How Accreditation stimulates and appreciates the Quality and Excellence in Higher Education

  In today’s globalised world, quality higher education is required to foster creativity, talent, innovation and research attitude in youth but under present dynamic situations, it is critical to guarantee that the educational institute accomplishes the learning outcomes and education meets the minimum criteria. Accreditation, a significant quality assurance instrument, is used to evaluate the national higher education system. Accreditation is regarded as a quality seal that certifies that an accredited institute or programme meets certain criteria. It serves two major purposes: quality assurance and quality improvement. Quality assurance is the process of determining a minimum acceptable standard of quality and performance in the public interest. Quality improvement is the process of providing a service that is designed to improve institutions and programmes through an external review process.

Quality and Excellence in Higher Education

Various people have different perspectives on quality. Nonetheless, everyone understands what “quality” means. The degree of satisfaction expressed by the consumer receiving the service can be used to rate the service’s quality. The definition of quality in the dictionary is “the degree of excellence.” It indicates that a product, organisation, or institution must have some key criteria, qualities, or distinguishing factor that provides satisfaction to the people who use the service. It has to do with people’s feelings of satisfaction and perceptions.

In different contexts, excellence in higher education can mean different things. It can be characterised as demonstrating an institution’s position and academic reputation from the standpoint of students. This, however, is contingent on the experiences of students and the purposes of the institutions. Accreditors have frequently used the phrase “excellence.” to determine the level of quality processes and services provided by institutions in order to ensure the satisfaction of stakeholders. Many accrediting authorities have described quality and excellence as a measurable parameter that include a mix of skills, knowledge, experience. as well as continuous improvement in outputs.

Need of Accreditation in Higher Education

Several events have occurred recently that have altered the perception of quality assurance standards in higher education. These include:

Growth and Development of Higher Education

The broadening of the foundations of elementary and secondary education has emerged from national initiatives to ensure education for all. As a result, demand for and availability of higher education has risen dramatically in recent decades. The fact that higher education is a visible component of society and contributes to national growth and well-being is now universally acknowledged by governments all over the world. Many institutions had to examine and vary not only their course offerings, but also many areas of their internal reorganisation and teaching-learning process as a result of the increased amount of activity and diversity of their student body. To ensure institutional responsibility to funding agencies and other stakeholders, the extent to which relevant institutional efforts adequately respond to changing societal and economic requirements must be examined.

Influence of Technology

Changes in study requirements, teaching and learning arrangements, and areas such as research organisation and university administrative practise have all been influenced by major advancements in information technology. There is a greater emphasis on multi-media tactics for boosting teaching and learning, which necessitates a rethinking of traditional quality assurance structures.

Alternative sources for Higher Education

The introduction of non-traditional higher education providers, such as open and virtual universities, private schools’ growth, multi-campus institutions’ growth, and franchising, has fractured the higher education market. As a result, quality assurance techniques that have shown to be effective for a system of essentially national, government-funded self-accrediting traditional and distant education institutions must be revisited.

Competitiveness on the global avenue

Most higher education institutions have proven to be quite effective and entrepreneurial in attracting students from both within and outside of their own country. Because there is a clear policy encouraging Indian students to pursue higher education overseas, it has become a significant contributor to India’s external accounts through fees paid by international students and the selling and promotion of services. Many other countries’ universities are likewise interested in enrolling students and delivering services. In a way, educational services are both imported and exported. India today finds itself in an international setting where the quality of tertiary education and research will determine its success.

Keeping all such parameters in consideration, it is believed that India would benefit from establishing a national system of external certification. The policies, attitudes, behaviours, and procedures required to ensure that quality is maintained and improved are referred to as Quality assurance. Accreditation is the process of determining whether or not a certain institution is eligible for a qualifying certificate. The status may have repercussions for the institution (e.g., permission to operate), its students (e.g., grant eligibility), and/or its graduates (e.g., qualifications for specific jobs).

Current Quality Assurance Practices in Higher Education

For the establishment and operationalization of higher education institutions, government organisations such as the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) have developed regulations and recommendations. These bodies’ information can be utilised to make quality improvement and assurance decisions based on the data they collect and analyse. The credentials framework outlines the types of awards available in higher education, and apex authorities keep track of recognised programmes and providers.

