MICA concludes a 2-day Faculty Development Program for educators to enhance their classroom experience

MICA aims at making the education more immersive for Millennials and Gen Z

BILKULONLINE

Ahmedabad, April 25: Understanding the challenges educators face today in dealing with the Millennials and Gen Z, MICA Ahmedabad recently concluded a two-day Faculty Development Program (FDP) for educators from across the state.

The FDP titled ‘Innovations in Teaching Pedagogy: for Higher Engagement with Millennials and Gen Z’ in collaboration with the Centre for Learning and Innovative Pedagogies (CLIP), aimed to share innovations in teaching pedagogy such that the classroom experience becomes absorbing and immersive for students, especially Millennials and Gen Z.

The program’s instructors, Prof. Subrat Sarangi, Prof. Falguni Vasavada Oza, and Prof. Suresh Malodia, exposed the participants to various pedagogical innovations like using simulations and customized case designs, social media techniques and adoption of technology, i.e., Chat GPT, Metaverse and many more.

A total of 26 participants from different educational institutes like GLS University, Marwadi University Rajkot, BK School of Professional Management, KSKV Kachchh University, L M College of Pharmacy, Karnavati University, JECRC University Jaipur attended the two-day program on MICA campus.

On this occasion,  Prof. Subrat Sarangi, Co-Chair of the Leadership Management Development Program (LMDP) at MICA said, “The FDP took a middle path between critical pedagogy (for Gen Z) and traditional pedagogy (for Millennials) as the objective is to prepare students of Gen Z to work with Millennials as managers (in most cases), and there is a huge behavioral gap between the two generations. We addressed this by bringing in tech applications to reduce cases to caselets, introducing self-learning quizzes on reading materials, and sharing abridged versions of reading material through usage of Chat GPT.

He added, “To retain students’ attention spans, immersive applications through metaverse-led interventions and gaming simulations on cloud or board games were also demonstrated. This shall be the next practice in teaching pedagogy for social sciences in the days to come.”

Sharing insights on the challenges faced by educators today, Prof. Falguni Vasavada Oza, Co-chair of the LMDP at MICA, said, “Teaching and engaging with today’s Gen Z and Millenials is a real challenge with their short attention spans, focused social media lives, and friendliness towards the audio-visual world. These students have tasted things in motion as early as their first year on earth and hence find text-heavy or monotonous talks boring. Addressing all these issues with relevant solutions was the focus of the FDP at MICA.”

The program gave the participants the skills and knowledge required to become successful and effective educators for higher engagement with Gen Z and Millennials.

The institutes’ official release stated: This is an endeavor on MICAs part to share its experience and learn from the larger teaching ecosystem to bring an immersive experience for the students in the classroom.

Dr. Mehal Pandya, Associate Professor at BK School of Professional and Management Studies while sharing his experience said, “This workshop was worth attending. I will apply all these techniques in my teaching, hoping my students will also enjoy it. MICA should organise more such workshops.

The instructors at MICA helped me summarize case studies and deliver them along with concepts and illustrations in a manner that would help me finish the syllabus in time.”

Sharing his experience, Dr. Belur Baxi, Assistant Professor at GLS University, said, “This was a much-needed program for teachers dealing with hyperactive students with short attention spans. We discussed and deliberated teaching philosophy and navigated the world of Metaverse. For me, the most important aspect was to learn how to modify and make case studies relevant for 2023 catering to students with less patience.”