Jawaharlal Nehru Engineering College ,Aurangabad, Maharashtra, has received the award given by USVA AICTE in the category titled HOW INNOVATIVELY YOU ARE CONDUCTING CLASSES FOR STUDENTS OF YOUR INSTITUTION DURING LOCKDOWN PERIOD?

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the enforcement of lockdown have posed major challenges in the education system globally.

This crisis had also opened up opportunities to usher in a new era of learning.

Jawaharlal Nehru Engineering College, a top–ranked private engineering college, a constituent college of MGM University, Aurangabad, founded by Mahatma Gandhi Mission, took the initiative of online teaching in a holistic manner with urgency so as to avoid endangering the progression of learning and career of its students.

Here is the brief narrative about the inspiration and the wide range of thoughtful actions taken by JNEC and their outcomes that has led to the winning of the prestigious AICTE-Utkrisht Sansthan Vishwakarma Award -2020.

Students were bound to feel isolated in online learning environment so the teaching-learning approach was imbued with care, concern, and compassion.

All the JNEC faculty members were advised to incorporate interactive elements and opportunities for communication-to guide students and to use students’ feedback to create more effective and engaging online learning lectures and make themselves available for queries regarding the course. At the end of every week all faculty member shared the updates and feedbacks on the online academic the activity carried out by them :

1.0   On-line Courses Registered/Completed

2.0   Learning Videos / Audio Created by faculty himself/herself

3.0   Third Party Videos/ Learning Resources used for students

4.0   Assignments/ Quizzes/ Tests/ Group Discussions

5.0   Use of Third Party Live Streaming Sessions (like Google Class-room, Zoom, etc)

6.0   Use of Virtual Lab sessions

7.0   Preparation of Question Bank/ Question Paper/ Lab Manuals

8.0   Administrative Work Submissions (NBA/Project/ Lab development/ Equipment List/ etc)

The weekly reviews continuously enriched and enhanced online teaching. Our faculty members used innovative and interesting ways to deliver the content and demonstrate the points through various approaches of online teaching, they shared subject-wise weekly tasks like assignments, videos & other references materials to students. Around 528 Assignments/Quizzes were shared to students, they submitted it through WhatsApp/ E-mail/ Moodle platform. Assessment and monitoring were timely conducted. The faculty members of our institution registered for 237 online courses, 95 virtual lab sessions were conducted and 1012 learning resources were used by students.       

SWAYAM Course registered and completed by faculty 

Photo: YouTube Video by faculty 

  Photo: Snapshot of learning materials shared through Google Classroom

 The unprecedented pandemic has created a high stress situation among students. Our faculty seek to combine the role of a parent and teacher and encourage students to adapt the new normal.

We also took various initiatives for students,namely,

Ø  Our faculty have motivated the students to download Arogya Setu app

Ø  Counseling of students staying in containment zones

Ø  Teacher –Guardian were in constant touch with students mentees

Ø  Special support was extended to our students residing in Leh-Ladakh. They were shared video of every lectures so they can download and  learn whenever they could get connected to the internet.

Ø  Webinar on health awareness during pandemic were also conducted for students

Ø  Students were motivated to take part in other Online Courses, Competitions & Challenges

Sample Certificates of students’ participation in online events

It was a big challenge to complete the final year projects since most projects require labs and fabrication and assembly to complete the projects. As per the UGC guideline all the hardware-based projects were converted to review based/ secondary data-based projects or software-driven projects. Toward this task all faculty guides helped the students to complete their projects.

Our Project team of Mechanical Engineering was working on an Industrial Project titled ‘Rolling & Unrolling Mechanism for Cloth Roll in Textile Industry’ in Vatan textiles, Railway Station MIDC, Aurangabad. The Project design and major Fabrication was completed in the month of March 2020 before the start of COVID-19 lockdown and the setup was stuck at the fabricator’s end. The Industry was in a dire need of the setup and was in constant touch with the project team during the lockdown. The Project team was stuck in different parts of the state but they coordinated on video & audio platforms with the fabricator and completed the final fabrications during the lockdown period and made sure the implementation in the industry during August 2020 in the graded Unlock Phase. The process got completion and impleation of the project.

 to: Industrial Project Implementation by JNEC students during Lockdown

Moving to the digital learning with inadequate support would have been a short-term solution. Our institution decided to provide excellent training to all faculty on ICT tools and techniques. The main objective was to train the faculty members in understanding the various online tools such as Online Lecture Conduction using Webex/ GoTo Meeting/ Zoom/Microsoft Team/ Google Classroom/ Google Meet, Moodle Learning Platform, Video recording and live streaming using OBS Tool for designing and development digital resources for effective and interactive teaching and learning.

