digitalLEARNING Weekly Newsletter Archive 2014
Innovation for the human safety
The students of Manav Rachna College of Engineering bagged the first, second and third position at the national round of Microsoft Imagine Cup. The students won in the innovation category. They created products like smart skull which is an automatic system to alert the relatives of the accident victim and emergency services. Smart skull sends out signals to emergency centres.
Another project which bagged the award was MovAid, which according to the team is the world’s first personalized solution to measure and monitor the recovery of an individual after orthopedic trauma rehabilitation, surgery, injury or joint replacement. Project Respiron has a device and smartphone application for an out of range alarm, medication reminder, puff control and panic button.The puff counter in the app gives and automatic update on the number of puffs left in the medicine cartridge and also gives an alert to the user over the need of replacement.
Manav Rachna Educational Institutions (MREI) is now teaming up with the industries and also with other institutions to orient the curricula to the market.It now offers BTech in telecom informatics in association with IBM and BTech in computer science and engineering with specialisation in cloud computing.
Embedding training programme in NCWEB
Though the University of Delhi (DU) has shifted to the four year undergraduate programme (FYUP), its Non-Collegiate Women’s Education Board (NCWEB) will continue with the three year degree. But the board will be introducing training and internship programme in the existing degree.
Anju Gupta, director, NCWEB, stated that they have no plans to change three year annual mode to the four year undergraduate programme this year. But in the current year, the students who will enroll in the institute can look forward to training and internship programmes, which will be conducted for the first time.
The board will collaborate with Delhi University Community Radio to give students technical training for four weeks. The training will include computer skills, MS Office etc. The purpose is to give students technical training and hands on experience which is essential today.
NCWEB caters to female students in Delhi and runs BA and BCom programmes through 13 DU colleges. It has about 14,000 seats. It also gives financial aid to 700 students and book bank facilities to 500 students.
Introducing Bachelor in Music in Mumbai University
The University of Mumbai has come up to offer three years bachelor degree in music (B Mus), to train students to become all round musicians.
The course requires students to pass seven theory and six practical papers. There will be three specialization papers on Hindustani classical vocal music, Hindustani classical instrumental- percussion (table), and Hindustani classical instrumental – non-percussion (sitar). The enrollee has to choose any one of the three specializations offered.
Students will have to appear three theory papers and two practical papers as well as work on two units of continual internal assessment projects in the first year. In the second and third year students have to take three theory and three practical papers in addition to two units continual internal assessments.
The main aim of the course is to equip students with knowledge in subjects like basic principles of music, communication skills, history of music, applied theory of music etc. At the completion of every semester, students have to manage a concert performance and pass a viva voce.
Jamia Milia Islamia University gets geologist Ahmad as new vice-chancellor
Jamia Milia Islamia University gets a new vice chancellor. Noted geologist Talat Ahmad takes over the charge as stated by an official statement on 30 April.
The statement also says that the president of India in his capacity as the visitor of the university has appointed Prof. Talat Ahmad as the VC of the University.
He is currently the vice chancellor of University of Kashmir and will replace Najeeb Jung who quit his post after he was appointed Delhi’s Lt governor.
Ahmad is an earth scientist and has served at the Department of Geology of the University of Delhi from 2003-2011.
IIT-Guwahati among top 100 young varsities
The IIT Guwahati is the only Indian entry which has made it to the top 100 list of world’s dynamic young varsities.
The Times Higher Education 100 Under 50 universities ranking which will be announced on May 1. The evaluation of the world’s top 100 universities under 50 puts India’s lone entry IIT Guwahati at 87th position.
The ranking oversee the future by examining a new breed of global universities that have managed to join the world’s elite in a matter of decades rather than centuries, with the potential to become the next generation’s Harvard or Oxford.
India which was the only BRIC nation which did not had a single university in the world top 100 table, recently has come in the Times Higher Education rankings. While mainland China had two, both in the top 50 and Russia and Brazil had one each. It is the first time that India joined the top 100 Under 50.
The 100 Under 50 is designed to be dynamic and forward looking to give a platform to the universities founded in 1964 or later.
Medical Values and Ethics to be a new subject in Medical Colleges
At the third conclave of vice chancellors of health universities of India, organized by Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) the highly debated matter in the meeting was to introduce a subject on Medical Ethics as a subject for MBBS students.
This led to turning the code of ethics and professionalism values to a proper subject, which shall also be evaluated through an exam.
To get approval on this action, Association of Health Universities of India are soon to appeal to the Medical Council of India (MCI) in written, with a proposal to make professionalism and a code of ethics as part of the MBBS course. They also want that a proper examination pattern should be conducted along with related assessments.
Though majority of Medical universities impart lectures on ethics, but very little is interpreted in actually among students. Hence, this new course on medical values and ethics is soon to be introduced and incorporated in the syllabus across Indian medical colleges.
Efforts to make agri education more challenging
Initiatives are being taken by the vice chancellor K Ramasamy to revamp the education process of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University by keeping the farmers in the forefront.
The university would first look into changing the curriculum on par with the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, and get the students equipped and exposed to the global competitions.
Ramaswamy stated that, he wants to make agriculture education more challenging and competitive from the current year to improve the quality of education with the focus to retain and improve position in ranking of institutes across the country.
He also added that, students have the option of studying at any agricultural college any time during the programme, to further foster collaboration in agricultural education research and outreach programme with National and International Institutes
The vice chancellor said that TNAU had submitted a proposal to the state government to start agri polytechnics in each district so that students after studying technology can become entrepreneurs and help the farmers.
Delhi Govt should increase seats to nursery admissions: says SC
The Supreme Court took over the matter in its hands to resolve the issues related to Nursery admissions. On 28 April, the SC raised question on the sudden notification that has been introduced in the rules of Nursery admission, which might augment conflicts, sine the admission process is not fully complete now.
Besides, the bench headed by justice H L Dattu, asked Delhi government to add five to six more seats in all Nursery schools in this admission season to protect the interest of the children by creating a room for the kids who fall in inter-state transfer cases who had gone ignored after the inter-state points category was scrapped. The court made it clear that the expansion of the seats will be a measure taken only for this year admission procedure to not make the parents arrived from different cities to suffer.
According to the data of DoE, eight percent of the seats were allotted to transfer children but 2209 cases were fake when inspected on it. Hence, the points allotted to the inter-state category were struck off to stop the deceitful practice.
In the 100 point nursery admission guidelines, inter-state transfer category students were initially provided with five additional points so that there can be a balance between the transfer students and the domicile students and could compete for 30.000 seats. After 27 February they were dispossessed with no seat and were left to compete again with 2.5 lakh students for some 2,000 vacant seats.
So the Apex court has to take a decision on it.
