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In this paper, we present a system for automatic evaluation of the quality of a question paper. Question paper plays a major role in educational assessment. The quality of a question paper is crucial to fulfilling the purpose of the assessment. In many education sectors, question papers are prepared manually. A prior analysis of a question paper might help in finding the errors in the question paper, and better achieving the goals of the assessment. In this experiment, we focus on higher education in the technical domain. First, we conducted a student survey to identify the key factors that affect the quality of a question paper. The top factors we identified are question relevance, question difficulty, and time requirement. We explored the strategies to handle these factors and implemented them. We employ various concepts and techniques for the implementation. The system finally assigns a numerical quality score against these factors. The system is evaluated using a set of question papers collected from various sources. The experimental results show that the proposed system is quite promising.

It is generally perceived that a substantial number of engineering faculty are still unaware of alternative educational methods, and many who are aware of them choose not to incorporate them into their approach to teaching. There are several likely reasons for this inertia, aside from the inevitable human resistance to change. The primary focus of imparting information is restricted to fulfilling the course requirements and, the upcoming term end examination. It is imperative to adopt a change from teaching to learning paradigm engaging the students in Higher Order Thinking Skills. Knowledge and technological advancements are changing the role of engineering and engineering faculty in the society. Engineering Education reforms need to focus on inductive teaching and stimulated learning. Students should be taught critical thinking skills and creative thinking skills to keep pace with the rapidly changing engineering profession. This paper reports the study done to test and explore the faculty awareness of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in the cognitive domain and Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) and to evaluate question papers set by engineering faculty with respect to HOTS as proposed by Bloom's Taxonomy. Various active learning strategies to enhance critical thinking skills and creative thinking skills of the students are recommended for use by the faculty in their interactions with the students.

Despite having one of the largest and fastest-growing post-secondary sectors in the world, there has been increasing protest against the lack of academic freedom within HEIs in India in the past decade. This research study carries out a comparative analysis of academic freedom within HEIs in India and the U.S., with a specific focus on how the notion is formulated within key policy documents and the provisions to safeguard it. Preliminary data from the systematic review revealed that while policy documents within both the countries frame the notion along similar lines, various sections within the Indian Penal Code are used to criminalize useful dissent and freedom of expression within HEIs. The study recommends that in order to safeguard academic freedom in India, certain specific sections within the Indian Penal Code (Section 124A, Section-153A, Section-292, Section-295A) should be either repealed or reformulated so that they are not amenable to misuse by the government.

This paper presents a comprehensive review of existing literature concerning the domains of accreditation and quality assurance in various sectors. Accreditation and quality assurance play vital roles in ensuring the credibility, transparency, and effectiveness of educational institutions, healthcare facilities, industries, and other domains. This paper synthesizes the findings of numerous studies, focusing on the conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and outcomes associated with accreditation and quality assurance processes. The review encompasses a wide range of perspectives, including historical context, best practices, challenges, and advancements in accreditation and quality assurance. Through a systematic analysis of these scholarly works, this paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of the evolving landscape of accreditation and quality assurance across diverse sectors and shed light on potential future research directions.

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 of India reframed the present structure of higher education such as syllabi, examinations, and assessments. Due to the pandemic, many educational and research institutions are building a knowledge and skill-based curriculum and designing new credit-based courses, while encouraging students to attend online courses as a way to meet the recommendations of NEP. Any e-learning platform or online course has four basic components: Videos, Activities, Additional Reading Material, and Discussions, with Additional Reading Material being a more important component. Online courses that are open to everyone (MOOCs) can be adopted irrespective of the students' specialization or area. The instructor provides the reading material to the learners as a fixed, recommended list irrespective of the learner's interest or specialization. Instructors are finding it difficult to cater to the diversity of learners' interests and learning styles. In this paper, I have focused and analyzed the additional reading material and digital reading patterns of learners in various MOOC platforms by conducting online surveys. I concluded that there is a need to use learning eXtension Trajectories (LxT) in the learner-centric MOOC model where an instructor can identify various supportive domains and provide a shortened list of resources comprising various media to the learners.

Alphabet-based languages are more often researched in literacy acquisition and education than akshara languages. Languages that use alphasyllabaries including symbols, called aksharas, represent a large portion of the world's languages, including the languages of the second most populous country, India. This conceptual research paper addresses teacher education in literacy related to the akshara languages. Using the theory and research base of existing letter and akshara acquisition, with teacher education standards for literacy in alphabet-based languages, this paper presents a model for teacher education in literacy for akshara languages. This framework provides teacher education standards and other considerations, such as evaluation of teacher education curriculum and performance, to enable data-based decision making in literacy instruction. The premise of this paper is to approach the problem of dismal literacy rates by drawing into the robust research in alphabetic language literacy education by using a systematic approach to target the source -- pre-service teacher education. While this paper addresses examples of languages in India, other transparent orthographies that use symbols or aksharas can draw from this to inform their teacher education in literacy.

