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Indian Education: Standpoint

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/arcanemind/indian-education-standpoint/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

Indian Education: Standpoint

Nowadays Indian education has boiled down to cram up and vomit on the paper (pun intended!). So where did this problem arise from? This didn’t happen over a night and was most definitely not conjured out of thin air by a wand swinging ‘Wizard from Hogwarts’.

This problem arose form the attitude of Indian educators towards new teaching methods and negligence of government in regulating this sector properly. This system of education was created by the, then ruling 40,000 Britishers to churn out clerks and other lower level officers to help run a country of 40 million Indians. And sadly not much has changed, except the fact that it has been turned into a money printing mint.

Once we were called ‘Jagatguru‘. How did we get ourselves demoted from being the premier education hub to minting plant? The answer is very simple, our educators neither endorse nor encourage any form of visible education reform. It’s high time we let go of that timid mentality and take some radical measures to up root this problem.

The easiest way to achieve this is via transition from traditional to project-based learning. But here are some facts to embrace from our buddy Tom Vander Arc before seriously considering this solution.

Tom says, “It’s easy to do, project-based learning it’s just hard to do it well.” Project-based learning is a great way to engage students, to encourage collaboration and creativity, and to promote authentic work and assessment. But it’s hard to:

set a high bar for high quality project deliverables;

assess projects objectively especially when they’re all

help students with low level skills engage in challenging

mitigate the free rider problem of loafing team

provide enough but not too much formative feedback and support;

avoid big knowledge gaps resulting from a string of projects.

Once we find solutions to these issues we can go and reclaim out true seat of education, and be rightfully called ‘Jagatguru‘ again.

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High-speed OPV INS Tarasa launched

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/news/ins-tarasa/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

High-speed OPV INS Tarasa launched

The last ship in the series of four Water Jet Fast Attack Crafts (WJFAC) being built by the Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Ltd(GRSE) for the Indian Navy was launched in Kolkatta on Thursday. Christened INS Tarasa, after an island in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, the ship was launched by Aruna Korde, wife of Vice Admiral Jaywant Korde, the navy’s Controller of Logistics.

INS Tarasa

An improved variant of the Car Nicobar-class high-speed offshore patrol vessels (OPVs), INS Tarasa will be fitted out at the GRSE’s Rajabagan Dockyard and handed over to the navy after sea trials.

With a 315 tonne displacement, the ship is designed for a maximum speed of 35 knots, with an endurance of nearly 2,000 nautical miles at 12-14 knots.

Powered by the latest 4,000-series MTU engines with advanced machinery control system, the ship will be fitted with CRN-91 indigenous 30mm gun with optronic pedestal and will have the latest communication equipment and radars to enable effective surveillance.

The WJFACs are ideally suited for interception of fast-moving surface craft and will perform anti-smuggling, fishery protection and search and rescue operations.

The Tarasa is the last of the “follow-on” series of the 10 Car Nicobar-class patrol vessels delivered by the GRSE to the navy.

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THE REALITY OF ED-TECH!

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/arcanemind/the-reality-of-ed-tech/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

THE REALITY OF ED-TECH!

In the modern age, every sphere has been touched by technology and education hasn’t been left behind in the process. The effort to automate processes to increase efficiency and productivity is common occurrence. The government, too, is promoting Digital India to leverage the use of technology. The inception of Ed-Tech can be traced back to a decade ago and owes its acceptance worldwide for varied reasons such as wider and faster reach, ability to cater to different learning styles, ability to keep the engagement alive, easy update of resource material, to name a few.

Although the general belief is that Ed-Tech is changing the face of education for the better and is likely to be a sustainable model of development in the area with blended teaching, tracking of student learning, advent of learning apps etc. But the more important question is, are the facilitators of education trained and ready to take aid of the fast growing changes in technology? Have they been trained enough to be able to use it to the best of its ability to transcend current learning levels?

There is no doubt that use of technology has many benefits over traditional black board methods. Slides, Smart boards, learning videos, personalized learning programs are a few examples of tools used in India. But how well have the people who are in the classroom, using technology to further education, been able to put it to its optimal use.

For example, can use of slides in the form of projection be called use of technology? Technically, Yes! But is it really helping students remember better when the same information that was on the blackboard is now projected in front of them? How does this medium of instruction motivate students to know more or ask the right questions or encourage them to study? In fact it is as easy to disengage from a projector, as it is with a blackboard.

