Questions/Answers

To mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and thrive in learning, with the power of Innovation, Technology & Institutional Resilience. When COVID-19 pandemic brought learning to a screeching halt worldwide, creating the most severe global education disruption in history. The 2 largest education systems in the world were thriving and rapidly mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic with the power of innovation, technology, collaboration, and institutional resilience. AICTE immediately initiated a helpline website https://helpline.aicte-india.org The nature of support included accommodation, food, online classes, mentoring, queries on examinations, scholarships, health, and transport. Over 0.5 million faculties and 15 million students joined the initiative for helping over 150 million citizens in various forms and donated 650 million Rupees to the State Relief Fund. AICTE also instantly shifted the whole technical education of the nation into the virtual mode. Swayam Prabha - 34 DTH channels activated to telecast high-quality educational content on a 24X7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite. Swayam– India’s own MOOC was offering online courses on all disciplines in the blended and Flip classroom mode. The virtual lab was arousing students’ curiosity to conduct remote experiments in the various disciplines of science and engineering. Digital Library having 38 million e-books, journals, and question banks was providing learning resources with a single-window search facility. Semester exams were conducted in the proctored format. NEAT– an Edtech solution provider platform was offering the best technological solutions to the students using artificial intelligence for personalized learning. World record-breaking 1000 faculty development programs were organized for more than 1.6 lakh faculties engaging over 90 experts from 25 countries. Online Challenge i.e. Fight CORONA IDEAthon, Smart India Hackathon, SAMADHAN – An Innovation challenge; Drug Discovery Hackathon, National Innovation Contest, and Vishwakarma Awards for innovation were igniting innovation in young minds.

AICTE rapidly responded to mitigate the Covid19 pandemic with the power of people, policy, institutional resilience, technology, innovation, and collaboration to save lives, serve communities keeping no impact on teaching-learning during the crisis. AICTE’s Rapid Response to the Covid-19 pandemic with the power of Innovation was effective, accountable, and inclusive because AICTE was virtually offering education allowing students to thrive in learning. The team of faculty members and students were virtually and physically serving neighboring communities by providing food, mask, sanitizer, ventilator, shelter and collecting donations to contribute National Relief Fund.

This initiative is aligned with SDG No. 4 because it provided equal access to affordable and quality higher education to all during the Covid-19 pandemic. This initiative is also aligned with SDG No. 16 as it is an effective, efficient, transparent, accountable, Innovative citizen-centered public service during the Covid19 pandemic. This initiative is also aligned with SDG No. 17 because it was the outcome of the sincere collaboration of multilateral organizations and individuals with technologies that increased the efficiency and effectiveness of the initiative

AICTE’s Rapid Response to the Covid-19 pandemic was sustainable in social and environmental terms because it was initiated to serve, survive and thrive during the global crisis. The initiative was driven by the spirit of service to communities using technical and social collaboration and creating more exciting learning opportunities. The financial support offered girls, special and underprivileged students, and students whose parents have died due to Covid-19. Clean & Smart Campus Award was an initiative was initiated to promote sustainable learning spaces. This initiative was focused to sustain and support economy and ecology not to cost economy and ecology.

Universities and college campuses are places where students live and study near each other. They are also buzzing cultural hubs where students are brought together from nations around the world. Foundations of this unique ecosystem have been impacted significantly by the rapid spread of the Covid-19 outbreak, creating uncertainty regarding the implications for higher education. AICTE’s Virtual mode of education minimized the impact on this socio-cultural ecosystem by offering online interactive, exiting & collaborative, learning experiences, virtual interactive labs, innovative group contests, challenges, and proctored evaluation. AICTE’s rapid response to Covid-19 has complemented supported and served frontline healthcare and administrative staff. AICTE`s e-Governance model achieved accountability, integrity, credibility, transparency & efficiency in institutional governance to provide effective services to all its stakeholders. The online Approval Process facilitates new or existing Institutions, Universities to apply for online approval and the entire approval process is fully online. Now Scrutiny, Rescrutiny, Appeal, and Visits are being conducted only in online mode. Online Grievance Redressal System (with automatic escalation procedures) has helped the management in effectively resolving the grievances/complaints at the earliest. This initiative has significantly addressed issues associated with institutional governance.

