To be a Professional: Step 2

Discipline
Lead a Disciplined life.

It is interesting to note how we have come to equate discipline with loss of freedom. It is argued that we must sacrifice freedom to be disciplined in our life.

Imagine if we didn't have traffic lights at each junction on our roads and we were free to move on the roads as we liked. Would it be freedom or chaos.

Another distortion is to think that we need to be disciplined only if there is someone to enforce it. In the absence of enforcement, we become indisciplined and create chaos and confusion all around. True discipline comes from within and it gets internalized by repeated and forced enforcement by external factors.

1. Follow the law of the land. 

2. Work within the rules of the game

3. Do what is prescribed by the standard acceptable procedure observing the safety and quality norms. 

4. Enforce discipline within and do not wait for superiors and external agencies to force it down your throat. 

To be a Professional: Step 1

Value Time: Be Punctual
The first step to professionalism is to be punctual. If you want to know the  value of 0.01 seconds, ask PT Usha, the Olympian, who lost a medal for being that late. Each moment is valuable and make best use of it. There is no point in repenting later as the time is not going to come back to make amends.
One has to make continuous efforts to make punctuality a part of his / her value system and bio-rhythm. Once that happens, the bio-alarm often rings on time to remind you of important events and appointments. One should hate being late, to make it a habit to be punctual. A true professional is always appreciated for valuing his /her own time as well as others'.
As a student, try to be in the class room or lab before the teacher. As a Teacher, try to be in the class before the students. You cannot imagine the amount of mutual admiration, the students and Teacher have of each other if they are punctual.
For students, it is the right time to start preparing the body and mind to be on time for important events of life like going to class, examination, interview and later to the job. Being on time reduces a lot of anxiety, keeps the mind peaceful and helps in being more productive in the work that you do.
Unfortunately we are led by persons for whom others' time has no value. They often take pride in being late to meetings, gatherings and functions. They keep their guests, hosts and public waiting & cursing. If we were to calculate the man-hours lost in waiting and convert that to do productive works, we would be a far better nation.
Let us all start on time to finish before time. 

3-IDIOTS : Seek Excellence, Success Follows

The title and the Tag line is taken from the Hindi movie 3-IDIOTS. While the concept has been strongly emphasized in the movie, it has great relevance in our real world. With the growth of information technology, the knowledge is available all around us. We just need to search and get what we need. The differentiating factor between successful and unsuccessful persons is not knowledge, but the passion & excellence in doing what they do.
Many of us are still trapped in the age old mindset that we need to memorize and remember questions and answers. When we are producing professionals in our colleges, who are supposed to tackle challenges of real life, we must equip them with tools and skills necessary to analyze problems and devise new and innovative methods to solve them. There are no fixed questions and fixed answers in real professional life. This is exactly the core message of the movie 3-IDIOTS.
For example, as computer scientist students, we must not seek to limit ourselves to just knowing the syntax and simple problems but seek to acquire skills to apply the gained knowledge to develop innovative products or methods which can change the game. As mentioned above, the real life is not a straight line equation, but a complex curve without any known equation. The success depends on figuring out the curve, and treading on the  curve without failing.
     

Communication Skills

Communications Skills in the student community is a much talked about topic in recent times for various reasons. The students are worried as they have to face interviews, where it is a very important attribute for determining their success. The College Management is worried because the recruiters are complaining about the lack of such skills in the students leading to lower placements and hence lower preference for the college in the next round of admissions. Each one is right in his/her own perspective.
Let us understand the issue from a different angle.
Someone said that we, in India, do not have an education system in our country but only an examination system. When the whole focus of the student, teacher and parent is the exam, learning takes back seat. And more so the other soft aspects of life. We often see children memorizing the questions and answers given in the notebooks to prepare for the exams. They are hardly encouraged to read the chapters, which contain much more content than just the answers to the most important questions.
Communication between the teacher and student is a very important part of the learning process. It helps accelerate the learning and builds confidence & self esteem. The teachers must develop a close rapport with the students and encourage them to interact in the class room and participate in the Q/A sessions. The more we keep the student quite in the class, the lesser the confidence he/ she will gain to face the challenges outside. If the ultimate aim of the teachers is the success of the students and it can be achieved by a healthier interaction with them, why don't our teachers do it more often.
We don't need a separate training for developing communication skills as demanded by our recruiters. The teachers themselves can do it, if they embed this aspect in the class. The teachers must also be conscious of the quality of their communication and make sure that they are conveying the concepts in clear and crisp manner understandable to all.
The students, on their part, need to participate more in the class and interact with teacher and other students in more formal forums than is often the case. It should be their agenda to improve communication skills on every occasion that they get their hands on. One should always be in a learning mode. We can learn a lot, by observing others.
While the above suggestion may not be a comprehensive solution to the development of communication skills, it will break the shackles and barriers of learning and improve the self esteem of the student, helping him/her to perform to their potential. Communication skills alone cannot guarantee a  job but showcases the potential of the student in a better way.

Competency Based Training (CBT)

It is now a well documented fact that the education we are getting in different institutions is not sufficient to make us productive as per the needs of the industry. The industry wants ready skilled persons rather than to re-train the workforce to suit their operations. We are producing a large number of graduates with good theoretical knowledge but poor practical skills.
The world is increasingly looking towards skills training and more so the Indian Government,whose focus is on setting up Skill Development Centers across the country.  
Competency refers to the group of skills and knowledge which are applied in order to carry out a task or function, in accordance with the requirements imposed by the job. 

In other words, Competency is the ability to transfer and apply skills and knowledge to new situations and environments.

Competency Based Training (CBT), focuses on what is expected of a person in the workplace. Our institutes should provide education and training to make the students perform to the standards prescribed by the industry. In CBT, the training programs are broken down into small modules which are very specific. These modules would develop such competencies, which are easily measurable. At the end of the training, the students are given certificate indicating the competencies acquired. Since the specifications of the competency are defined and measurable, the industry will have a much clearer picture of the candidate, at the time of interview, rather than just know that the candidate is an engineer in a specific discipline. They would also know, for instance, what can the candidate do or perform in the industry for a given situation.

Welcome

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It feels nice to set up a platform for communicating with all the persons who care about IGIAT and who wish to be connected and share their views.
Indo German Institute of Advanced Technology was set up by Government of Andhra Pradesh in partnership with Government of Germany and Gayatri Vidya Parishad, under a Public Private Partnership model. With active support of all the three partners, IGIAT has had a very smooth take off and has now a very good standing in the vocational education sector in India.

Main Building

The main differentiator of IGIAT is the practical skills that are part of the curriculum, in addition to the fact that the curriculum being focussed on the needs of the industry. So the participants have a very high probability of being favored for a job in comparison to other candidates and with a higher salary.
The other differentiator is the method of teaching / training. The participants are  the most important part of the process and the needs and issues concerning the trainees are central to the training methodology. German support in curriculum development has helped in getting the finer technical aspects right. But the core strength of IGIAT is the human touch. The batch sizes are kept small typically 12-20 to give very high attention to the trainees.
The participants are encouraged to interact well in the process of learning and are asked to give formal and informal feedback to the faculty and other administrators regarding any aspect. Now, IGIAT has introduced web-based feedback in a structured manner.
To keep the certification, transparent, the certificates can be verified by employers on the website. The candidates can proudly show this feature to generate confidence in the recruiters.

This blog is a wonderful platform to all the visitors to record their views and opinions, forward others' views,which help us deliver better service to the beneficiaries.