Universities have internal mechanisms for evaluating new course ideas and promoting staff development, and most have established relationships with other universities to support staff exchanges, research collaboration, and course delivery benchmarking. A variety of mechanisms are in place for assessing and improving teaching, as well as reporting and scrutinising staff publishing and research records. The majority of promotion criteria centre on teaching excellence, research engagement, and community service initiatives.

For a variety of reasons, it has been standard practise to have external assessors conduct programme reviews in order to evaluate the quality of academic activities with that of other leading universities. External reviewers developed a quality assurance mechanism that relies on one or a combination of methodologies, the most important of which are self-studies or self-evaluation, peer review by expert panels, use of relevant statistical information and performance indicators, and service to key groups such as students, graduates, and employers.

Role of iCloudEMS to ensure quality and evaluating arrangements for the effective implementation of strategies for accomplishing specified goals in Higher Education Institutes.

With our innovative products and services, we at iCloudEMS are continually assisting Higher Education Institutes in improving their quality standards. Our Accreditation management system is a cloud-based programme with SIS and other modules that is designed for all sorts of technical and nontechnical Higher Education Institutes and delivers results in compliance with the Washington Accord, LIMA Accord, and Bologna Process.

• Accreditation bodies often demand and analyse data over a couple of years, but manually organizing and formatting such a vast volume of data is a time-consuming operation prone to redundancy and missing data. Our cloud-based technology makes data management and rule-compliant formatting a breeze.

• Accreditation journey starts with self-analysis reports formation only. Our system can generate a range of self-assessment and analysis reports for your institution, such as SER/SAR/AQAR/IQAC/AACSB, with just a few clicks.

• Uploading data to accreditation portals is a pre-requisite prior to a peer team’s visit; our unique features make this process easier, including the possibility to use prefilled data on the portal during the multi-year data collection process.

• There are pre-defined questionnaires in line with different criteria of accreditation bodies, and the answers are requested to be entered through responses to such pre-set questions based on certain parameters. We digitally support in making data and results uploading easier and in the required manner only.

• Self-evaluation is a crucial part of the accrediting process, and reports are more effective than words at communicating findings. Throughout accreditation assessments and qualification analysis, we assist faculty members by automating the preparation of the main self-assessment reports, as well as various supplementary reports.

• Our expert database verification team investigates the standards and criteria to be certified by compiling and managing data in chronological order.

• Using our tiered evaluation approach, institutes can swiftly analyse the benchmarking standards and obtain a fast reckoner on the current situation.

• With only a few clicks, our user-friendly system assists governing bodies in conducting a fair and complete audit of well-organized data and reports.

It can be stated that iCloudEMS provides a well-managed digital environment for automating and simplifying the time-consuming and repetitive accrediting processes. For quality monitoring and improvement, our complete Accreditation management system allows for an error-free mapping of learning outcomes with the institute’s objective and vision. In today’s competitive environment, it’s more important than ever for Higher Education Institutes to invest in a digital partner like iCloudEMS that can align workflow with the institute’s strategic plans to assure quality assurance and improvement on a regular basis.

Source from: https://www.icloudems.com/how-accreditation-stimulates-and-appreciates-the-quality-and-excellence-in-higher-education/

How iCloudEMS strengthens the digital capabilities of Higher Education with its Online Classes and Examination management system

 Technology has proven its true potential by revolutionizing the conventional teaching learning methodologies and bringing the transformation in Higher Education. Our government has never left any stone unturned to leverage technology in stretching the wings of the Education system to make it accessible and affordable for every student worldwide. COVID-19 has accelerated the deployment of the Education Management System to support uninterrupted Education learning and administration. Online Classes and Examination management System is a cloud-based solution that simplifies the administration intricacies of Classes and Examination. It removes the physical barriers in delivering and assessment of student-centric quality education.

