The key to success is for the mentor to be extremely generous to ensure that the mentee has all the support (s)he needs for his/her research. This includes ensuring a hassle-free research environment, administrative support and access to resources (including papers, talks and visits to conferences). Given the uncertainties in research, it is important that the mentee is guaranteed such support during his/her first few years.
I abhor the practice in which a guide is assigned to a student immediately on entering the graduate school and the guide looses no time in proposing a problem – something that unfortunately happens all too often in our universities.
A mentor-mentee relationship is a crucial one in the professional lives of both the persons. It has to be handled with utmost care and sensitivity.
It is important for a journalist to be equipped with a moral compass to have a strong discerning sense of what is right and wrong that goes beyond political propriety. Take the case of using a hidden camera. Normally it is unethical to use one, but a sting operation may be warranted in the larger public interest when it becomes legitimate, even if not necessarily legal in the strict sense.
A special issue of Dialogue carries an editorial and six papers addressing the issue of Deepening of Disciplinary Content of Public Health in Post-COVID times.
This article discusses the problems that persons with physical and cognitive challenges confront on account of exclusivist attitudes in academic institutions. It focuses in particular on the classroom situation and attempts to bring to the fore how unpreparedness of teachers and students, the absence of adaptive teaching curriculum and teaching techniques, the absence of empathy and active listening, the unavailability of access to adequate learning material can lead to alienation of the students with physical and cognitive difference which ultimately leads to their complete withdrawal.
Mentoring carries the responsibility of enabling someone to move out of debilitating circumstances; it is much more than the term that has emerged as a catchphrase in an NGO-ized women’s studies discourse—“capacity building.”
The schema of learning and teaching presents itself as a mutual experience for both the artist and the one who wants to be an artist, distinctions that are difficult to make sometimes.
The science of coping with the pandemic progressed far faster than anyone could hope for, but socio-political and cultural worlds have struggled to keep pace. Culture and politics have clashed with science, leaving everyone worse off. We are nowhere near the final chapter of this real-life drama.
The need to do college laboratory experiments in science and engineering remotely due to the COVID 19 Pandemic became necessary for the entire student community, from March 2021 onward. The Virtual Lab repository built under the NMEICT Program of the Ministry of Education, Government of India, was leveraged for use by students to do simulated experiments. The Virtual Labs made a substantial impact and was used by over 7.0M users to meet their curricular needs. This chapter describes the salient features of the impact and how this impact can be sustained through specific initiatives.
Personally, I wouldn’t say the year of teaching online has been a total loss, but I can see it has been pretty much a write off for many students who have found it impossible to engage online, partly because of technological or situational constraints, but also because they have never learned how to learn independently.
A teacher’s act of teaching is moderated by the experience of seeing the class and being-seen by the class. As teachers, we develop a fine-tuned antennae that can sense the mood of the class. We know when the students are getting bored or restless, or when they get a spark thinking through something we have said.
In an ideal situation, students should have enough choice in their educational opportunities and the freedom to recognize their skills and pursue the career that suits them the most. This is a far cry from what one sees in India.
