agile practices in higher education: a case study

Agile Practices in Higher Education: A Case Study

Venkatesh Kamat

Goa University

vvkamat@unigoa.ac.in

Outline

• Motivation for Agile framework in Education

• Proposed Agile Manifesto in education

• Case Study

• Conclusion

• Q & A

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Software development Game

Key Actors in the Game– Programmer / Developer – Customer / Client– Collaboration results in Software

DeveloperCustomerSoftware

Collaborate

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Education Game

Key Actors in the Game– Teacher / Institute– Employer / Industry– Student

Teacher / InstitutionEmployer / IndustryStudent

Collaborate?

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Present Scenario

• Academic programs are rigid and uses waterfall process model in delivery

• Most academic programs are fixed time, fixed cost and fixed scope projects

• Change is a bureaucratic process and on an average cycle time is 3-4 years

• There is over emphasis on what can be taught than what need to be taught

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Present Scenario cont…

• Students graduate with little practical skills, no idea of industry expectations

• There is over compartmentalization of education and no time for integration

• Instead of resolving the problem, industry has found its own quick fix solutions

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Frustration!

• Industry– They don’t understand what we want

• Academia– They don’t know what our problems are

• Student– Confused, eager to join industry only to get

more confused

• There is lot of duplication of efforts, waste of time & resources, is anybody listening?

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Blame Game – Industry View

• Institutions teach things that are not relevant

• Marks in the exam is no proof of actual skills

• Institutions teach as if all students are going to be researchers

• Institutions are bureaucratic, they are tightly controlled bodies and averse to change

• and so on . . .

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Blame Game - Academic View

• We teach fundamentals, platform specific skills is not our forte

• We expect industry participation if they want better output

• We are paid peanuts, what better can you expect?

• Our environments are not inspiring, come and work here then talk

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Blame game doesn’t fix the bug

• Understand the process of education

• Three key processes in education are– Teaching– Evaluation – Administration

• The quality of education is directly related to quality of these 3 processes

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Current Trend in Education• Cost of education is rising

• Classroom size is becoming bigger

• Conventional classroom teaching ineffective

• Education is being looked upon as investment

• Education has become a serious business

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Current Profile – Student

• Limited attention span

• Well informed, well versed with technology

• Visually oriented

• Impatient, eager to experiment

• Finds stereotype teaching boring

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Current Teaching/Evaluation Practices

• Engaging class is important but …

• Accountability is limited to attendance

• Lot of teacher time spent on mundane jobs

• Chalk & talk has no scope for reusability

• Focus is on scoring marks then knowing

• Essay type questions lack application

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Current Administrative Woes

• Procedures more important then outcome • Excessive worry about misuse before use• Control mindset disabling than enabling• Compliance scores over Competence• System encourages/propagates mediocrity• Lack of trust in teacher and the system • System converts assets into liability

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Agile manifesto in Education

• Teachers and Students over Administration and Infrastructure

• Competence and Collaboration over Compliance and Competition

• Employability and Marketability over Syllabus and Marks

• Attitude and Learning skills over Aptitude and formal degree

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What skills are important?

• Problem solving skills are more important rather than rote learning

• Classroom control through engagement is more important rather than discipline

• Ability to ask right question is more important rather than knowing all answers

• Formulating a problem is more important rather than solving it in gory detail

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Change in attitude - Teacher

• Figure of authority to a facilitator– Sage on the stage to guide by the side

• Know it all to let me know– Open to new ideas of teaching-learning

• Innovative in order to be effective– Explore opportunities to use new technologies

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Do not reinvent the wheel

• Use internet resources judiciously

• Download – Modify – Reuse but…

• Content has its own life cycle

• Use technology effectively for engagement

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Take feedback often

• Student is evaluated once in a while, but teacher is evaluated everyday

• Evaluation is the only way to know how much student has misunderstood

• Evaluation only determines what student doesn't know and not what student knows

• Earlier you detect the misunderstanding, easier it is to fix it

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Food for thought!

• Each student learns differently than why all students should pass in same time?

• What is the competence of a student who has scored 40% marks in an exam?

• Why each teacher should prepare her own lecture content?

• How do we move from just-in-case to just-in-time delivery model?

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Case Study - PGDCET

• 500 ICT school teachers being trained

• Teachers spread across 350+ schools

• Training conducted across 11 colleges

• Master trainers – to prepare content

• College teachers – to deliver the material

• All interactions hosted through Moodle – Learning Management System (LMS)

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Conclusion

• Technologies are necessary to address the problem of – Lack of experienced teacher – Scalability – Effective & Efficient delivery

• But technology is not a substitute for good teaching

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Conclusion

• There is an urgent need to apply agile framework to education system before it goes through heavy process orientation

• Lightweight process framework like Agile is recommended to educational setup

• Our experience shows that it is very much possible to put these practices in use provided there is will and commitment

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Q & A?

Thank You!