The present paper studied the various issues and challenges of student's assessment that has been faced by college teachers and students of Kashmir division during COVID-19 Pandemic. Assessment is the major aspect of the education system. The student assessment is the act of evaluating student's abilities and achievements. It is ongoing process and integral part of the teaching and learning process. The teacher makes judgments about the students learning or to determine student's interest through assessment. It helps the teacher to reflect on each student's level of achievement as well as to customize their teaching plans accordingly. After COVID-19 Pandemic the student assessment has been shifted more to the online assessment. The teachers have faced lot of issues due to lack of access of internet and technology. In every sphere of education there is a great impact of technology on the students learning that has been done after COVID-19. The present study was descriptive- survey based study. Both primary and secondary sources of data were collected. For the secondary sources of data the investigator had reviewed various national and international papers related with the present study. The sample comprised of 400 college students and 400 teachers from various degree colleges of Kashmir Division. Self- developed interview schedule and self-constructed were used for the data collection. The investigator has conducted a group interview of 10 college's students and 10 teachers separately that constituted of 80 interviews. On the bases of these 80 group interviews the researcher developed themes of all interviews and analyzed all these into specific themes. The investigator suggested some recommendations for improving the better assessment of students through remote learning. The study indicated that there are major six challenges in the context of online assessment i.e., lack of internet connection, language problem, parental attitude, mental disturbance, heavy work load and inaccessibility of smarts phones.

The competency-based undergraduate medical curriculum in the preclinical years requires clinical topics to be taught using a linker clinical case for students to appreciate the clinical application of basic sciences. The objective of this study was to evaluate student and faculty satisfaction regarding the construct and delivery of an aligned and integrated curriculum that involved the use of linker clinical cases. We aimed at evaluating the perceptions and performance of students when paper cases were supplemented with a simulated patient (SP) video. This interventional study was conducted by inviting 250 medical students from the first professional phase from the 2020-2021 batch. Integrated modules were prepared for two clinical conditions: myocardial infarction (MI) and nephrotic syndrome (NS). The topic NS was taught with a paper-based case while the topic MI was supplemented with an SP video. Feedback from students and faculty was collected using a newly developed and validated questionnaire and focused group discussions. The students performed significantly better in the assessment conducted after the topic MI compared to NS. The majority of the students (80%) expressed a preference for the video to understand the clinical relevance when compared to the paper case. Overall, the students (83-87%) expressed satisfaction with integrated teaching sessions using clinical cases. Using linker clinical cases in an aligned and integrated preclinical curriculum allowed students to interrelate the subjects and apply them to clinical contexts. The SP videos prepared from an authentic setting facilitated learner engagement with a better understanding of the clinical relevance of the basic sciences.

Intercultural Perspectives on Information Literacy and Metaliteracy (IPILM) is a discourseoriented learning environment that engages students from diverse cultural backgrounds to participate in collaborative knowledge construction. The objective is to evolve a thematic approach to course design that includes elements of open pedagogy, information literacy, and metaliteracy. IPILM invites participation from educators and learners from around the world and has witnessed an increase in participating countries. This paper describes the concept of IPILM and demonstrates the implementation of this approach in practice. The initiative was well received by students and is both feasible and sustainable as an intercultural learning endeavor. IPILM is an ongoing project and a work in progress that is an adaptable model which may be transferred to disparate fields of teaching and learning or adopted by international communities of instructors.

Within the spirit of conspiration, this article brings together contributions from participants of the PhD-led UCL Reading and React Group 'Colonialism(s), Neoliberalism(s) and Language Teaching and Learning', which ran in 2019/20. Weaving together various perspectives, the article centres on the dialogic nature of the decolonial enterprise and challenges the colonial concept of monologic authorial voice. Across the reflections on participants' own engagements with questions of decolonising language teaching and learning, we pull together three threads: the inherent coloniality of the concepts that shape the very disciplines we seek to decolonise; the need to place decolonial efforts within broader contexts and to be sceptical of projects claiming to have completed the work of decolonising language teaching and learning; and the affordances and limitations offered to us by our positionalities, which the reflexivity of the conspirational encounter has allowed us to explore in some depth. The article closes with a reflection on the process of writing this article, and with the assertion that decolonising the curriculum is a multifaceted and open-ended process of dialogue and conspiration between practitioners and researchers alike.

