10 steps to excel in

professional fisheries education

Prof.M.J.Modayil

© mohanjosephmodayil 2011

Why Good Teaching is

important?

Good teaching leads to good learning, good

skills, good understanding, good analysis, good

application, good research and good thinking

DO WE HAVE ALL THESE IN OUR

STUDENTS WHO PASS OUT EVERY YEAR ?

Are we producing stereotypes

form a teaching machine?

1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s

Where do our students

find opportunities?

What is the market value of our

students?

Are they globally competitive and

employable?

Where is the rainbow ?

What can be done to produce

the best fisheries manpower talent?

How do we make the students passing out from our

colleges professionally skilled and competent,

employable and globally competitive ?

Some statistics

Institutions

• 18 fisheries colleges

• 2 fisheries universities

• 1 deemed university

9/16/2015 MODAYIL 6

Annual outputs

• 570 bachelors degree

• 250 Masters degree

• 93 Ph.Ds

Performance in NET

All Agricultural

disciplines

85 % from 4 ICAR

Deemed Universities

and 10 SAUs

15% from all other

SAUs and UGC

Universities

9/16/2015 MODAYIL 7

Fisheries disciplines

100 % from 3 SAUs

&

1 ICAR DU (CIFE)

Cut off marks for pass: 40 % for UR, 35 % for reserved.

Pass % = 23.8 %

• 4 ICAR DUs – 39 %

• 10 top SAUs – 39%

• The rest of SAUs – 15 %

• UGC Univ. – 7 %

9/16/2015 MODAYIL 8

Performance in ARS

10 STEPS TO EXCEL

1. INFRASTRUCTURE

2. FACULTY STRENGTH &

SPECIALIZATION

3. DELIVERY OF TEACHING

4. EVALUATIONS

5. STUDENT RESEARCH

6. STAFF RESEARCH

7. MENTORING & FIP

8. LINKAGES & EXCHANGES

9. BENCHMARKING & ACCREDITATION

10. TQM AND GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS

9/16/2015 MODAYIL 9

Infrastructure

• Essential infrastructure

– well equipped laboratories

– Experimental hatcheries

– Functional farm, nursery ponds

– Post harvest processing equipments, cold storage

facilities

– Engineering workshop for craft and gear

– Computer lab, internet facilities for students

– Facilities for swimming classes

– Minimal recreational and hostel facilities 9/16/2015 MODAYIL 10

Faculty strength & specializations • Faculty specialization, number and competence

• Specialized teachers in all core disciplines

• Aquaculture, Fisheries Resource Management, Post Harvest

Technology, Fish Nutrition, Fish Health, Fish Genetics &

Breeding.

• it is very important that Ph.Ds in these disciplines are available

as faculty

• A unified faculty structure is to be adopted by all colleges.

• In my understanding most colleges are functioning with only

< 50% faculty

• Critical mass of faculty to be ensured in all colleges

• The present practice of offering a course through guest lectures

must stop forthwith 11

Delivery of Teaching

• A handful of faculty members offer the full range of subjects in

the UG and PG levels.

• Non fisheries faculty who have no understanding of fish offering

fisheries courses

• Old notes are recycled and even dictated

• There is no teaching, only ppt presentations !

• Some courses are ‘offered’ during study tours through guest

lectures in the visiting institutions

• Students do not get hands-on experience in the practical

classes; they simply watch a demonstration

• Instead of teaching, reading assignments are given in PG

• Most colleges do not have lecture outlines, laboratory manuals,

question bank, schedule of classes and topics 9/16/2015 MODAYIL 12

Evaluations • Almost in all colleges, QP is set from old question papers.

As a result most questions are repeated often and known

to students

• No effort is spared to make a “balanced’ question paper

where the subject area is fully covered, the three difficulty

levels are adequately distributed and jumbled, the balance

between the topics is well maintained, new knowledge,

analysis, synthesis, reasoning and application are all

tested with equal weightage

• Workshops on question paper methodologies and question

paper setting, teaching methods, evaluations etc. are

unheard of. But teachers scramble for workshops on

climate change, global warming, biotechnology and

livelihoods! 13

Student research

• The topic of research comes out of wishful thinking in any area,

irrespective of the specialization of the teacher.

• I have seen teachers ‘guiding’ students on topics in which the

teacher has no knowledge, competence or publications.

• Much of the student research is ‘cut and paste’ work which are

sent to close friends of the teacher and in a few days the

evaluation report, always highly complimented, arrives.

• There is no guidance, monitoring, reviews or proper

discussions. I am yet to see a thesis rejected by an external

examiner.

• If such wonderful research is being done in our DU and

colleges, why such works have not made any visible outcome or

impact in the fisheries and aquaculture scenario ?

9/16/2015 MODAYIL 14

Staff research

• The concept of scientist-teacher in the agricultural education is

that every teacher is also a scientist in his area of Ph.D.

specialization and s/he will continue to do research in that area

to generate new knowledge as well as keep abreast with latest

research elsewhere and pass on these to the students.

Unfortunately, this is not happening.

• Teachers take up external research projects only for procuring

equipments, laptop, travel funds

• In that process, they migrate to areas where they have no basic

qualification or expertise, but still manage to get funds from

agencies. They even guide students in those areas !

• The faculty should be allowed to take up research only in his/her

area of specialization and the student community should benefit

from the research methodologies, data, results, analysis and

inferences

Mentoring & FIP

• Every professional discipline needs training before

practicing, but teaching in university needs no training !

• Teaching is an art and science and the required skills are

to be acquired through mentoring !

• In-house teacher mentoring to be made mandatory to

improve

• National workshops/summer school on teaching

methodologies must be thought of by ICAR

• HRD funds must be used for teacher mentoring and not for

research tourism as at present

• Teaching methodology workshops must be organized

during semester breaks by inviting skilled teachers 9/16/2015 MODAYIL 16

Linkages, exchanges

• Most institutions work in isolation

• There is no intellectual exchange

• Invited faculty lectures from other fisheries colleges are

rare

• All 20 fisheries teaching institutions must form a

network and share the intellectual capital and skills

they own through exchange faculty lectures

• Both students and faculty will gain from experiencing

new blood

9/16/2015 MODAYIL 17

Benchmarking & accreditation

• Accreditation by ICAR and benchmarking need to be

revisited with clarity and objectivity

• The present benchmarking standards are inadequate and

skewed

• Financial support from ICAR should be linked to certain cut

off points

• A highly skilled and empowered committee should visit all

20 institutions and benchmark using new indices.

• If this is given priority and done in a time frame, further

deterioration can be reduced

• It is also worthwhile looking at the UGC pattern and

standards of accreditation / rating.

•

9/16/2015 18

TQM and Global Competitiveness

• There are no attempts for TQM

• As long as students do not go on strike, all are happy

• How many VCs or Deans sit in a class at least once in a

semester and observe the delivery of subject matter?

• Most institutions keep away from others for fear of being

exposed of their weakness

• The poor employability of their products is indicative of their

national and global competitiveness

• The objective of making the upcoming genre of fisheries

professionals globally competitive, can be achieved only by

a complete and drastic revamping of the entire fisheries

education processes followed presently.

9/16/2015 19

Way forward

• We need to recognize the urgent need to upstream our

fisheries education.

• A central quality assurance mechanism on the line of

the Veterinary Council of India (VCI) is the need of the

day.

• Guidelines and quality standards for the fisheries

education needs to be fixed for quality assurance in

all areas of fisheries education

• I hope that this august body will appreciate the

importance of this initiative and take a positive and

creative outlook for future 9/16/2015 MODAYIL 20

For more information: mohanjosephmodayil@gmail.com