Activities
ACTIVITIES OF IQAC
2020-21
With a vision to build and ensure a quality culture aimed at all-around excellence at the institutional level, the Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC) was established in Shri Ram College of Commerce. By keeping the idea of service quality at its core, the IQAC aims to develop and progress a heightened level of clarity and focus in institutional functioning towards creation, sustenance, and enhancement of quality. This would facilitate the internalization of such a culture permeating every sphere of the College by better decision making, greater coordination amongst the constituents of the College, and enhanced communication with its stakeholders.
The work of the IQAC is an additional step towards the internalization and institutionalization of quality enhancement initiatives. Building on the growth-oriented direction of the College, the IQAC fosters a sense of belongingness and participation in all the constituents of the institution. Employing its potential to become a vehicle for ushering in quality enhancement, the IQAC works out interventionist strategies to remove deficiencies and enhance quality in the institution akin to “Quality Circles” in industries. The IQAC in Shri Ram College of Commerce has integrated the various functional units required for efficient and effective functioning of the College viz. Faculty from all courses, Administration, Accounts, and Library. Each of these units contributes to the holistic development of the institution and the students. The IQAC coordinates these units into a single direction oriented for the qualitative development of academic and administrative standards in the College. A facilitative and participative voluntary organ of the institution, the IQAC combines the synergies of each of the interlinked constituents in the process of planning, development, assurance, and monitoring of quality in the College.
Continuing the endeavor to enhance industry-academia and academia-academia interface during the COVID-19 induced lockdown and applying extensional learning beyond the curriculum, several webinars were organized on themes ranging from “Leadership”, “Virtual Audit” and “Happiness during lockdown” amongst others. Renowned personalities from global organizations were invited to interact with students and faculty members. These webinars touched areas such as the effect of COVID-19 on business, social and interpersonal aspects as well the possible scenarios in a Post COVID-19 world. More than 20 such webinars were organized which were attended by over 1000 participants on the online platform.
The IQAC organized a one-week online development program, on adapting and innovating three critical personality sets namely, “Mind-Sets, Knowledge-Sets and Skill-Sets for 21st Century Youth”. The resource persons for the FDP included seasoned trainers from organizations such as Art of Living and Anandi Foundation, experienced professionals from Chartered Accountancy, Cyber Security, and law as well as eminent academicians from the University of Delhi. Over 1200 students, faculty members, and professionals from various organizations across the country attended the MDP.
The IQAC, SRCC was instrumental in ensuring continuity of the teaching-learning process at Shri Ram College of Commerce by recommending the creation of a separate digital identity and the use of a dedicated digital classroom platform. The IQAC, SRCC also ensured training sessions were provided to faculty members to help them rapidly adapt to the technological changes and ensure a smooth transition to the online mode of teaching-learning. Additionally, during the lockdown, the IQAC, SRCC ensured regular communication with the primary stakeholders i.e. students and faculty members. Periodic feedback on the teaching-learning process as well as the emotional state of students and faculty members were obtained. This feedback was utilized to develop academic teaching-learning processes such as recommending MS-Teams as the general online platform for teaching-learning in the College.
In the initial days of pandemic-induced lockdown, there was a disruption in the learning curve of the students. Further, the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly changed the employability profile, shifting the focus of employers to favour application-oriented understanding over theoretical domains. Sensing this paradigm shift in the learning process as well as expectations of the employers, the IQAC, SRCC collaborated with Coursera, a globally renowned online learning platform offering anywhere, anytime access to online course and degrees from world-class universities and companies. The goal of this collaboration to further enhance the knowledge and application profile of the students and faculty members, absolutely free of cost. Under this collaboration, both students and faculty members of Shri Ram College of Commerce could access over 1000 courses of Coursera in various domains such as Advanced Data Science, Big Data, Blockchain, Business Leadership, Communication, Data management, Data warehousing, Deep learning, Mathematics, Music and Arts amongst others, at zero cost. Over 1500 students and faculty members enthusiastically enrolled for these courses on Coursera. This initiative of IQAC ensured significant learning and reskilling of students on technical, highly contemporary and multidisciplinary topics by both globally renowned academic institutions such as HSE University, INSEAD, John Hopkins University, University of California and University of Michigan amongst several others as well as from global corporate organisations such as SAS and Cloudera amongst others.
Additionally, under this philosophy, the following value-added courses were launched in collaboration with industry bodies during the academic year: Legal literacy course, certificate course in French language, certificate course in Fundamental and Technical Analysis data analytics with R.