Jamia Millia Islamia to conduct programme to equip faculty with online teaching tools

The Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) will be carrying out an online development programme for faculty members to equip them with online teaching tools during the 21-day lockdown. The varsity's vice-chancellor on Wednesday wrote to faculty members about organising a seven-session JMI-Online Faculty Development (JMI-OFDP) for all faculty members of the university.

"In order to share experiences of faculty members for identifying the best practices for online teaching-learning process and capacity building of a large number of faculty members of the university, I have decided to organise a seven-session JMI-Online Faculty Development (JMI-OFDP) for the benefit of all faculty members of the university," the letter said.

The novel coronavirus (COVID - 19) pandemic has necessitated the complete lockdown in the country, she said in the letter, adding that colleges and universities are compelled to discontinue face-to-face teaching-learning.

Under these circumstances, the university may have to think, evolve and facilitate alternative ways of engaging with students through online teaching-learning, she said. While stressing such an engagement is desirable for academic continuity and for the social and emotional health of the students, she said a large number of teachers are already doing their bit to engage their students.

She said teachers are already teaching in an online mode using a wide variety of tools and technologies available. "Some of you are using WhatsApp group/broadcast, Instagram and other social media platforms for lecturing and delivering the online content; many of you are emailing the links of the learning materials in the forms of videos/lectures/slides identified and selected from a wide variety of open source resources, learning portals, YouTube etc; quite a few of you are using Google Classroom for the purpose," she said.

She also said some professors are also using interactive tools like Skype, Zoom, Cisco Webcast, Google Hangouts, Google Meets and Google Chat etc, to engage students.

At the institutional level, Jamia Millia Islamia has activated online learning facilitation tools through Google Suite and it is now possible that faculty members can open accounts on Google Hangouts, Google Meets and Google Classroom, the letter said. The university library has enabled remote access to a wide variety of subscribed and Open Educational Resources (OERS), she said. The varsity had suspended classes on March 13 in view of the coronavirus threat.