Best Practices -I

2.  Objective: The primary focus of the RTL method is to give students a wide-range of knowledge, exceptional creativity and more comfort and to bring out their hidden potentials into the limelight.

3. The Context: In education, teachers facilitate students’ learning which helps students gain skills, knowledge and thinking ability. Different ways to teach are often referred to as pedagogy. Teaching using pedagogy involves assessing the educational levels of the students on particular skills. Understanding the pedagogy of the students in the classroom involves using differentialised instruction as well as supervision to meet the needs of all students in the classroom.

4.The Practice:

(a)  Student Centric Learning

As we found a few difficulties in the traditional method of chalk and talk teaching, we have set up the classroom as student centric namely Reformed Teaching Learning (RTL) process.

(b)  Activity Based Learning

As this new process is connected with activity based learning such as role play, brainstorming etc., students get more space to interact with teachers and classmates. Further, PPTs, Videos, OHPs and Short Seminars are used in the RTL method.

(c) Project Based Learning

 The RTL method provides a detailed learning to students and also reduces them to initiate a project on the basis of what they have learnt in the classroom.

(d)  Experiential Learning

• Students undergo in plant training/ internships through which they understand practical implementations of technology and get exposure to real time problems.
• Based on the real time problems students are encouraged to do mini projects and final year project works.
• Students are made to have experiential learning through their practical sessions in the laboratories as a part of their curriculum.

• Participated learning is promoted in regular classes by variety of teaching methods like think pair, peer learning, Just A Minute, seminar, group discussion, enacting role play etc., for easy understanding of concepts.
• To enhance student participation in diverse activities, our institution has various professional societies such as IEI, ISTE, EDC, CSI, ICT, IIC, department associations etc. The students participate in paper presentations, coding contests, project expos, workshops, etc and develop their core knowledge, presentation skills and soft skills.
• Value added courses and e-learning provide platform for students to learn new and advanced technologies.

(f) Problem Solving Methods

• Tutorial hours are conducted for analytical subjects in the curriculum to solve problems related to the subject.
• Students are motivated to take up case studies and implement the various methods/ techniques to solve the problem.  
• The students are motivated to register for online NPTEL Certificate courses in addition to their regular curriculum thereby creating a platform to learn and interact with IIT professors
• Mathematics Laboratory (Math Lab) contains models which are utilized to solve basic mathematical problems

(g) ICT enabled tools for effective teaching-learning process

Apart from conventional chalk and talk lectures, we follow an experiential learning which creates an opportunity for learners to apply what they have been taught to solve real-world challenges. Every experiential learning activity includes a debriefing session where learners receive feedback and coaching from the faculty members. To make it effective, we have made all the classrooms with ICT Enable tools which help to generate new paths of quality education. The following ICT enabled teaching approaches are being practiced in the institution by using the following Teaching Tools.

• Simulation
• Mind map
• Video Lecturing
• Animation
• Seminars
• Virtual Labs
• Google classrooms
• Google /Microsoft teams meet.
• Terv Tool is used for programming assistance
• Neo coder - examly , V- Labs are used for conducting academic lab courses virtually
• Smart classrooms with LCD projectors,
• Study materials, video lectures of theory and laboratories, question bank and assignment topics are also made available in smartcamp (KSRCMS)

5. Evidence of Success: KSRIET is one among 4 colleges in Tamil Nadu and 29 colleges in India in achieving best Practices in AICTE approved Institutions in the year 2018.

The outcome of the Reformed Teaching and Learning Process can be witnessed in the Academic Review Meetings, where the students have given excellent feedbacks for the process involved in the teaching and learning process.

As a result of continuous encouragement and guidance of our faculty members, our students have come out with projects which meet societal and industry-related challenges. This helps the students to design more such projects and become entrepreneurs. This also helps them to appear for project contests and win awards.

6. Problems encountered and Resources required:  Students from rural areas are in considerable number. Those students in the first year feel difficult to get accustomed academically to the engineering curriculum. In school level, Tamil medium students have lack of confidence in communicating in English and Biology students have lack of confidence in learning computer subjects. To improve their confidence level, Communication Skills Development (CSD) classes are incorporated in the class timetable itself for two hours per week. The inputs given in the CSD classes have been revealed in the students’ active participation in the Lingua Club activities and the participation in the Youth Talks. To kindle the students’ interest towards computer, the basics of computer and programming are taught in the bridge course itself.

Most of the students’ dream is to be placed in core companies. However, the number of core companies come for recruitment is less when compared to software companies. The students of ECE, EEE and Mechanical do not have computer papers in their third year. It becomes a hurdle to them to get placed in software companies. As our institute has well experience faculty members in the departments of CSE and IT, they are utilized for giving special training to the students in the required areas.