Bengaluru, 23 July 2021. A future-ready University needs to anticipate the future work place requirements and ensure that students are being prepared for it. It needs to inculcate certain qualities in the student such as the ability to disrupt in an innovative way and perpetual learning. Digital and data science skills will also be crucial in the future.
Delivering the first Distinguished lecture on `Building a Future Ready University’, the Founder of the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement, Dr. R Balasubramaniam observed that disruptive innovators are going to be the norm of the future. He was speaking at an event organised by the RV University at its campus.
Dr. Balu pointed out that a teacher must repackage information into a powerful experience and co-create learning along with student. How the teacher relates to the student and the course content become important in a university of the future. The role of faculty in a future-ready University is to be facilitators of learning, rather than mere providers of information. Faculty also need to keep themselves and their curriculum updated in order to be relevant. For this, faculty should be willing to be perpetual learners, he added.
Elaborating further, Dr. Balu said that the need of the future is a hybridised model of education with 70% of the learning needs to be experiential, 20% must come from relational or peer learning and 10% should be content-based. The architecture of the classroom too needs to change in order to reflect this learning environment. A traditional classroom, in which students face faculty, is suited for informational learning. It does not facilitate peer learning, as students do not face one another. It does not accommodate experiential learning either. For experiential learning, a classroom can be anywhere: It can be a visit to a prison or to a metro station.
The Founder and Chairman of Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement (GRAAM), Dr. Balu observed that `learning how to learn’ will be the new mantra. Dr. Balu pointed out the importance of compassion, faith and hope, a spirit of positivism, a sense of humour, fearlessness, sprit of service, mindfulness and a spirit of self-inquiry, as parameters to gauge the success of students.
In his opening remarks, the Vice Chancellor of RV University, Dr. Y.S.R Murthy lauded the contribution of Dr. Balasubramaniam by stating that, “Many of us dream about doing good things and engage in philanthropy. The only difference between us and Dr. Balu is that he has done it. He dedicated his life and spent 36 years in the service of poor, forest based tribals”. Referring to his inspiring work, Dr. Murthy said, “RV University has already signed MoUs with SVYM and GRAAM. As our students will do an India immersion programme, they can get unique insights by working with these organisations which are doing extraordinary work.”
The RV University is a new-age, global university committed to liberal education which has opened admissions for under-graduate, post-graduate and Ph.D. programmes from the current academic year. It was established under the RV University Act, 2019 passed by the Karnataka Legislature and was recognized by the UGC under Section 2(f) of the UGC Act.
Starting from the current academic year in 2021, the RV University will offer nine degree programmes in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Design and Economics and Finance. These three inter-disciplinary Schools will offer a range of specialisations and interesting mix of majors-minors to suit student choices.
Established by the Rashtreeya Sikshana Samithi Trust which has more than eight decades rich legacy in the field of education, RVU now joins twenty other institutions established by that Trust in the fields of technology, management, law, architecture, dental, physiotherapy and nursing.