  Faculty development program on ICT Tool  and sample certificate provided to all attendees.

Faculty members had written blogs relevant to student interest which are published on our university website.

 Blogging by faculty to provide emotional support to JNEC students

 

Webinars:

Our College conducted various informative webinars for students and faculty members to make them aware of current technologies and opportunities during pandemic.

Ø  Webinars for students and faculty.

Ø   09 webinars for Engineering aspirants (12^th Class students) by our Head of the departments. The main objective was to share the opportunities available in engineering streams.

 Library in the time of Pandemic

“Books bring a new dawn in your life and will inspire you to make changes in your life. The habit of reading not only increases your knowledge but also changes your way of thinking”. Digital Learning tools and technology enables students to develop effective self-directed learning skills. Our college stived hard to promote digital learning and make students aware of the various e-learning platforms.   Students were able to identify the e-books they need to learn, find and use online resources. In addition to this engaging students, digital learning tools and technology sharpen critical thinking skills.

Abundant number of digital versions of the books and technical magazines were shared with students. Students were able to avail the services of :

·         Google Ebooks - more than 25 Million ebooks

·         Project Gutenburg and Hindustan Ebooks - 60000+ ebooks are available on this portals

·         NISCAIR online repository of E-journals : 22+ National reputed E-journals are available on this poertal

·         Springer Open Access E-journal : 300+ International reputed E-journals.

·         Directory of Open Access Journals :11+ E-journals are available on this portal

·         Standard Pearson publication e-books e-library to our students for  preparation :4000+ E-books

·         National Digital Library of India

·         McGraw Hill publication e-books : 800+ syllabus

·         e-shodhSindhu e-resources, SWAYAM PRABHA

·         Springer Open access :  450+ Ebooks

·         NPTEL live sessions SMS were sent daily to Faculty and Students

·         Bloomsbury Online Library for   Architecture department: 240 + ebooks.

JNEC faculty members contributed a lot during COVID-Lockdown.

·         8000 Face shields were designed, developed and distributed by the faculty members of  JNEC to the Corona warriors – the Doctors, Nurses, Policemen, Housekeeping staff and faculty members

·         Grocery and food items (worth Rs. 1,00,000) were distributed to needy people during the lockdown

·         Food, Fruits, Medicines and Masks were also distributed during the lockdown period by Faculty Members, Staff and students. All of these activities were carried out following the safety guidelines issued by government

·         Foot-Operated sanitizer machine was made ready

·         Sensor based hand sanitizer machine

·         1000 note books were binded out of unused pages of notebooks and were distributed to orphanage in Gevrai village

·         Presently working on 2 projects, one of which is submitted to AICTE and other one to BAMU

Face shield Development and distribution in society

 

Our college student also participated at National Level Challenge & Shortlisted 7th at MHRD AICTE MEGA Online Challenge SAMADHAN for COVID-19 pandemic SAMADHAN Challenge (April 18 to 25, 2020) 

 Snapshot of session

All educational institutes were in fear of an economic slowdown due to the coronavirus pandemic as the job market had come to a complete standstill . Our training and placement office struggled hard to cope up with the unprecedented situation and kept on providing all possible guidance and opportunities to job aspirants. We had conducted 12 webinars for all engineering students , coordinated 23 Online Contests/ Challenges /Aptitude Tests for all students all branches. Also, initiated Pre-Campus Placement preparation and training activities for students, such as:

·         Spruce Training Activity

·         Syntel CSR Training  on Python

·         Xento ‘Train and Hire’ Program

·         TCS CodeVita Interaction Series

Our Training and placement cell arranged for job offers from 58 companies in all and placed 42 students during the lockdown out of total of 312 students placed in the current academic year. 

All this was possible because of constant motivation by Honorable Shri. A. N. Kadam , Chancellor, MGM University.  We were ably guided by our Honorable Vice-Chancellor Dr. Sudhir Gavhane and Mr. Ashish Gadekar, Registrar, MGM University. Principal of JNEC, Dr. H. H. Shinde , who were a continuous source of inspiration and support for us during all the activities conducted by us during the lockdown.