Best Practices

BEST PRACTICE NO.1:

Name of the Practice: “Aadishakti”-Women Empowerment

Need Analysis: Education is one of the most important tools of empowering women with knowledge, skills and self-reliance. It helps women in self-dependence, self-confidence and more capability. KLE Society’s Science and Commerce college strives for Gender Equity and sensitivity to eliminate discriminatory practices that are barriers to full participation for either gender. The Women Development Cell  of the college is always having a major role in creating gender neutral, and to counsel girls for peer pressure impact on the adolescents.

Objectives of the Practice: The college believes to champion the cause of women’s emancipation for the benefit of society with the following goals:

• • To empower women through education and strengthen them with social values
  • To promote gender equity and gender sensitization
  • To create awareness regarding health and hygiene
  • To make students aware of human rights
  • To provide harmonious atmosphere to female employees and female students
  • To create a conducive atmosphere through co-education

Context and Concerns under which this Practice was implemented:

Due to lack of education, women in Indian patriarchal society have been exploited by their own relatives thereby victimizing them in various aspects. Social acceptability of gender inequality against women is a direct effect of social conviction in the superiority of the male gender over the female. The objective of women empowerment initiatives is to inculcate among students gender sensitivity and moral responsibility for each citizen without any gender bias. In order to empower and strengthen women, they should be educated and counseled. The agenda of our institution is to impart education in all communities preferably girls students. To achieve these objectives the college has strengthened the Women development  cell.

The practice:
It is often said- “Empowering a woman empowers the next generation”. In this context, the college practices the following measures for empowering women:

 
A. Facilities for women:

• Safety and security: Appointment of Male and Female guards and construction of guard room at the entrance and exit gate.
• Uniform: Provision ofUniform for students.
• Identity cards: Identity cards are provided to thestudents, teaching and non-teaching staff to prevent the entry of outsiders into the college premises.
• CCTV (Close Circuit Television): CCTV cameras are installed at various places in the college premises including Canteen area and playground.
• Counseling: The female students are counseled from time to time by their mentors. The institution promotes the female students to participate in all the curricular and extracurricular activities, NSS, inter-collegiate competitions, etc.
• Common Room: There is a common room for girls.
• Sanitary pad vending machine: Sanitary pads vending machine and an ‘Eco-friendly Sanitary Napkin Incinerator’ has been installed  to achieve good menstrual hygiene practices among females and disposal of bio-wastes.
• Provision of Leave:Maternity leave is provided to female employees when needed.

B. Women Development Cell:KLE Society’s Science and Commerce College has duly constituted Women Development Cell headed by a female faculty. Girl students would interact with WDC members in all respects. Skill development training programs have been conducted by WDC to provide skills to improve employability, boost confidence, improve financial stability thereby achieving economic and social independence.

C. Seminars:
For promotion of gender equity, the institution conducts various seminars as awareness programme on Personality development and Woman Hygiene, self defence activity, SwasthaBalak-BalikaSpardha& Webinar on Self Development and Emotional balance, Music Therapy to Boost Mental Health, Webinar on Cyber Crime and Safety on National Girl Child Day.

D. Workshops: The college has conducted several workshops for WarliPainting , Cyber Safety & Self-Defense Workshop, Cake & Chocolate making workshop, Candle making Workshop.

Result of success:

• Enhanced participation of female students in class wise seminars and extra –curricular activities.
• Increase in number of girls’ participation in Certificate Courses.
• Amongst the 18 toppers, 10 girl students were awarded scholarships of Rs. 50000/-.
• Large number of female teaching staff, non-teaching staff and girl students in the institution.

Teaching Staff

Non-Teaching Staff

Students

Problems encountered:
No problem is encountered for this noble practice.

Endnote: Our institution promotes women empowerment during the course of teaching, learning and evaluation. Through various activities girls are encouraged to participate in education tours, cultural events, sport events, NSS related events, etc.

BEST PRACTICE NO.2:

Name of the Practice: Digitisation of the College Functioning

Need Analysis: 

Day-to-day College administration is becoming challenging partly due to diversification of educational landscape, and partly because of Data pool demanded by various controlling bodies in different permutations and combinations. A robust mechanism to manage the Data in tune with the modern methods was therefore needed. The management of the KLE, therefore decided to move on with the time and thus, it gave a big push to first introduce and then internalise the Digitization of day-to-day college functioning. The COVID -19 pandemic additionally made it inevitable.

Objectives of the Practice:

The college authority primarily started with certain objectives in implementing Digitization.

