As we know that the Covid-19 outbreak has changed the way the world used to live and work. The pandemic has caused greater adoption of the technology, especially in the Education sector. With this thought, IQAC at MRIIRS successfully organized the Virtual Quality Conclave-2021 recently to deliberate on how to maintain Quality in Education through the change in Education Dynamics around the world due to this pandemic. 

The inaugural session was graced and blessed by Prof. (Dr.) Sanjay Srivastava (Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor, MRIIRS), Prof. (Dr.) Naresh Grover (Hon’ble Pro Vice-Chancellor and Chief Mentor IQAC, MRIIRS) and Dr. V. K. Mahna (Professor Emeritus and Advisor IQAC, MRIIRS) with a welcome note by Dr. Rashima Mahajan (Director IQAC, MRIIRS).  

During the inaugural session, Prof. (Dr.) Sanjay Srivastava beautifully explained the ways to inculcate Quality with the correlations of Sattva Gun and Rajo Gun.  He emphasized on the need to deliberate on Student Centric Models to have focused learning by involving students in the Quality work. The paradigm shift scenarios before and after Covid were also touched upon with the quote that technology is no longer a luxury now rather a need to implement hybrid & blended teaching and flipped classroom models, online evaluation systems along with the relevant teacher training.

Three distinguished speakers of the Conclave (Dr. Sarita Ahlawat- BIRAC_BIG Innovator at TBIU, IIT Delhi; Prof. Binod Khadria- Former Professor of Economics, Education and International Migration and Chairperson, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; and Mr. Umesh Kumar- Heading Security for one of the Central government projects. Skilled professional having 28+ years of rich experience with 8 Years in Manufacturing and 20+ Years in Cyber Security/Secure SDLC/ITSM) were formally introduced by Prof. (Dr.) Naresh Grover (PVC, MRIIRS). He also shared the marvellous journey of Manav Rachna Group with all the audiences and walked all through about the conclave and how useful it is to deliberate on the theme Quality in Education through this platform. 

The first session started with Dr. Sarita Ahlawat delivering her thoughts on ‘What does Quality Education mean for Society?’ The key message of the session was focused on investing in Quality education to nourish translational academic research leading towards technology that the people can use. The way Dr. Sarita correlated Quality Education with Product Outcome justifies the implementation of the concept of outcome-based education for sustainable developments.

The second session on ‘Transforming Paradigms of Education in Pandemic’ was delivered by Prof. Binod Khadria. He emphasized on the need of Academic Freedom for Quality Education to make the system more inclusive. The next paradigm to transform in a post-pandemic would be that of cross-disciplinary across the streams of Science, Arts and Humanities. 

The next session of the day was delivered by our third expert, Mr. Umesh Kumar on ‘Cyber Safe Education’. Due to increased technology usage in Education systems during this pandemic has also increased the vulnerability to cybercrimes. He discussed the importance of keeping yourself protected in today’s cyber world. The various security attacks were demonstrated by involving the audiences through a ‘Fastest Finger First’ game & citing other examples and sharing the multiple tips to have a strong and non-hackable password. 

The concluding remarks were shared by Dr. V. K. Mahna, Prof. (Dr.) Naresh Grover and Prof. (Dr.) Sanjay Srivastava with an emphasis on organizing more such events to deliberate on Quality. There were a total of 194 participants across the fields who were actively involved during the sessions. The sessions were coordinated by Dr. Rashima Mahajan, Ms. Nidhi Tandon and Mr. Sunny Bhatia from Team-IQAC. All the sessions were followed by the interactive Q/A rounds.