The study aims to understand the foremost challenges in the transition to online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study adopts the PRISMA approach to screening the selection of journal articles and review papers according to the research aims and the inclusion criteria. The journal articles and review papers were extracted and stored in Microsoft Excel and Google Scholar, Academic. Microsoft, Semantic Scholar, Elsevier, and Emerald Insight databases searched relevant documents using formulated keywords. A statistical technique was applied using the M.S. Excel analysis tool (PivotTable and an independent t-Test) to analyze data and determine the differences between teachers and students. The review revealed the evidence that the majority of the studies were primarily focused on the individual developing countries and results from other developing countries were not considered. In addition, the foremost challenges in the transition to online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic were inadequate skills and training, inadequate Internet/Infrastructure, lack of supporting resources and lack of online student engagement and feedback. Finally, the independent t-test reveals there is no statistically significant difference in challenges in the transition to online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both teachers and students encounter similar challenges. The systematic review raised concerns that higher learning needs to effectively implement long term strategies and support teachers and students in getting into online teaching and learning.

The higher education efficiency evaluation model using the data envelopment analysis method has interested many researchers. This paper uses bibliometric analysis on publications extracted from the Scopus database to provide a comprehensive overview of research publications on the measurement of higher education efficiency based on data envelopment analysis: its growth rate, major collaboration networks, the most important and popular research topic. A total of 169 related publications were collected and analyzed from 1988 to 2021. The analysis results show that: Publications published every year have increased sharply in the last six years; The quality of publications is relatively high as publications tend to be published in journals with high-ranking indexes; Countries with the most influence in studies on this topic are: Italy, China, Spain, the USA, and the United Kingdom; Authors with the most influence in this research direction are Agasisti T., Abbott M., Doucouliagos C., Avkiran N.K., and Johnes J.; The research cooperation among countries and among affiliations is not strong. Finally, the paper has provided recommendations for future studies based on the findings.

Concept maps help detect misconceptions and provide revision exercises to assess comprehension once a topic has been introduced. A concept map is a schematic drawing used to show the connection among the concepts in propositional form. A concept map is a helpful tool for illustrating the relationships between main concepts and sub-concepts. The main objective of the study was to identify misconceptions about the human digestive system among higher secondary students using concept maps. The data was collected from higher secondary students XI class students) (N = 388) with the help of students' preliminary concept maps and researcher-made concept map tools. Findings of the study showed that secondary school students hold misconceptions related to the human digestive system, i.e. few (22.68%) students have misconceptions such as 'Human Digestive System is the process by which hard food is converted into simple diffusible assimilable nutrients', few (19.32%) students have misconceptions such as 'Alimentary Canal starts with the throat," etc. The present paper will help use concept maps for the identification and remediation of students' misconceptions.

The COVID-19 pandemic is redefining the practices of higher education in an unprecedented way. E-learning can guarantee the right to higher education during the pandemic to the students of higher education and hence its adoption in teaching learning is now inevitable. The readiness of higher education faculty members towards E-learning is explored in this paper. The paper also presents about the impact of demographic factors (Age, Gender and Discipline) as predictors variables and the influence of their interaction on the criterion variable i.e., E-learning readiness. A self-developed inventory was used to collect the data about E-learning readiness of faculty members. Seven research hypotheses were framed and tested using 4 X 2 X 3 Factorial Design ANOVA. The findings revealed that there is a need to improve the E-learning readiness of faculty members of higher education. Also, it was discovered that there is no significant difference in the mean scores of E-learning readiness of faculty members with respect to their Age, Gender and Discipline to which they belong. Further it is also observed that the second order interaction effect among the Age, Gender and Discipline has a significant influence on E-learning readiness of faculty members of higher education.

