Multi-disciplinary approach crucial for students to land jobs: academics at a webinar
Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) scores do not ensure lucrative job opportunities, rather students should focus on acquiring social and life skills, speakers at a webinar have said.
Organised jointly by the SRM Institute of Science and Technology (SRMIST) and The Hindu, the webinar was part of a series on 'Future Career Conversations: Reimagining Futures through Humanities and Sciences' and explored the topic 'Beyond Marksheets: Building Real World Skills through Humanities and Sciences'.
Professor A. Vinay Kumar, Pro-Vice Chancellor, SRMIST, said that employers these days look for candidates capable of critical and emotional thinking, effective communication, and innovatively solving problems. A multi-disciplinary approach to academics, looking beyond the conventional framework of education, helps acquire the requisite skills, he said. To be able to solve societal issues with empathy, students need to have aptitude and curiosity that comes from studying subjects like literature, history, psychology, music, and philosophy.
While urging parents to drop their fixation with marks, ranks, and results, A. Joseph Dorairaj, Emeritus Professor, School of English and Foreign Languages, Gandhigram Rural Institute, said that increasingly, institutions are favouring competency-based frameworks and relaxing eligibility criteria for admission.
Both speakers underlined the importance of students developing cognitive skills and equipping themselves with technology, irrespective of the subjects they are studying.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
AI-based initiative for education improves results in Tonk's government schools
'Padhai with AI', an artificial intelligence (AI)-based initiative launched with the objective of helping out students in difficult subjects, has extended the benefits of digital learning and improved the results of government schools in Rajasthan's Tonk district. In the first academic session of its execution, 95% of secondary students have passed out with flying colours. The initiative has helped the students struggling with tough subjects, especially mathematics, in solving questions from their textbooks and practising new questions of a similar pattern. The digital learning has combined technology with education through a dedicated web portal, which includes remedial practices, drills and personalised learning. Tonk Collector Saumya Jha came up with the AI-based solution after realising the challenges in the performance of students during her field visits to schools in the district, situated south of Jaipur. Ms. Jha interacted with the teachers to identify fear and anxiety about mathematics as an important factor affecting the students. 'We introduced 'Padhai with AI' programme with a web portal and prepared a detailed action plan for three months in the academic session for the students of 10th class, setting the targets for 2025,' Ms. Jha told The Hindu. A total of 351 government schools were selected for the initiative. 'Improvement in maths' After the results were declared in May, it was found that the percentage of students who passed in Tonk was higher than the State average. There was also an increase of 5% in the number of students passing in the first division. 'An impressive jump was witnessed in the performance in mathematics, which was earlier a dreaded subject for children,' Ms. Jha said.
The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
Mother tongue mapping in Delhi-NCR schools reveals rich diversity, preference for English
Following a Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) circular emphasising the use of mother tongues in foundational classes, schools in Delhi-NCR have been mapping the various languages spoken by students, which has revealed linguistic diversity in most classrooms. The exercise being carried out independently by the schools has shown that students in the region speak between 10 and 20 different languages, including Hindi. Most CBSE schools in Delhi-NCR are English-medium and offer Hindi, Sanskrit, or Urdu as the second language from Class 1, and a third language from a pool of foreign and local languages from Class 6. Most principals The Hindu spoke to said that while English will remain the official medium of instruction, as most parents seem to be in favour of it, Hindi will be used 'informally' in the primary classes for assistance, as is the practice in most CBSE schools. Many also said that they are formulating ways to use oral and visual media to introduce children to different languages, as incorporating those into the pedagogy right away wouldn't be possible. The CBSE directive dated May 22 referred to the National Curriculum Framework, which recommends that the 'first language of literacy (R1) should ideally be the mother tongue or a familiar State or regional language'. It adds, 'If there are practical considerations, such as classroom diversity, resource limitations, or oral traditions lacking written forms, R1 may shift to the State language, which would be a familiar language. R1 must serve as the medium of instruction until foundational literacy in another language is achieved.' The schools have been asked to complete language mapping and realign curriculum by early July, when summer vacations end. 'Teaching through folklore' Sudha Acharya, principal of ITL Public School in Dwarka, said, 'We found that 3,000 students had 21 different mother tongues, including Marathi, Odia and Malayalam. Hindi is the most spoken, so we will continue with Hindi and English as mediums of instruction until Class 2.' To promote inclusivity, ITL has launched an initiative that exposes students to a different language every two weeks through music, folklore, and visual aids such as language trees and charts. She added that even as her school has a bilingual teaching policy for the initial classes, many parents insist on early fluency in English, which they associate with 'better prospects for higher education and employment'. Urmimala Sudhakar, principal of Summer Fields School, Gurugram, said they will teach the various mother tongues orally as the CBSE circular does not mention teaching mother tongues for the purpose of testing. 'We are working on framing our own language policy. Students' mother tongues will be taught orally. For instance, a teacher could ask a student how to say 'water' in their mother tongue. We cannot introduce it overnight as teachers will require training first,' she said. 'Parents prefer English' Ameeta Mulla Wattal, chairperson (innovations and training) of DLF Foundation Schools, noted: 'Since there is great linguistic diversity, a separate class will not be held for three students who might have the same mother tongue. Rather, the languages can be incorporated in other ways to ensure that linguistic minorities in the classroom feel included.' However, linguistic integration faces a major caveat: English remains the preferred mode for instruction for many parents, said Ms. Wattal. 'In response to the mapping exercise, parents have overwhelmingly opted for English as the primary language. We will have to take this into consideration. It should be a parent-driven exercise,' she added. Jyoti Arora, principal of Mount Abu Public School in Rohini, echoed this view. English will remain the mode of instruction. However, we are also encouraging teachers to use Hindi orally, she said.
