Leverage Experiential Learning for Quality in Higher Education

Watching movie “Transformers” with my 9 yr old son amazed me to find his knowledge about the historical context of characters in the movie, their technical details to very finer level. This level of knowledge and understanding was similar to my niece aged 7 years, about the Barbie doll and both these phenomenon were reminiscent of my school friend, who barely recollected the title of the poetry in Hindi literature class but had awesome accuracy in reciting each and every dialogue from film Sholay along with details on tone and sequence. All these phenomenon have a common thread;

• ·Each represents a very high degree of retention of knowledge due to an emotional engagement with the subject.
• Learning on the subject either thru discussions with friends or deep belief in the subject, and 
• The learning was not facilitated thru any conventional method like lectures or reading.

Around 1999, I attended a leadership development program which leveraged the experiential learning method by including team based games to create experiences. I had my eureka moment when I learnt few essential leadership aspects at amazing speed and without any external instructions or aid and incidentally these were same aspects that I read books, attended lectures and watched others performing for years, however couldn’t learn as much, as on that day and my eureka moment was to experience the power of experiential learning.

It is important to mention that experiential learning method makes learning memorable - in comparison to traditional education the retention rates associated with Experiential Learning are considerably high. The average retention rates for experiential learning solutions are high, in the 80-90% area.

These statistics are proven by third party research shown in this learning pyramid - a well known piece of research from the National Training Laboratory in Bethel, Maine.

Traditional learning tends to encompass the top 2 elements of the pyramid - lecture and reading - and as mentioned earlier, the longer-term retention rates of traditional learning (typically lecture and reading based) fall into the 5-10% retention category.

Lastly I like to mention that theories relating to the success of experiential learning are not new, in 1984 a professor of learning David Kolb published a ground breaking book called ‘Experiential Learning - experience as the source of learning and development’ and highlighted that adults learn best through discovery and experience.

I have been advocating and practicing experiential learning on many occasions and situations, be it for bringing about rapid cultural change within organization, rapid adoption of new technology or more recently to facilitate learning for students or managers within organizations on ERP and continue to remain impressed with the outcomes of the experiential learning method. In view of growing concern on the quality of talent produced by education system in India, I am keen to initiate experiential method within higher education layer intending to produce authentic professionals having deeper understanding of the subject.

by Shreekant W Shiralkar who is teaching ERP & Business Intelligence at Management Institutes in India and has authored books on technology and served global organizations at leadership positions. He can be contacted on S_Shiralkar@yahoo.com

Industry Relevant Education ~ Strategic lever for economic growth

Let me draw my impressions on the larger context, before delving into the specific observations on how industry relevant education is critical to our economy. With emergence of the Knowledge Economy, developed world focused on more intelligent work, monotonous and near mechanical work got outsourced to the third world aka developing economies, creating entirely a new set of opportunity. India hitherto burdened with a large and younger population, compelled to work on low remunerations as necessity and equipped with inheritance of basic language skill on English, gained hugely from this opportunity and catapulted into the league of fastest growing economies.  In the process, downstream of this phenomenon, education became an attractive business proposition and next few years witnessed explosive growth of technical and management Institutes across the country. Pl. refer details in the graph below, based on the data from Ministry of Human Resource Development aka MHRD and specifically note the trajectory post 1990.

Recent trends have signaled caution! Be it the migration of outsourcing work to other countries or the rise in lack of appropriate employment for youth, graduating from Technical & Management Institutes running “nearly static” curriculum  further, it is established, that mere knowledge of English isn't a competitive advantage anymore as other countries like China, Philippines et al have made huge progress on language skills. Let me now share the specific observation derived from my personal engagement with the education system for past few years, I observed a widening gap between the demand for skills by the industry and its supply from our education system as an employer. I discovered another deficiency, when my books on Business Intelligence solution were adopted as course-ware in US universities, evidencing synchronization between the education system there with industry. Majority of colleges and universities in India do not have a foundation course on ERP, adaptation of my books on Business Intelligence can therefore be out of context and consideration. Incidentally, I have come across few progressive institutes in India who showcase their commitment through a design of their curriculum on a “living” mode that is based on inputs from Industry and education system in the developed economies. Quantity of those progressive institutes is however extremely insignificant and therefore cannot bridge the widening gap to capitalize on unmet demands from Industry. Most institutes across India continue to run their business of education, possibly unaware, and certainly ignorant of “not so meaningful” contribution to the economy and society in general. I assume that policy makers and people responsible in the government may be aware about this aspect or deficiency; they however could be engaged on attending to other priorities like primary education, Inclusive Education or implementation of Rajbhasha than the alignment and integration of the higher education with the industry.

In my limited comprehension of the situation I express an urgent need for change in the education system almost in “here & now” mode. The education system needs to develop agility for inculcating industry relevance in their course design as a regular process rather than a reactive one.

I am aware that MHRD and other stake holders have their means and methods for restructuring academic programme which are established and implementable ones, I venture to make following suggestions purely intended to trigger better and brighter ideas ;

• Regulatory agencies like NAAC could introduce specific and quantifiable parameters for industry relevance in the process of grading, assessment and accreditation.
• Educational institutes should leverage their association with Industry forums, for example, the Computer Society of India can provide inputs for changes to the curriculum for Institutes engaged on Higher Education for Information Technology.
• Extending the framework of prevailing campus placement evolve and prospect changes to the course contents in addition to the placement activity.
• Educational Institutes should engage their ex-students and alumni to provide inputs for new courses or changes to existing courses in addition to their other interests in their alma mater.

I firmly believe that I have a limited understanding of the situation and therefore my suggestions may not serve direct gains they however would complement the established and actionable ideas and serve a larger objective of recognizing education as a critical lever for economic growth and that educational institutes can make meaningful contribution to the growth of our economy and help us retain, or even better, gain leadership and competitive position in today’s economic order.

by Shreekant W Shiralkar who is teaching ERP & Business Intelligence at Management Institutes in India and is author of books on technology and served global organizations at leadership positions. He can be contacted on S_Shiralkar@yahoo.com. The article has taken data from MHRD Report 2010-11 - page 52 and prompted by following statements;  “the success of the Indian economy has been based squarely on our participation in the global information economies, but this participation will falter without an enhanced role by our colleges and universities” (Minister of HRD 2007) “…in order to ensure that India does not throw away its advantage in BPO/KPO, it is imperative that it continues to produce a critical mass of highly skilled manpower at an accelerated pace.” (Sanat Kaul ICRIER 2006) “India’s economic future is dependent on the extent to which our universities have the determination to reform themselves” ( VC University of Delhi 2007)