Hence, we need to take a step back and ensure the people using technology in classrooms have been trained and are comfortable with it. Before that is done, merely using technology as a standalone solution may not reach its full potential in making children ‘Learn with Understanding’.

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India yet to bridge gaps in education: Unicef

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/news/bridge-gaps-education-unicef/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

India yet to bridge gaps in education: Unicef

An Unicef report released on Tuesday warned that, 69 million children under age five will die from mostly preventable causes, 167 million children will live in poverty, and 750 million women will have been married as children by 2030 across the globe if current trends continue.

Notably, the year 2030 has been set the target date for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The State of the World’s Children, Unicef’s annual flagship report, portrays a grim picture of what is in store for the world’s poorest children if governments, donors, businesses and international organisations do not accelerate efforts to address their needs.

“We have a choice: Invest in these children now or allow our world to become still more unequal and divided,” said Unicef Executive Director Anthony Lake.

In the Indian context, the report focused on education. It noted that India has achieved much, particularly in ensuring children’s access to school through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and implementation of the Right to Education Act.

The number of out-of-school children between 6 to 13 years has come down from approximately eight million in 2009 to six million in 2014. Yet challenges remain, it said.

Releasing the report, Unicef Representative in India Louis-Georges Arsenault said, “The early years are foundational and children who start behind stay behind.”

“There are long-term consequences, particularly for the most marginalized children, when they enter school without a quality preschool education. The gaps between disadvantaged children and other children become harder to bridge at later points in their education,” he added.

In India, the highest percentage of children not attending pre-school education is from the Muslim community (34 per cent), followed by Hindus at 25.9 per cent, the report showed.

“In India, out of the 74 million children between 3-6 years, about 20 million were not attending any preschool education in 2014, and it is the children from the poorest families and marginalised communities who are often left behind,” the report said. It also pointed out that investing in the most vulnerable children can yield immediate and long-term benefits.

“On average, each additional year of education a child receives increases his or her adult earnings by about 10 per cent. And for each additional year of schooling completed, on average, by young adults in a country, that country’s poverty rates fall by nine per cent,” it said. The release of the report saw participation of senior officials of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the Ministry of Women and Child Development, other central ministries, academics, and civil society activists.

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'Evils' of Indian education-III

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/uncategorized/evils-indian-education-3/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

'Evils' of Indian education-III

So the is the finale of this eye-opening series which helps one by enlightening them about the ‘Evils’ of Indian education. As per our last chapter we discussed the pathetic attendance of students in classes which reflects poorly on their results, which raises the question:

Why do people go get an education in India?

We are in majority poor. Most of our students get an education to earn more/ develop skills which earn them more money. But we are also a large country, which introduces this new monster – ‘Competition’. When you’re studying to get a good job and earn more money in a country which is so competitive, what happens? The following do –

1) Reliance on study guides etc. Cause study guides help me get more marks -> a better college than my competition -> better job – > More money

2) Career Selection – Go get the career which earns people more money. In our country this is being an Engineer, Doctor, Chartered Accountant and so on.

Sure I’m a good painter. The government will even open a good arts institute to train me. But are there enough people to buy my paintings? No, very few it probably won’t pay much. Let’s become an architect instead.

ATTAINMENT

The Indian education system was designed by the British rulers to create clerks to help the few thousand British administrators run a country of 40 million people. It was not designed to promote thought and encourage a culture of curiosity. As a result in most Indian schools, at least in the Public schools system, the kids do not really attain knowledge and skills commensurate with their age. There are reasons that contribute to this

The pedagogy of Indian education is boring and depends so much on being learning by rote.

The evaluations, if they happen, are focussed on a child being able to vomit out what (s)he has learnt by heart. Study of history is reduced to dates and study of language to reciting poems.

Most of the kids coming in from poorly educated households do not have the atmosphere at home to aid learning. There are no books. There is no money to pay for extra coaching, even if a kid is a slow learner and needs that support. Parents are not capable of evaluating whether the kid is learning anything.

The curriculum is designed to leave the kid with no skills or perspectives to be able to build a working life.  This is not only at the schooling level. Think about someone with a Bachelors degree; how often does this person manage to leverage what (s)he has learnt into a career? Even fresh engineers need to be retrained by their employers to make them ‘useful’.

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'Evils' of Indian Education-II

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/uncategorized/evils-indian-education-2/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

'Evils' of Indian Education-II

So we are back with the second installation of ‘Evils’ of Indian Education. To kick off this topic let’s start off with: How this pyramidal structure came to be?