AICTE’s rapid response to the Covid-19 pandemic was focused on saving all lives, serving everyone who was looking for help, and continuing quality learning for all with no gender discrimination. Virtual learning opportunities were accessible to all keeping no one left behind policy. PRAGATI scholarship Scheme for girls was offered to 10000 towards promoting girls in the technical education. AICTE has launched the Lilavati Award to celebrate the glory of womanhood and honor the contribution of women in 6 themes, which include Women's Health, Self-Defense, Sanitation and Hygiene, Literacy, Women Entrepreneurship, and Legal Awareness.

Target Group of AICTE’s rapid response to the Covdi-19 pandemic was the wellbeing of students, faculty members, their family members, and communities at large. Stage -1 Our rapid response was focused on ensuring the well-being of our students, faculty members, and their families. Stage -2 Our rapid response was focused on continuing the teaching-learning process with innovative virtual learning opportunities with no one left behind policy. Stage-3 Our rapid response was focused to inspire faculty members and students to come together and helping their neighboring communities who were in need and frontline health workers with no impact on virtual teaching-learning. Stage- 4 Our rapid response was focused on local innovation for local needs using residential spaces as the innovation hub for mitigating the Covid-19 pandemic. Our Students and faculty members were preparing, food packets, reusable masks, sanitizer, and much more covid-19 appropriate day-to-day life accessories. Our Students and Faculty members were also helping frontline health workers, administrative staff members and collecting donations for national and relief funds. AICTE has used virtual teaching opportunities to inspire students and faculties to thrive in learning and serving to mitigate the impact of Covid-19.

Step-1 AICTE has launched the student’s helpline portal https://helpline.aicte-india.org within 24 hours of the announcement of the National lockdown to help students who were stranded by the lockdown. Step-2 After this AICTE evaluated its power of people, proficiency, policies, technology, innovation, and collaboration to rapidly mitigate the covid-19 pandemic and shift the whole technical education of the nation into virtual mode ensuring that learning shouldn’t stop but thrive. The academic team integrated and updated a virtual interactive Lab, Digital library, India’s own MOOC, 34 DTH channels, Proctored Evaluation System, Internship Portal to offer an interesting learning experience to the students. The innovation team has initiated innovations to mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic through online Contests and challenges. FDP team has achieved a world record-breaking online faculty development program during the Covid-19. A group of students and faculty members were helping frontline health workers to provide timely care to covid-19 infected people. A Group of students and faculty members were preparing and distributing food packets, reusable masks, UV disinfectants, ventilators prototypes, and robots for the neighboring communities. A group of students and faculty members were collecting funds to support State and National Relief Funds. Group of students and faculty members were conducting online classes to the neighboring school students. Group of students and faculty members were working as Covid-19 counselors and offering tele - Counseling to the stranded people, migrant laborers, and the public at large. Technical Institutions were organizing health camps to provide basic health care to the communities.

It was the testing time for mankind including AICTE. Everyone involved in this initiative was working selflessly to beat the pandemic with the power of courage, care, concern, collaboration, commitment, technology, innovation and institutional resilience. This initiative has tested our institutional resilience to respond the future challenges. Every obstacle looks small when the power of learning is activated. It was the desire of learning and the desire of surviving that inspired us to initiate this rapid response to covid 19 pandemic

This initiative is innovative because it is initiated with the idea and spirit of innovation. Shifting 2 largest education system of the world into the virtual mode, using advanced technologies within the shortest period is innovation. Collective and effective rapid response to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic with the power of thousands of innovations that helped the nation to restrict the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic is innovations. Latest Technologies has been used and local innovation were utilized as tool the survive in pandemic and thrive in learning .

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has forced us to initiate this initiative. We have only applied our existing strength like never before. This initiative is a classic case to be applied in the future during sudden change and pandemic situations. However, our online content is being used in many countries. Students from 114 Countries have been accessing SWAYAM MOOCs courses Best practices and collaborative research to survive in sudden change is being initiated with many countries. AICTE – MITACS scheme provides opportunities for students to pursue Internships and Incubator support in Canada. Credit transfer for the one-semester student exchange program.

ICT is being used as enabler for this initiative, artificial intelligence and other tech-tools were also applied towards making learning more interesting and interactive.

This initiative can be adapted anywhere in the world to survive and thrive in sudden change. Such initiative can be initiated with the power of the spirit of innovation, technology infrastructure, highly trained team of technologists and academicians, inspiring leadership, institutional resilience, and reputation. Our few online challenges are already reached beyond the national boundaries The ASEAN-INDIA Hackathon-2021 focused on the blue economy, agriculture, tourism, health care and medical devices, environment, education, water, and smart cities and campuses. 10 Asian countries i.e.Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam, and India have participated in this 36-hours grand challenge.