Now, let’s understand the importance of Online Classes and Examination system

Online Classes management:

COVID-19 has made the Institutes transform their traditional classroom-led teaching-learning practices with Online or Virtual learning sessions in blink of an eye and the best part is both faculty and students have leveraged the latest technologies to access quality E-learning and Examination. iCloudEMS has offered a plethora of digital possibilities for an enriching learning experience using online whiteboards, video conferencing, learning management system, instant messaging and many more tools to connect students and instructors any time and from anywhere over the internet. We cater the specific needs of learners with our versatile digital resources for both LIVE and recorded sessions to channelize the valuable efforts of instructors towards a flexible and progressive student-centric learning environment. The major advantages of our Online Classes product are:

• We deliver an online platform where both teachers and students are free to arrange their learning according to their mutual preferences and learning styles to fill in the gaps and improve outcomes.
• Our advanced learning methodology tends to promote pupil-teacher and peer networking across borders and cultural boundaries, making it easier to incorporate research and innovation into learning theories.
• We offer online cloud-based documentation and repository that makes 24/7 access to study materials and progress records that facilitates digital governance of learning goals.
• Our system is an economical learning investment that can easily be afforded with reasonable service subscriptions and a one-time hardware expenditure.
  

Online Examination and Evaluation:

iCloudEMS brings a comprehensive cloud-based Online Examination System that simplifies the myriad of tedious and challenging Examination and Evaluation responsibilities with efficient management of material and human resources. The important features of our product include:

• Automatic scheduling and posting of examination datasheets that eliminates expected scheduling conflicts between exams on the same day.
• Collaborative question paper setting mechanism that makes the faculty members to easily coordinate with each other and higher authorities to ensure outcome-based learning assessment that follows OBE and Bloom’s taxonomy guidelines.
• Automated approach for assigning invigilation duties and exam centre to faculty members on different groups of students that streamlines the administration to conduct multiple exams with many students at the same time.
• Our LIVE proctoring attribute includes fool proof invigilation feature that ascertains integrity of Examination under a reliable digital-driven environment.
• The digital ecosphere safeguards the purity of evaluation by making the answer sheets and results completely immune to tampering.
• We present a labour-saving strategy that minimizes the time of assessment and publishing results under a transparent avenue for all the stakeholders.
  

The importance of online education and on-demand examination has been advocated in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 to encourage skill-oriented learning practices. It galvanizes the use of digital platforms and the latest learning endeavors like national MOOC courses, DIKSHA and SWAYAM to empower sustained quality education globally. Recent unfavorable situations such as epidemics and pandemics have necessitated utilizing ICT-based education while addressing all potential hurdles. iCloudEMS is a game changer and has always been supportive of institutes’ technical demands in order to foster a modern education atmosphere in a digitally driven environment where one can reap the unseen benefits in situations where traditional classroom learning is not viable.

Source from: https://www.icloudems.com/how-icloudems-strengthens-the-digital-capabilities-of-higher-education-with-its-online-classes-and-examination-management-system/

Implementation of iCloudEMS to Ensure Effective Execution of the New Education Policy 2020: Advantages of iCloudEMS in Higher Education Institutes

 

The twenty-first century has witnessed a tremendous change in every walk of life. The domain of human knowledge is one of them affected by the huge transformation of traditional human life into technology enabled ways of living to excel in rapid growth, creativity, development of critical thinking, and evaluative and cognitive skills. Considering these aspects, the New Education Policy 2020 focused on a holistic approach to education with the slogan ‘light but tight’ regulatory framework to ensure integrity, transparency, and resource efficiency of the educational system through audit and public disclosure while encouraging innovation and out-of-the-box ideas through autonomy, good governance, and empowerment. This National Education Policy envisions an education system that has its origin in Indian ethos. It explicitly believes in transformation of India education system in an innovative way and encourages sustainability into an equitable and vibrant knowledge society, by providing high-quality education to all to prepare India a global knowledge superpower. The aim of education should not only be cognitive development, but it should also aim ta building character and creating holistic and well-rounded individuals equipped with the key skills of the21st century learners. The experiential learning will be adopted, including hands-on learning, arts-integrated and sports-integrated education, story-telling-based pedagogy, among others, as standard pedagogy within each subject, and with explorations of relations among different subjects. Further, the NEP states that the curriculum and pedagogy of the higher education institutions must inculcate a deep sense of respect towards the Fundamental Duties and Constitutional values, bonding with one’s country, and a conscious awareness of one’s roles and responsibilities in a changing world among the learners. The vision of the Policy is to instill a deep-rooted pride in being Indian, not only in thought, but also in spirit, intellect, and deeds, as well as to develop knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions that support responsible commitment to human rights, sustainable development and living, and global well-being among the learners to reflect the image of a truly global citizen. The NEP encourages multidisciplinary and a holistic education system across the sciences, social sciences, arts, humanities, and sports for a multidisciplinary approach to ensure the unity and integrity of all knowledge to enhance competency at the global level. However, the NEP has laid emphasis on the conceptual understanding rather than tradition ways of rote learning or examination-oriented learning. It clearly states the especial attention on ethics and human and constitutional values like empathy, respect for others, cleanliness, courtesy, democratic spirit, spirit of service, self-esteem, respect for public property, scientific temper, liberty, responsibility, pluralism, equality, and justice.