The Hindu
7 hours ago
- The Hindu
With money and manpower, India could achieve quantum satellite communication by 2030, says expert
India could be technologically capable of 'quantum communication' using satellites in the 'next half a decade' Professor Bhaskar Kanseri of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi, whose team recently reported an instance of quantum key distribution one kilometre apart — the farthest such transmission in India, without any connecting cables — told The Hindu in an interview. This, however, would require large teams of well-funded multidisciplinary experts and the involvement of start-ups which are specifically geared towards such ends, Prof. Kanseri said. Safe quantum communication requires enabling a sender and receiver to get 'quantum keys', which are made of streams of photons — the carriers of light. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) employs principles of quantum mechanics: the incompletely understood principles underlying the behaviour of atomic and sub-atomic particles, including photons. While there are a couple of approaches in using QKD, one of them — said to be the most secure but technically harder to implement — uses quantum entanglement. Pairs of photons are naturally 'entangled', in a way that a change in one instantaneously reflects in the other. Applying this to encryption means that even the mere attempt by a potential hacker into a QKD-secured transmission of information becomes apparent to those communicating, thus allowing preventive measures. While generating such secure keys can be done through physical networks, including fibre optic cables, the goal is to be able to do it in 'free-space' or without such intervening wires. This is because the cost of such transmissions using cables rapidly rises once the sender and receiver are hundreds of kilometres apart. Thus the ideal step would be to involve satellites, which can act as an intermediary between any two points even if they are thousands of kilometres apart. However, using fibre optic cables provides a stable channel for quantum communication which free-space channels do not. Atmospheric disturbances such as turbulence, air flow, pollution, etc., particularly in a city such as the Delhi National Capital Region, made it more 'challenging' to demonstrate free-space quantum communication. 'The photon beam of quantum channel diverges and wanders due to these disturbances and results in more errors. Owing to these reasons, the error rates are generally higher than the fibre ones. However, with better beam control and optimisation, there is a scope to reduce these errors,' Prof. Kanseri said. China had demonstrated satellite-based quantum communication nearly one decade ago, as they had a head start in quantum communication activities since the early 2000s, he surmised. 'I strongly believe that India, which started quite recently (in the 2020s), will achieve it in next half-a-decade or so, as under the National Quantum Mission (NQM), a strong focus is to develop satellite-based long distance quantum communication,' Prof. Kanseri, who is currently in the U.S., said in an email. As an academic institute, IIT-Delhi's experiments in quantum communication so far were 'proof of concept (POC) nature' conducted with a small team of four to five students, explained Prof Kanseri. 'Satellite based quantum communication would be one of the biggest projects and require not only adequate funds but also a large, dedicated team of multidisciplinary skilled experts for developing several types of enabling technologies. Quantum startups, mentored by researchers working in quantum technologies, if funded adequately, can contribute immensely in translation of technologies from lab to market, and in prototyping quantum technologies in a focussed and faster manner. In addition, indigenous development of needed equipment and components is also required,' Prof. Kanseri said. In 2017 and 2020, researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China, during multiple instances, generated quantum keys involving a satellite (500 km above the ground) and ground stations 1,000 and 1,700-km apart. Since 2005, there have been ground demonstrations in Europe, Canada, and the United States of free-space (without cables) QKD greater than 100 km, suggesting that India still has much to cover regarding QKD-entanglement communication. In January 27, 2022, scientists from the Department of Space (DOS), namely, Space Applications Centre (SAC) and Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), both in Ahmedabad, jointly demonstrated quantum entanglement based real time Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) over a 300-metre atmospheric channel. In 2021, a team of scientists led by Urbasi Sinha demonstrated perhaps the first instances of such free-space communication in Bangalore over building separated by 50 metres. Quantum key distributions over much greater distances have been achieved over optical fibre networks. Prof. Kanseri's team demonstrated an intercity quantum-communication link between Vindhyachal and Prayagraj in 2022, using commercial grade underground dark optical fibre. In 2024, the team successfully distributed quantum keys using entanglement over a 100 km spool of telecom-grade optical fibre in another project supported by the Defence Research and Development Organisation.