In the Indian higher education (HE) setting, what 'academic freedom' of students and faculty members constitutes has not been discussed in detail. As a result, many faculty members and students have discerned 'academic freedom' as freedom from external control and influence. It is noticed that faculty members and students are often misinterpreting and misconstruing the concept of 'academic freedom' as 'legal freedom' and confused it with 'civil and political rights'. This creates a hurdle to achieve the aims and objectives of Indian HE institutions. Against this backdrop, the paper discusses the concept of 'academic freedom' and its importance in the higher education setting. It examines the relationship between 'academic freedom' and 'university autonomy' in the Indian context. It discusses the HE institution's social responsibilities concerning the notion of 'academic freedom'. It delineates faculty member's and student's academic freedom in the Indian higher education setting. It submits that 'academic freedom' is not to be treated as 'legal freedom'. But it is an essential requisite for quality teaching-learning activities, productive and rewarding research works in higher education. The paper adopts a qualitative methodology that subsumes descriptive, evaluative, and interpretative approaches to derive its conclusion.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] We present the pedagogical design and implementation of "ESSENCe": Experimental problem solving using Staging, Scaffolding, Embedded information sources, iNstruments, and Collaboration. Research in experimental physics requires problem-solving skills that include designing investigations, developing instrumentation techniques, troubleshooting, planning data analysis, and evaluating experimental outcomes. Most of these skills can be taught at the undergraduate level but are unfortunately skipped in traditional cookbook-recipe style labs. Since many physics experiments require electronics, the ESSENCe pedagogy presented here has been developed in the context of undergraduate electronics laboratory courses. The goals of ESSENCe labs are to help students apply their theoretical knowledge of electronics to hands-on open-ended experiments, understand properties of physical systems and limitations of measurements, and to learn how to work with sophisticated instruments used in experimental research. ESSENCe emphasizes collaboration with peers and teaching assistants. This paper presents the results of ESSENCe implementation in a sophomore undergraduate analog electronics lab of 45--60 students over multiple years in a top-ranked technological university in India. A mixed methods study was conducted to analyze students' development of experimental problem-solving skills through repeated measures of performance on experimental tests and video analysis of students working on the experiments. We found statistically significant improvement in students' experimental problem-solving skills over the course of a semester. The study also analyzed students' perceptions about the benefits and challenges of the open-ended collaborative lab.

Purpose: This paper presents the features and relevance of open distance learning in the context of the socio-economic conditions of people living in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in India. Although the primary purpose of the present study was to ascertain the effectiveness of the learner support services (LSSs) and different facilities offered by the open distance learning (ODL) institutions in that specific region. On the basis of these findings, few suggestions are made for the improvement in the support services, in order to make the ODL system more responsive to the area-specific needs of the learners, especially those residing in inaccessible areas such as J&K. Design/methodology/approach: A survey-based descriptive methodology was applied to conduct this study. The data extracted from primary and secondary sources were analysed to reach certain conclusions. In total, 1,200 distance learners constituted the sample of the research. A semi-structured questionnaire was designed and distributed amongst learners and academics in the region to obtain their feedback and opinion on different aspects of support services and facilities offered to ODL learners. Findings: Results of the study revealed that overall, the LSSs were satisfactory on different parameters, although they slightly varied from institution to institution. However, there was still scope for improvement in certain areas, where institutions further need to make serious efforts to address the identified gaps for improving the LSS and make teaching-learning more learner-centric in view of their specific requirements and local circumstances of J&K. Research limitations/implications: The present study focusses on presenting an overview of the only major components of LSS offered by ODL institutions and covers six distance education institutions (DEIs) located in different geographical locations within the limited jurisdiction of J&K. There is still scope to make focused (institution-wise) studies in a more specific situation and context to ascertain the problems in a more realistic way. Practical implications: Although the study has been conducted in a specific territory of J&K, the findings reported in the paper may be equally useful for the other ODL institutions with similar characteristics or located in similar geographical locations, as support services are essential common components of institutions offering distance education programmes or courses. Originality/value: The study is original research work conducted in the specific context of J&K, and its findings are based on the primary and secondary data collected from learners and other stakeholders of the selected ODL institutions. This work may be significant for the DEIs of J&K to get familiar with the essential components of LSS and develop a mechanism to further improve the academic and administrative support services for distance learners.

Purpose: The study aims to validate a mobile learning readiness scale through the technology readiness and acceptance model (TRAM), thereby assessing students' readiness to adopt m-learning in teaching and learning, including its acceptance. Design/methodology/approach: A structured questionnaire was administered to open and distance learning (ODL) students in Odisha, India, to assess their readiness and acceptance of m-learning. 665 valid responses were collected, and collected data was analysed using statistical packages for social sciences (SPSS) and SmartPLS. Findings: The findings of the study reveal that optimism contributes positively to perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) of m-learning ([beta] = 7.921, p < 0.001; [beta] = 2.123, p < 0.05), whereas innovativeness positively contributes to PEOU of m-learning ([beta] = 2.227, p < 0.05), but not PU of m-learning. ODL student's optimism improves his/her PEOU and PU of m-learning, but innovativeness improves only his/her PEOU. Further, the impact of innovativeness is higher than that of optimism in the TRAM and innovativeness is the strong predictor to adopt m-learning. It also shows that the PU of m-learning positively influences behavioural intention to use m-learning ([beta] = 4.757, p < 0.001). Integrating technology readiness (TR) with technology acceptance model (TAM) to predict students' acceptance of m-learning is very useful. Practical implications: The paper will help decision-makers to adopt and use m-learning in higher educational institutions. Originality/value: This paper is the first to explore the readiness and acceptance of m-learning in higher education in India.