To impart the quality education in the educational institutes and the achieve the goals set by the New Education Policy 2020, the software iCloudEMS plays a significant role in digitalization of learning material, and provides free access anytime, and anywhere. It helps universities and colleges streamline activities—academics, accreditation, admissions, administrative, HR, and outcome-based education. It empowers learners, faculty, and management to collaborate efficiently and use insights effectively, deliver benchmarking quality education while creating personalized learning experience.

Advantages of iCloudEMS to Foster Conducive Learning Environments and Effective Pedagogic Skills

            The educational institutes, especially the higher educational institutes aspiring for providing high quality education to the 21st century learners can use this Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based software to achieve the goals of the New Education Policy 2020 and benefit their learners in different ways. Some of the remarkable advantages of iCloudEMS are given below:

• The New Education Policy emphasizes holistic development of learners to instill them with a logical decision-making power, from school education to the higher education and the iCloudEMS foster learning environment and opens avenues to access learning material from anywhere, anytime. Consequently, learners get opportunity to enrich their creative impulse and critical thinking.
• The New Education Policy promotes learners’ cognitive skills and comprehension abilities instead of emphasizing of the traditional ways of rote learning. The iCloudEMS helps learners to transform themselves into cognitive learners by inculcating life skills to interact and compete with the global learners.
• The New Education Policy focuses on learners’ critical, analytical, comprehensive, and competency-based learning skills and abilities. While iCloudEMS supports learners overcome barriers in developing these skills and makes learning strategies easier.
• The New Education Policy envisions on the learner-centric learning environments and iCloudEMS facilities learner-oriented classroom in a unique way.  The classic features of the iCloudEMS fulfil needs of learners as well course instructors.
• The New Education Policy promotes outcome-based education where learners and teachers both are aware of the objectives of the outcome based-education, consequently they focus on the desired outcome to make learning comprehensive and effective. The iCloudEMS has been recognized as a milestone in enhancing efficiency and targeted skills of the twenty-first learners.
• As the NEP reiterates on the extensive use of technology in teaching and learning, removing language barriers, increasing access for Divyang students, and educational planning and management, iCloudEMS has proved to be one of the integral tools of imparting teaching-learning activities.
• The iCloudEMS conforms to the NEP (respect for diversity and respect for the local context in all curricula, pedagogy, and policy, always keeping in mind that education is a concurrent subject) and helps the Higher Education Institutes to impart quality education.
• Being one of the technological tools the iCloudEMS established synergy between learners and the course instructors which is core of the New Education Policy 2020.
• The NEP provides flexibility to the learners, so that learners can opt learning programs of their own choice, and thus decide their own paths in life by showcasing their talents and interests. To enrich teaching-learning experience and make learning learner centric, iCloudEMS helps educational institutes to execute the educational strategies of the NEP in an organized way.
• Being an integrated solution to conduct and manage virtual classroom settings and Online examination management for effectual educational activities, the software iCloudEMS fulfills needs of the NEP to conduct online blended and flipped classes. Thus, it caters needs of the stakeholders as well.