This initiative was focused to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and continuing technical education in India. It can be considered as a case study for future challenges anywhere in the world. This Initiative has the potential to be transferred and adopted anywhere in the world. This initiative is an affordable and sustainable solution to any sudden change that may occur anytime anywhere in the world. This initiative transformed Indian technical education from surviving to thriving.

The policy of Institution, Proficiency of its team, Process of technological integration, Payment to the Global experts for Faculty development programs and Prizes for contests and challenges were used as financial & human resources to initiate and implement rapid response to mitigate Covid-19pandemic and thriving learning virtually.

This initiative was the most affordable and sustainable at any time. This initiative was a collaborative, inclusive, and judicious model for mitigating the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Inspiring leadership and Institutional resilience were the core of making this initiative successful. This was a low-cost - no-cost initiative that turned good for the institution, instructors, education, economy, pupil, and the planet.

Yes

This initiative was driven by policies and process approved through institutional due diligence. Every element associated and applied in this initiative having the specific policy document. This initiative was internally evaluated and appreciated. Evaluation process was led by chairman of the Institution. Certificate of evaluation was issued by the chairman of AICTE

Green Mentors have evaluated the impact of AICTE's "Rapid Response to the Covid-19 pandemic with Power of Innovation" in 7 core criteria i.e. institutional resilience, alignment with 2030 Agenda, innovation, significance, adaptability, sustainability, and partnership. Global indicators for evaluating institutional resilience, alignment with 2030 Agenda, innovation, significance,, adaptability, sustainability, and partnership were applied to evaluate the impact of the initiative. Each evaluation Indicator is in turn measured against a set of Global Standards for evaluating institutional response to the Covid-19 pandemic. 6 criteria were given 15% weightage while 1 criterion was evaluated on the 10% weightage.

1. Institutional Resilience brings power to institutions to respond to sudden change. 2. Visionary Leadership accelerates the institution to save lives even in risking self-life. 3. Organizational culture having a spirit of collaboration and operation brings more power to respond to sudden change. 4. Performance of technology and integration of technologies adds power to respond to sudden change. 5. Power of education and educators can defeat any challenge anytime anywhere in any form. 7. Partnership for people and the planet always has the power to make everything right. 8. Organizational reputation brings people together to work together and win together.

The AICTE Act was constituted to provide for the establishment of an All India Council for Technical Education with a view to proper planning and co-ordinated development of a technical education system throughout the country, the promotion of qualitative improvements of such education concerning planned quantitative growth, regulation & proper maintenance of norms and standards in the technical education system and for the matters connected therewith. AICTE is governed by a well-established organizational structure that outlines how institution’s policies are framed and directed in order to achieve the mission, vision, and goal of AICTE. The organization is governed by its well-defined rules, roles, and responsibilities for every position and person. The chairman leads the organization in terms of framing policies, taking decisions, and evaluating performance. This initiative was initiated by the Chairman of AICTE and followed by every stockholder including, team members placed at AICTE headquarter in New Delhi, regional offices, technical institutions, faculty members, students, and parents. Confident Leadership, Committed team members, power of collaboration, partnership, and collective spirit towards defeating Covid-19 pandemic and thriving in testing time were reasons behind the success of this initiative.

The initially technical team of AICTE was engaged to initiate the Students helpline portal to help stranded students in different parts of India. The way technical institutions and nongovt. organizations came to support the initiative, the leadership of AICTE has decided to initiate nationwide rapid response not only to mitigate the impact of the covid-19 pandemic but continue the teaching-learning of technical education in the virtual mode with more enthusiasm, innovation, collaboration technological integration. After launching the virtual mode of technical education all stakeholders including technical institutions, faculty members, and students whole heartily joined the initiative and started learning, thinking collaborating, and serving the communities in every part of the nation. The tech team and curriculum team were offering innovative and interesting teaching-learning content, contest and challenges which was igniting young minds to thrive and learning curriculum and serving communities, and innovating solutions during the testing time. The financial support offered girls, special and underprivileged students, and students whose parents have died due to Covid-19 to achieve the goal of NO ONE LEFT BEHIND.

The resilience of an institution helps it to survive in the most difficult time. Spirit of Collaboration and partnership are ways to excel in the testing time. Inspiring leadership brings hope in challenging times. Education and educator always take us to the winning path. Innovation, technology, terminology, and pedagogy matter in testing times