Ms Priyanka Gajare, student reporter, SVU Newsletter interviewed Prof Soumyadeb Ghosh, Senior Professor, Faculty of Science at S K Somaiya College, Somaiya Vidyavihar University. Here are the excerpts of the interview where Prof S Ghosh shared his thoughts on the NEP 2020 Policy.
Soumyadeb earned his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. After spending five years overseas, he returned to India to join GE India Technology Centre, Bangalore. Subsequently, he moved to CSIR-CSMCRI in Bhavnagar as Head of the Electro-membrane division. Before joining SVU, Prof Ghosh was a Senior Scientist and Innovation and External Partnership Manager, at Solvay Research and Innovation Centre, Vadodara. He has over thirty years of research expertise in several domains of Polymer Science, both in industrial R&D and academia. He has pioneered breakthroughs in frontier research areas, resulting in new products, patents, and publications. He has over 25 research publications in reputed journals and filed 25 international patents.
1. How does the NEP 2020 policy support the curriculum to promote science and technology?
India has the maximum number of educated young population in the world, and also in the higher education sectors, it ranks among the topmost in terms of research outputs. However, due to India’s fragmented educational system, it scores low in technology development when compared to even much smaller countries such as, South Korea and Japan. In this context, the NEP 2020 policy seeks to provide a framework for comprehensive education, allowing young people to learn with a broad perspective. It generates unique ideas and future work prospects. NEP 2020 provides institutions with a great level of freedom in integrating and catering to interdisciplinary education. It gives multidisciplinary educational institutions autonomy to offer courses from multiple disciplines.
2. In the context of NEP 2020, how should science instructors be empowered and given authority to experiment with creative pedagogical forms of teaching that incorporate technology-driven learning?
NEP 2020 recommends education providers to have a high level of autonomy, allowing them to choose from a variety of pedagogical techniques and deciding on the kind of education that should be delivered. It provides opportunities to universities to adopt student-centric approaches, in which the teacher guides the students to learn by engaging them in the learning process. Such pedagogical approaches encourage student participation in the form of group discussions, flipped classrooms, team-based projects, innovative design of lab-experiments, etc. There is no role of rote-learning in this process, and students are allowed to express their learning through new approaches such as open-book examinations and use of online resources during group-discussion or projects in classes, and to look beyond what is taught in the classroom.
The education process must also be supported with online instructional resources that are now easily accessible to the public. The impact of technology on education has received a great deal of attention, notably in terms of deep learning platforms such as ChatGPT from Open AI. The opinion of educationists on such new technologies is divided. However, I personally would suggest that instead of focusing too much on such controversies, we should learn to face the changing world. While accepting all kinds of open-learning resources, we should educate our students to ‘learn to learn’, to be productive throughout their life in this rapidly evolving world. Through our holistic education, students should learn to differentiate between knowledge and information, how to assimilate information to form a body of ‘knowledge’, and in the process, learn to create new knowledge from careful compilation of reliable information.
3. What modifications is Somaiya Vidyavihar University proposing to make to be under NEP 2020?
The Somaiya Vidyavihar University has amazing diversity in terms of the variety of disciplines it offers for education at different levels. It also supports platforms such as RiiDL, a venture centre encouraging incubation of ideas and development of startups through interdisciplinary research projects. SVU provides significant support in building new infrastructure for research and for digital education through online resources. The Faculty Development Programme encourages faculty members to study new technologies and disciplines to stay relevant in the evolving fields of science and technology. The university is further upgrading to modernize the infrastructure to enable newer programmes in science and technology.
The newly formed Somaiya Centre for Integrated Science Education & Research (SciSER) focuses on education through its flagship integrated science programs in Bachelor of Science (BS) and Master of Science (MS). This programme offers a 4-year BS degree, with the first two years’ curriculum covering all branches of science. The students move gradually to their desired subject for specialization through choosing major courses in the third and fourth year. The integration of the science subjects is provided through learning of mathematical, computational and statistical tools. The students can then pursue their Master of Science degree (MS) in any of their chosen science subjects. Alternatively, the students may choose other M.Sc. programmes such as in Polymer Science, or other masters programmes running in the University. One can also choose to pursue a one-year PG Diploma in one of the professional courses. A palette of certification in professional courses are offered on management and computational tool-based courses. This equips the students with a broad variety of knowledge and expertise, enabling them to choose their own career path and be adaptable in the ever-changing world for a long productive career. The NEP 2020 Policy allows students to earn credits and gain knowledge through multiple entry and exit options, to avail such opportunities.
4. What is your advice for young people, and how can they get the most out of NEP policy?
I would advise students to be inquisitive, creative and be positive about their future. In their first years, the students should focus on learning the basic concepts and tools in the variety of core subjects, and then pick their subject for specialisation in the final years. The student should not just seek education from the perspective of job-prospects, which changes from time to time. Rather, they should take up courses providing broader education that would enable them to be adaptive in their career. Students should continuously upgrade their knowledge through online courses. The NEP Policy’s multiple entry and exit points have made it simpler for the students to obtain education in multidisciplinary courses and gain knowledge in several fields. They should make themselves aware of the changes and take maximum benefit from the evolving education scene in the country.
Above all, they should remember that the positive outlook of the young Indians will make India a developed nation in the coming decades. This is an expectation of the world, as India is predicted to grow and develop significantly over the next 15 years. The NEP Policy will provide numerous opportunities to our young citizens to empower them with the education that is needed to make this happen.
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