Myth of Faculty Development Programs

Now a days, all educational institutes are carrying out faculty development programmes by inviting many experts from industries, IITs and other professional bodies specially formed for such services.

Due to tremendous growth of  various sectors of knowledge and fast dissemination of information about research and developments occurring over the entire world, very few can remain active in the actual development or research. They rightfully choose to share their knowledge with college faculty which is primarily engaged and too busy in academic work.

I myself, have conducted many seminars and training programs on Environment, Green Technology and Web Design under student and faculty development schemes, Though such programs were useful to students,  I found that they do not yield desired results for faculty due to various reasons.

1. Faculty members are generally well educated and it becomes just a repetition of what they know already.

2. Speakers try to give overview information rather than in depth study with critical personal input as the time allocated is too short and they do not know background of faculty expertise.

3. Not everybody is interested in the topic and it becomes just past time get together function.

4. The faculty who is keen to study that topic does not get what he is lacking in.

After experience and feedback, I have come to conclusion that real faculty development can be done if following measures are taken

1. Faculty expert interaction should be  one to one basis and over a long period of association.

2. Each faculty has to choose the topic for advancement and expert can be identified who will be able to give guidance.

3. There should be definite objective of training like changed syllabus requirement, research or development need or consultation and revenue generation opportunities. Thus the outcome should be measurable.

4. The management of the institute should be able to provide resources and flexibility in teaching load to pursue advancement.

5. Expert providing organisation should get remuneration and faculty doing development must be rewarded by cash or kind ( Certification, promotion etc) .

6. The faculty development program should be beneficial to institute as regards student training and research projects or for serving the needs of society and business.

Such programs create interest about the topic and give publicity to institute, but add very little in permanent change in work culture of faculty. Long term association of senior retired experts and faculty having resource of young energetic students can yield good combination for stable and sustainable faculty development and contribution to research and development by institute.

The industries and businesses will be happy and willing to enter in such collaborations with institute with equal financial inputs. This will help institute to become financially self supported and would not have to worry about student admissions..

In particular my Dnyandeep Infotech Company will be ready to have such collaboration with joint working and responsibility in IT and Green Technology sectors with educational institutes.