Education is of quality only when the teacher is ‘vidvaan’. If professors who are experts in their domain and carry out a lot of research in addition to teaching the students, teaches at any Indian institute then:- 1) A very dynamic, ever changing, open syllabus is created 2) Passionate professors, teachers can answer most questions 3) Focus on research increases 4) Encouragement of critical thinking

So how do you get these great thinkers to teach? You pay them handsomely which their talent/knowledge deserves. But what does that do? It increases the cost of Education. But our people are poor. Can they pay a tuition to the tune of even Rs. 10-15 lakh for college education? Of course not. So the state does what it thinks best – State-Sponsored education. But now we need more state-sponsored schools because we are such a big country. What does the state do? It opens new schools but doesn’t revise teacher salaries. Now a very talented and knowledgeable teacher who teaches at the state-sponsored college suddenly finds his salary stays stagnant while the salaries in Industry keep rocketing. He doesn’t get his research grants anymore. He takes the right decision and goes to work in the industry or teach at a college abroad.

As the ratio of industry salary/teacher salary keeps increasing, the quality of people teaching at the colleges gets worse and all the problems advantages listed above start becoming problems. However, the state does one thing – it keeps funding and revising salaries/grants for some of its best institutes also called IITs/IIMs. Hello affordable good education at IIMs(not so much!).

ATTENDANCE:THE OLDER WE GROW THE LESS WE LISTEN TO WHAT PEOPLE SAY

Even if the child does get enrolled in a school, there is no guarantee that (s)he will attend. There are number of factors that keep the child away

Teachers are held accountable for enrollment, seldom for attendance; they don’t see the need to push.

The child needs to work, at home or in the family enterprise (farming, trading etc) or in another enterprise to bring in money to help feed the family.

The pedagogy is so boring and the subjects so irrelevant that no self-respecting child will be lured to stay on.

Marks/Score is all that matters: Marks have been given the prime importance in the educational system, they can make or break your career and are considered the best metric to judge the person’s knowledge on the subject. Everybody wants good marks and they can do whatever it takes to get them. A lot of books or guides are available in the market for all subjects and standards which help you score good marks. They don’t impart knowledge, they just provide you with the minimum information required to pass the test. They will help you get through, so what more should you ask for ? more marks with less effort, perfect combination for a lazy student.

Teachers are often uninterested in teaching. Their knowledge is limited. Delhi University is offering students options of quitting a 4 year diploma course in 2 years, if they want to be primary school teachers. What message are we sending? That it is all right for poorly qualified people to be primary school teachers.  Teachers are often used for all sorts of extension work by government. They are often ‘returning officers’ in elections and that makes them powerful. They are feared by the students and why would they not?

Teacher truancy – if the teacher skips classes with impunity all the time, why would the kid want to go?

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Preparing Teachers for 21st-Century Learning

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/arcanemind/teaching-with-leadership/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

Preparing Teachers for 21st-Century Learning

Whether in elementary, secondary or college classrooms, many teachers have begun using open educational resources (OER) as an integral part of day-to-day learning. However, just as no two students are the same, neither are any two teachers.

The challenge with OER is that although the concept of freely accessible, openly licensed resources has been around since 2002, different states, districts, schools and teachers have transitioned to using them at different rates–or potentially not at all. The margin is wide.

Many schools, such as the Open High School of Utah, operate by utilizing a curriculum that consists 90% of OER. The school’s founder, David Wiley, explained that content is delivered completely online and made available to students 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Utilizing personalized learning to the fullest, schools like the Open High School of Utah are pioneers in the technological shift in education. While this and similar institutions are well established and functioning effectively, not all schools are advancing at the same pace.

Paper or Technology?

According to a data report in The Journal, paper notebooks are very much a thing of the past, and school-provided technology is available at more and more institutions. The report findings show that:

In 2014, 33% of all high-school students used school-issued mobile devices.

Additionally, 66% of middle- and high-school students had access to a laptop.

An average of 56% of both groups had access to tablets.

Largely, this technology is providing the majority of students in these age brackets with the ability to access information through online portals. However, much lower percentages of students are using this technology to read online textbooks or watch teacher-created videos.

How are teachers being developed to use educational technology in a way that best supports a student’s ability to learn?