Source from: https://www.icloudems.com/implementation-of-icloudems-to-ensure-effective-execution-of-the-new-education-policy-2020-advantages-of-icloudems-in-higher-education-institutes/

Implementation of iCloudEMS to Ensure Effective Execution of the New Education Policy 2020: Advantages of iCloudEMS in Higher Education Institutes

 

The twenty-first century has witnessed a tremendous change in every walk of life. The domain of human knowledge is one of them affected by the huge transformation of traditional human life into technology enabled ways of living to excel in rapid growth, creativity, development of critical thinking, and evaluative and cognitive skills. Considering these aspects, the New Education Policy 2020 focused on a holistic approach to education with the slogan ‘light but tight’ regulatory framework to ensure integrity, transparency, and resource efficiency of the educational system through audit and public disclosure while encouraging innovation and out-of-the-box ideas through autonomy, good governance, and empowerment. This National Education Policy envisions an education system that has its origin in Indian ethos. It explicitly believes in transformation of India education system in an innovative way and encourages sustainability into an equitable and vibrant knowledge society, by providing high-quality education to all to prepare India a global knowledge superpower. The aim of education should not only be cognitive development, but it should also aim ta building character and creating holistic and well-rounded individuals equipped with the key skills of the21st century learners. The experiential learning will be adopted, including hands-on learning, arts-integrated and sports-integrated education, story-telling-based pedagogy, among others, as standard pedagogy within each subject, and with explorations of relations among different subjects. Further, the NEP states that the curriculum and pedagogy of the higher education institutions must inculcate a deep sense of respect towards the Fundamental Duties and Constitutional values, bonding with one’s country, and a conscious awareness of one’s roles and responsibilities in a changing world among the learners. The vision of the Policy is to instill a deep-rooted pride in being Indian, not only in thought, but also in spirit, intellect, and deeds, as well as to develop knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions that support responsible commitment to human rights, sustainable development and living, and global well-being among the learners to reflect the image of a truly global citizen. The NEP encourages multidisciplinary and a holistic education system across the sciences, social sciences, arts, humanities, and sports for a multidisciplinary approach to ensure the unity and integrity of all knowledge to enhance competency at the global level. However, the NEP has laid emphasis on the conceptual understanding rather than tradition ways of rote learning or examination-oriented learning. It clearly states the especial attention on ethics and human and constitutional values like empathy, respect for others, cleanliness, courtesy, democratic spirit, spirit of service, self-esteem, respect for public property, scientific temper, liberty, responsibility, pluralism, equality, and justice.

To impart the quality education in the educational institutes and the achieve the goals set by the New Education Policy 2020, the software iCloudEMS plays a significant role in digitalization of learning material, and provides free access anytime, and anywhere. It helps universities and colleges streamline activities—academics, accreditation, admissions, administrative, HR, and outcome-based education. It empowers learners, faculty, and management to collaborate efficiently and use insights effectively, deliver benchmarking quality education while creating personalized learning experience.

Advantages of iCloudEMS to Foster Conducive Learning Environments and Effective Pedagogic Skills

            The educational institutes, especially the higher educational institutes aspiring for providing high quality education to the 21st century learners can use this Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based software to achieve the goals of the New Education Policy 2020 and benefit their learners in different ways. Some of the remarkable advantages of iCloudEMS are given below:

• The New Education Policy emphasizes holistic development of learners to instill them with a logical decision-making power, from school education to the higher education and the iCloudEMS foster learning environment and opens avenues to access learning material from anywhere, anytime. Consequently, learners get opportunity to enrich their creative impulse and critical thinking.
• The New Education Policy promotes learners’ cognitive skills and comprehension abilities instead of emphasizing of the traditional ways of rote learning. The iCloudEMS helps learners to transform themselves into cognitive learners by inculcating life skills to interact and compete with the global learners.
• The New Education Policy focuses on learners’ critical, analytical, comprehensive, and competency-based learning skills and abilities. While iCloudEMS supports learners overcome barriers in developing these skills and makes learning strategies easier.
• The New Education Policy envisions on the learner-centric learning environments and iCloudEMS facilities learner-oriented classroom in a unique way.  The classic features of the iCloudEMS fulfil needs of learners as well course instructors.
• The New Education Policy promotes outcome-based education where learners and teachers both are aware of the objectives of the outcome based-education, consequently they focus on the desired outcome to make learning comprehensive and effective. The iCloudEMS has been recognized as a milestone in enhancing efficiency and targeted skills of the twenty-first learners.
• As the NEP reiterates on the extensive use of technology in teaching and learning, removing language barriers, increasing access for Divyang students, and educational planning and management, iCloudEMS has proved to be one of the integral tools of imparting teaching-learning activities.
• The iCloudEMS conforms to the NEP (respect for diversity and respect for the local context in all curricula, pedagogy, and policy, always keeping in mind that education is a concurrent subject) and helps the Higher Education Institutes to impart quality education.
• Being one of the technological tools the iCloudEMS established synergy between learners and the course instructors which is core of the New Education Policy 2020.
• The NEP provides flexibility to the learners, so that learners can opt learning programs of their own choice, and thus decide their own paths in life by showcasing their talents and interests. To enrich teaching-learning experience and make learning learner centric, iCloudEMS helps educational institutes to execute the educational strategies of the NEP in an organized way.
• Being an integrated solution to conduct and manage virtual classroom settings and Online examination management for effectual educational activities, the software iCloudEMS fulfills needs of the NEP to conduct online blended and flipped classes. Thus, it caters needs of the stakeholders as well.

