Overview
This fund is being created to establish a 21st Century Skills Classroom at Pilani Campus. The proposed classroom would be a hub for Technology-enabled Collaborative Learning across courses and programs. The fund is aiming to raise an amount of Rs. 50 Lakhs, required to modify an existing classroom to a 21st Century skills classroom. In the next 2 years, we intend to modify 10 classrooms to become equipped for the new pedagogy.
Need
This fund is being created to establish a 21st Century Skills Classroom at Pilani Campus. The proposed classroom would be a hub for Technology-enabled Collaborative Learning across courses and programs. The fund is aiming to raise an amount of Rs. 50 Lakhs, required to modify an existing class of the biggest challenges for the 21st century educators is effective engagement with students. For BITS Pilani, this problem compounds due to no requirement of a minimum attendance for a student to appear in the exam – the so-called zero attendance.
Moreover, since the modern age learners have a vast pool of learning resources available at their disposal, 21st century educators need to continuously redefine their identity as teachers in order to remain relevant and effective as teachers. Another big challenge for the educators is to maximize students learning, plus enhance their learning in the higher cognitive domains.
sroom to a 21st Century skills classroom. In the next 2 years, we intend to modify 10 classrooms to become equipped for the new pedagogy.
Concept
The 21st Century Skill Classroom is a technology-enabled learning space equipped with the following infrastructure:
- Cloud-based interactive whiteboards which allow students to work, do assignments in groups/teams, even when they are not physically present in the class
- Digital clickers for taking polls, conducting assessments, providing immediate feedback to students to facilitate self or group learning, improving the efficacy of teaching
- Circular tables and revolving chairs to foster the working of students in teams
Through the proposed classroom, we wish to focus on three main areas of learning – student engagement, students’ mastery of content, and students’ all-round growth.
Benefits
World over, such classrooms are known to provide following benefits. We intend to further research the impact on learning outcomes, under the Teaching Learning Centre at BITS.
- Enabling students to learn by doing and develop deeper understanding of concepts
- Improving students in-class engagement and increasing their out-of-class engagement
- Establish stress-free and co-operative as opposed to competitive learning
- Promoting assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning
- Conduct research in the area of teaching-learning to investigate the efficacy of new pedagogy
- Conduct faculty development program for faculty members of colleges in and around Rajasthan
The 21st Century Skills is a key in fulfilling the highest goals of education - preparing individuals to become free thinkers, compassionate human beings, and responsible citizens in addition to being successful professionals.
Beneficiaries
We estimate every year, 1000 students across programs and courses to benefit from this lab. The pedagogy of any on-campus courses can be modified to be delivered in the proposed classroom.
Additionally, such a technology-enabled learning space can become a hub of innovating in teaching-learning. Faculty members interested in pursuing research in the field of teaching-learning may benefit immensely from the possibility of experimentation in classrooms using active and collaborative learning.
Naming Rights
Shall you, individually, as a group of Individual, batch or a corporate provide the entire cost of creating a 21st Century Skills classroom, we would be pleased to provide naming rights on the classroom for your contribution. Detailed break-up of the lab is available here (the cost break up will be uploaded and link would be given).
Contribution Amount
We welcome any amount of contribution, and we are thankful for your gracious support to the BITS students. All contributions to BITS Pilani are 100% exempt from Tax under Section 80G.
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