A two day workshop on ‘Benchmarking – Enhancing Education Practices of Institutional Excellence’, organized by the IQAC of Carmel College on the 4 th and 5 th of April 2018 for the teaching faculty and administrative staff.
The resource person for the program was Dr. Senthil Kumaran, Chairperson of Learners Confluence, Bangalore.
On the first day Mr. Kumaran met with the Management and IQAC team, along with a few senior faculties, to deliberate on the various challenges faced by the institution and narrow down institute specific parameters towards qualitative benchmarks.
At the onset Mr. Kumaran identified the required role of the IQAC in highlighting the attributes of higher education- Subject Specific Expertise, Functional Skills and Behavioral Skills. He highlighted on the need to follow the 4A+2I=C formula where the 4A’s stood for Awareness, Acceptance, Attitude and Assessment, the 2 I’s stood for Initiatives and Impact and C for change.
He also made us aware of the difference between out-put and out -come. The focus thus was on how to create benchmarks so that Carmel College’s education is outcome based education. He showed us how to put our processes in scientific and systematic way as the change should be scientific and systematic. and Bench marks performance related.
Citing many examples he helped the IQAC narrow down to the following performance parameters
- Student
- Staff
- non-financial and financial
- collaborations with other local communities
- linkages
- data analysis
- community patenting
He stressed that as an institution we needed to keep in mind our geographical location and study the various advantages and disadvantages. This would help us to size our challenges. It was important to know our stake holders profile and sync it with the institution vision/ mission and values
On the 5 th Dr. Senthil Kumaran interacted with the teaching and administrative staff. He gave a brief detail about benchmarking. He showed us templates of various institutions and went on to look at specifics pertaining to our college like
- Redefining mentorship program
- Relooking at the vision and aligning the department values with the college values.
- Having a systematic Placement process
- Remedial teaching
- Public relations where he suggested an advocacy committee.
- Security procedure
He spoke of the 5W + 1H strategy to implement the goals of each department. W stands for What, Why, Who, Where, When and H for How. In the concluding session he made each department identify their 3 areas of strength and 3 areas where they need to improve.
