergencies.
• To relocate the administrative offices, Computer Science Labs and Centre for Excellence to the first floor.
• To be extra vigilant and take necessary precautionswhen local authorities or the Government issues warnings of natural calamities.

1. Title of the Practice: Inclusive Teaching-Learning

Sacred Heart College believes that students should be provided a meaningful education in an optimum environment so that they can make their life dignified and successful. Attempts are made to ensure quality education without any barriers like ability, physical disability, language, culture, family background or economic/social status.

2. Objective

To adopt strategies that work best to advance equity, diversity, belonging and inclusion in the distinct teaching -learning contexts.

3. The Context

The college admits students from diverse economic, social, cultural, educational and locational backgrounds. Fostering a feeling of belongingness and the overriding need to value students’ backgrounds, identities and experiences is considered to be essential in creating a climate that can influence anything from student engagement in class to student motivation and persistence.The challenge before teachers in our institution is to create a space where students are both challenged and heard. All this is strongly connected to how much students learn. Choosing to teach inclusively has been ingrained into the teaching methodologies of teachers. No student should feel neglected or marginalised in a classroom. All kinds of students from weak and strong financial backgrounds, from diverse social classes, differently-abled and strikingly different educational and familial backgrounds are given equitable and transformative learning opportunities. During the COVID pandemic, the online learning challenges of students varied in type and extent. Students faced many obstacles in their home learning environment such as availability of smart phones, high internet cost and limited interaction/socialization between and among students. Some other challenges faced were anxiety, depression, poor internet service and unfavourable home learning environment. These problems were aggravated in the case of marginalised students from remote areas. The challenge before the institution was to make online learning more accessible and inclusive.

4. The Practice

The following practices are internalised in the institution :

1. Building teacher-student rapport

• Making it a point to learn students’ names
• Ice breaking sessions in the beginning of the academic year
• Getting to know about students by collecting bio-data at the beginning of the program
• Engaging students in activities outside class hours
• Online and phone chats, using social media for communication
• Sharing by teachers of their passions, interests and experiences with students
• Mentoring sessions
• Parent teacher interaction, both formally and informally.
• Going on field visits, excursions, trips, competitions, youth festivals with students
• Remedial coaching for slow learners
• Celebration of birthdays of faculty and students and festivals provides a congenial ambience in the campus
• Teachers describe their own fears and struggles in learning new material to break down barriers and demystify the learning process
• Motivational sharing by teachers in classroom spaces

2. Building student-student rapport

• Providing of opportunities for students to know and interact with each other through ice breaker sessions and encouraging them to work in pairs and groups
• Encouraging dialogue about learning experiences and facilitating discussions of best and worst class experience to establish a climate of learning
• Using narrative reflection to incorporate experiential knowledge and designing activities that allow students to draw on their diverse backgrounds and approaches to a course concept

3. Minimise discrimination and value individuals

• Treat each student as an individual by allowing them to self-identify themselves
• Supporting students’ unique abilities and experiences
• Caution exercised not to be overprotective or unduly strict towards any group of or individual students
• Treating all students in an even-handed manner
• Emphasising high standards with verbal assurances that teachers will support them and help them succeed

Addressing challenging classroom moments in the form of poor self-confidence, indifferent attitude, poor level of response and interaction, non-cooperative attitude and unwillingness to learn are some of the constraints faced by the teachers.

Several methods were followed during the pandemic to deal with the challenges of online learning and teaching:

• Distribution of smart phones to students who do not possess one
• Pre-recording of video lessons or lectures
• Humanising the learning process by making it more dynamic, interactive and interesting
• Continuously improving the quality of online classes
• Allowing students to ask questions and collect feedback
• Promoting collaborative learning
• Asking students to turn on their videos to increase their attention
• Regularly seek their real-time responses during online classes to keep them engaged
• Students who could not access online classes could access them on the college You Tube channel or on platforms like Google classroom
• The management took steps to build and improve digital learning platforms, provide stable internet connection, support students from poor socio-economic backgrounds who may not have digital devices and improve digital literacy among faculty and students

Evidence of Success

• Collection and analysis of feedback by the Principal and the IQAC has shown positive academic and non-academic outcomes
• Explicit articulation of learning goalsand objectives,transparency around performance expectations and criteria-based evaluationsystem has empowered students to share responsibility for their learning
• Personal care and tutorials have improved individual performance
• In the case of online learning, informal feedback collected from students that the methods employed have improved their online learning experience
• Modification of online teaching in accordance with feedback received has assisted online learning
• Online learning platforms were easy to use for the students
• At that point of time it encouraged students to take part in the learning process since the instruction mode shifted to self-paced learning

Problems encountered and Resources required

• Mental blocks of students towards certain courses
• Low self-esteem
• Dysfunctional families
• Indifferent attitude
• Work burden at home
• Alcoholic fathers
• Poverty of students
• Terminally ill parents/dependents
• Rural backgrounds
• Overly strict parents/families
• Limited personal freedom
• Limited facilities for learning at home
• Adapting to online learning for both faculty and students
• Problems of access to internet
• Lack of interaction reflecting on students’ personalities and progress
• Lack of insufficient tools for student assessment
• Lack of motivation to attend classes
• Faculty could not identify individual differences quickly
• Faculty found online class preparation more tedious

Notes

Some of the problems encountered were uncontrollable and external to the institution. However some factors were controllable and internal to the institution. Attempts to address all these issues were made within the framework of the college.

• More financial resources were needed
• More awareness programs for parents
• More programs to raise self-esteem and reduce indifference