The Ministry of Human Resources Development conceived this idea soon after the Modi government took over. The idea was to invite faculty from abroad to teach courses for 2-3 weeks in India. The MHRD offered them total honorarium of USD 12,000 that included air travel. The program was named as Global Initiative of Academic Network (GIAN). The implementing agency was IIT Khargpur JNU, of course, decided to take up the offer and soon invited applications for GIAN course. Under this initiative I and my colleague conducted two GIAN courses. And here are some of my thoughts:
1. The success of the initiative really depends on the guest faculty. If the guest faculty puts in the effort and time to prepare a good course and is an excellent teacher, the program offers great value. We had an excellent guest faculty and, indeed, I learned a lot from her about teaching. She made the students read papers, discuss them, and interspersed her lectures with discussion points, puzzles, and in general, made it an interactive session which the students valued. I was little apprehensive whether the students would read the papers but they did. And not only that, some of them offered to write a term paper to get extra credit. This is big because motivating the students is something many of us are not good at.
However, if the guest faculty does not engage the students, the course becomes boring and the students end up getting a certificate without gaining any knowledge.
2. The GIAN program is supposed to offer courses that are not offered at present in colleges and Universities/or courses that add value to the existing courses. The problem is then of integrating these courses into the existing course structure and ensuring that the students (undergraduate and post-graduate) get credit for it. This usually means that the GIAN course has to be approved by the faculty and the board of studies. This is a long process and many times we are unable to do it because the program is of short duration and evaluation is problematic. However, this is an issue that each College/University has to solve on their own.
3. The Indian consulates are clueless about the program. The GIAN program states that the guest faculty need to get a business visa but the paper work required for a business visa does not match with the papers provided to the guest faculty. Further, each consulate seems to be operating on an independent and autonomous mode. So they have different requirements for the same visa (I observed the same thing with student visa when I was the foreign student advisor) and the guest faculty and the host faculty scramble around trying to fulfill the requirements.
4. Accommodation and food- In JNU, our guest house is in shambles and generally people are advised not to stay there. This then brings up the problem of where do we house the faculty? If we book a hotel, then the payment comes out of the honorarium given to the guest faculty. By itself, it is not a bad idea but it is not made clear to the guest faculty at the time of applying.
5.The GIAN program itself has nothing for the host faculty. Fortunately, in JNU, the program coordinators made sure that the host faculty also get a token honorarium.
I am not sure if GIAN is evaluating the courses or evaluating the program itself to make it more effective in its deliverables. In its present format, as we rolled out the program, the problems became visible and needs to be fixed.
But I will reiterate: Given an excellent guest faculty, the program offers tremendous scope as it can be taken by anyone. We had an undergraduate student and a faculty from a Delhi college this time taking the course. Each one benefited in their own way.
1. The success of the initiative really depends on the guest faculty. If the guest faculty puts in the effort and time to prepare a good course and is an excellent teacher, the program offers great value. We had an excellent guest faculty and, indeed, I learned a lot from her about teaching. She made the students read papers, discuss them, and interspersed her lectures with discussion points, puzzles, and in general, made it an interactive session which the students valued. I was little apprehensive whether the students would read the papers but they did. And not only that, some of them offered to write a term paper to get extra credit. This is big because motivating the students is something many of us are not good at.
However, if the guest faculty does not engage the students, the course becomes boring and the students end up getting a certificate without gaining any knowledge.
2. The GIAN program is supposed to offer courses that are not offered at present in colleges and Universities/or courses that add value to the existing courses. The problem is then of integrating these courses into the existing course structure and ensuring that the students (undergraduate and post-graduate) get credit for it. This usually means that the GIAN course has to be approved by the faculty and the board of studies. This is a long process and many times we are unable to do it because the program is of short duration and evaluation is problematic. However, this is an issue that each College/University has to solve on their own.
3. The Indian consulates are clueless about the program. The GIAN program states that the guest faculty need to get a business visa but the paper work required for a business visa does not match with the papers provided to the guest faculty. Further, each consulate seems to be operating on an independent and autonomous mode. So they have different requirements for the same visa (I observed the same thing with student visa when I was the foreign student advisor) and the guest faculty and the host faculty scramble around trying to fulfill the requirements.
4. Accommodation and food- In JNU, our guest house is in shambles and generally people are advised not to stay there. This then brings up the problem of where do we house the faculty? If we book a hotel, then the payment comes out of the honorarium given to the guest faculty. By itself, it is not a bad idea but it is not made clear to the guest faculty at the time of applying.
5.The GIAN program itself has nothing for the host faculty. Fortunately, in JNU, the program coordinators made sure that the host faculty also get a token honorarium.
I am not sure if GIAN is evaluating the courses or evaluating the program itself to make it more effective in its deliverables. In its present format, as we rolled out the program, the problems became visible and needs to be fixed.
But I will reiterate: Given an excellent guest faculty, the program offers tremendous scope as it can be taken by anyone. We had an undergraduate student and a faculty from a Delhi college this time taking the course. Each one benefited in their own way.