Main Objectives were as follows:

1. To move to digitisation and to be in tune with current trends.
2. To increase the speed of delivery of services.
3. To make the stakeholders compatible with time and further their functioning convenient and comfortable.
4. To reduce paper work and contribute to environmental sustainability.
5. To make data processes fast, storage safe and transmission convenient.
6. To make the services accessible from anywhere and anytime.
7. To improve the pace of decision making and to lower the cost of operation.

Context and Concerns under which this Practice was implemented:

Digitization is a process that converts the mode of our activity from physical to digital with the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This change was, therefore, not simple as it appears. There were several contexts and concerns which the College administration had to negotiate before and during the implementation of this process.  The first was off-course the cost factor. Digital Infrastructure required for digitization came at a very high premium. Thankfully, the Management of the College, the KLE did not hesitate to provide everything required for the same. The second concern was related to digital literacy. The mind-set of the stakeholders and a general inertia to any change became additional hurdles in this process. Cost of connectivity (internet) and hardware required (PC/Laptop or Mobile device) for end-users namely students were additional issues to be addressed.  Fortunately, the teaching and non-teaching staff took extra efforts and pains to sensitise and educate the students and the parents, and thus gradually, its percolation became easy.

The practice:

Introducing Digitization in the College was started way back in 2016-17 when the entire admission process was made online. Thereafter, even the Exam module was made functional. The Pandemic period of the 2020s in this case became a blessing in disguise. The Pandemic situation brought in rapid changes to go for digitisation. Admissions, Online payment process, Lectures on zoom, Google meet and other platforms, various user friendly Apps, Evaluation on testmoz or similar platforms helped everyone to overcome all barriers. Digitization has literally helped everyone to overcome distance as physical barrier, cost as a financial barrier, and social distancing as a medical need. We all at the College became so accustomed that subsequently we even conducted cultural events through digital platforms. Conferences and Seminars were also further conducted in the same format. Recently, the College has also shifted to a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)system, which has accelerated the process of Digitization in functioning.

Result of success:

As mentioned above, in the Post-pandemic period, digitisation continued right from admission up to results including payment of fees filling up the examination forms, introduction of ERP for admission to exam results. In a way, now, the entire life cycle of the student is digitised. Students now can access the information they want from the college through MasterSoftCloud App, which is integrated into the ERP system of the College. Students can now track their progression. In order to make this happen, the College ensured infrastructural enhancement in the form of smart boards, projectors, laptops, PCs, and computer labs. Etc. The administrative office, Exam Cell have been fully computerized andequipped with scanners, printers, internet facilities and necessary softwares. ManyClassrooms, the Conference room and the Auditorium/Seminar rooms are ICT-enabled, withprojectors and screens and sound system. Campus-wide surveillance has been ensuredthrough the installation and maintenance of CCTV cameras at all strategic locations.

The Management has also ensured digitisation in yet another form by introducing ‘Logsafe’, an app used to monitor the functioning of the College from their very own head office located at Belgaum in Karnataka.

Digitization has also changed the flow of knowledge and information. Dissemination of information has now shifted from library to e-Library, electronics laboratories, from books to kindle, and from collection of newspaper clippings to collections of screenshots and YouTube video library.

Target group and Benchmarking:

Target group for this scheme was all stakeholders- Teachers, Students, Parents, Non-Teaching Staff, etc. We can see that almost every stakeholder has assimilated just near to perfect acceptance level of this digitization process. As a result we have achieved certain benchmarks in Digitization level. Some of our processes like admission, exam, ERP, attendance, Office accounts have reached 100% digitization. Teachers, particularly in Accounts and Mathematics, used digital methods to assign problems and sums for studentsto answer in class.Teachershave found this practice to be time saving.  Use of ICT tools in the Teaching-Learning process has therefore increased from 20 % to 100%now.

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Problems encountered:

No change is smooth and flawless. But these hurdles and errors lay the path for future success. Digitization process in the college did face some challenges. Some major issues were related to resource gap, digital divide and digital literacy. Digital divide was resolved with the provision of free Wi-fi in the campus that made the connectivity free and thus digitization affordable to students. Perseverance of teachers helped to overcome the issue of digital literacy among students and parents. Today, digitization has now become an integral part of College Administration.

Endnote:

Based on our experience, we would like to provide following guidelines to those who wish to implement similar practice in their institution.

1. It is advisable to start with digital literacy first.
2. Train Human resources adequate and well in advance.
3. All verticals of College functioning, like admission-Attendance-Exams, are integrated, it is advisable to go for all out digitization of the institution at once, instead of phase wise.
4. Maximise the use of open learning resources.
5. Exploit the various Govt. schemes like free laptops to students, etc.
6. Upgrade Software and Hardware regularly.
7. Make campus with free Wi-Fi.
8. Ensure functional AMCs
9. Be prepared for initial heavy investment and good dividend over a period of time.