Source from: https://www.icloudems.com/implementation-of-icloudems-to-ensure-effective-execution-of-the-new-education-policy-2020-advantages-of-icloudems-in-higher-education-institutes/

Ideal Educational Management System Making Colleges Systematic

 

Many companies are making ERP software but selecting one of them is the aim of educational institutions like colleges, universities and that ERP software becomes ideal Educational Management System.

College ERP/University ERP software becomes ideal Educational Management System.

ERP software simplifies the activities of colleges and universities so that the performance of the Educational system is optimized. College ERP/University ERP system can be customized as per the requirements of colleges and universities to make it ideal and useful all the way. College ERP/University ERP software is used in colleges and universities is referred as Educational Management System. As the technologies are evolving into advanced methods, Educational Management system (EMS) is improvising the structure of learning in Colleges/Universities and other relevant requirements within.

Most of the colleges and universities are implementing ERP software and they are getting the outcomes as promised by the ERP software company. Such functional, convenient, applicable and serviceable ERP software becomes ideal Educational Management System. Investing once in EMS, generates continuous results for long time effectively.

There are a few attentive reasons to implement and integrate ERP software in universities and colleges, and some of the reasons are as:

I. Adaptability
The academics in colleges is undergoing through a dramatic change in today’s date, Educational Management System helps authorities for potential outcome to cope up with the change. College ERP/University ERP system is improvising the structure of learning in Colleges/Universities and other relevant

II. Productivity
In Colleges/Universities Educational Management System is mainly effective in administration and management. In less time much more work can be completed efficiently and effectively which increases the productivity of the Educational Institutes.

III. Scope of education
Educational Management System is mainly used by staff members, students and their parents. They can access services instantly provided by system favourably which diversifies the scope of education. With the help of Educational Management System, quality of education can be improvised which widens the scope of education.

IV. Easy to operate
Educational Management System is easy to operate as with a single click many operations can be performed in spite of comprehensive structure internally. Front end is easy to navigate and in simple language which makes it more easy to understand and use EMS in friendly and optimised manner.

V. Mobile and internet penetration
Availability of Mobile App for ERP makes parents access data easily and they can remain connected with Colleges/Universities activities and student performances.

VI. Security
This is a very important factor as educational institutes deals with vast data of staff members, students and teachers. Fee payment and salaries are valuable part of colleges and universities which should not be tampered by externals. EMS with password protection makes it secure.

VII. Cost effective
Once the application is installed at institution, it reduces all the paperwork and workload of teachers and other administrative officers which is a worthy investment. This application will also be useful in reducing the infrastructure cost.

VIII. A centralised system
Universities and colleges function at various levels, which include various departments. Every department is unique in its own way, and hence, it is crucial to maintain a system that will bring every department under the central university management. College ERP/University ERP software is a systematic approach towards the entire system.

IX. Controllable and authorised
Administrative control and authority to give and change privileges makes system to run smoothly. Management becomes powerful with ERP based solutions. The management can control the working at the ground level.

Conclusion: College ERP/University ERP system is a user-friendly technology to perform vital operations of an institute. It is a comprehensive platform to perform the tedious tasks with a couple of clicks and take the valuable decisions.

Source from: https://www.icloudems.com/ems-colleges/