Assuming that teachers have begun utilizing technology, determining exactly how to do so can quickly produce a new barrier. The struggle to find ideal OER to use in the classroom was once an issue because of the limited number of resources available, and while this issue should phase itself out as more and more resources become available, the struggle then morphs into a new issue: OER can be overwhelming.In a perfect world, when a teacher identifies a gap that a new resource could fill, the creation of a new resource could solve the problem.

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'Evils' of Indian education-I

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/uncategorized/evils-indian-education-1/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

'Evils' of Indian education-I

Political Science is about cooking and the most reactive element in the periodic table is “aluminium”. If you netizens haven’t heard those words then you have been living under a rock. Those are excerpts from videos of shocking gaffes by Humanities topper, Ruby Rai, and Science topper, Saurabh Shrestha, the stars of Indian education system.

For a country that supposedly is the world’s fastest-growing major economy with 15-24-year-olds making up more than 35% of the adult population, manpower can be the make or break factor. By 2020, the average age in India will be 29 and it is set to become the world’s youngest country with 64% of its population in the working age group. If this population doesn’t have the requisite skilled human resource, growth cannot be sustained. If the quality of Indian education continues to follow this same path then those dreaded days are not far off.

So what could be reason for those inevitable situations to have arisen? Quoting Mr. Makarand Sahasrabuddhe, one of the top writer’s on Quora :-

There are three broad issues affecting quality of Indian education. They are:-

Access: ‘As a nation, we are a very big country where majority of the people are poor’

A large number of school going children are not even able to access schools; note I am not saying good schools just schools. There are many reasons for this

Poor infrastructure – few schools especially in rural and remote tribal areas. Those that are there have poor classrooms, no compounds, no latrines and no drinking water facilities.

Parents are not certain about the safety of the girl child travelling to school even if it is only 1/2 km away from home.

Apparently simple issues like the need to cross a highway / stream on the way to school keeps kids away.

There is a pyramidical structure as one goes from primary schools up to universities.The system is designed to squeeze out students at each stage (secondary, higher secondary, under graduation, post graduation etc) simply because there are not enough seats available. For some strange reason, education planners have always felt that primary education is enough.

  Even if accessibility to education is made easier then there are other hindrances to consider. Stay tuned for our next part.

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NIAT celebrates Diamond Jubilee

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/news/niat-celebrates-diamond-jubilee/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

NIAT celebrates Diamond Jubilee

The Naval Institute of Aeronautical Technology (NIAT), the premier Aviation technical training establishment of the Indian Navy celebrated 60th anniversary on 17 Jun 16.

An International Seminar on Challenges in Maintenance and Training of Fixed and Rotary wing Naval Air Assets” along with Industry Exposition (Aero-Expo)showcasing emerging technologies in field of Aviation and Marine was conducted which was inaugurated by the chief guest, Vice Admiral A R Karve AVSM, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Southern Naval Command. A special day cover was also released jointly by Vice Admiral A R Karve and Smt. Sumathi Ravichandran,Post Master General, Kochi for commemorating the occasion. The aim of conducting Expo was to provide opportunity to the Indian Defense Industry to showcase their core technology and indigenization capabilities in line with the Make in India drive. Eight leading aviation and marine industries of the country viz M/s ELCOM Group, M/s Mark Control, M/s Verdant Telemetry, M/s HBL Power systems , M/s Tata Advance Power systems Ltd., M/s Merlinhawk Aerospace Pvt Ltd, M/s Radiant Corporation pvt. Ltd and Goa Aeromarine & Engg. Services Pvt.Ltd had put up stalls showcasing their core expertise and indigenization capability.

The seminar was attended by many senior officers of Indian Navy and industry representatives. A large number of eminent speakers / academicians from Indian Navy, DRDO, HAL, CEMILAC, DGCA, and industry giants like M/S Boeing Ltd, M/S Rolls-Royce ltd. participated and presented their views in form of papers.

The event was also graced by former Directors, officers and sailors of the institute.Additionally, the Institute also conducted community service at Old age home under Ministry of Labour and Social Justice at Thevera and a Painting Competition for the children of Southern Naval Command, cycling expedition to Andhakaranzhi Beach where cleanliness drive was undertaken as a part of Swatch Bharat Abhiyan during the run up to the diamond jubilee celebrations.

NIAT, having been set up as the Naval Air Technical School (NATS) in the wake of the induction of the amphibious Sea Land aircraft in 1956, has grown and evolved over the years and can be counted today among the premier training establishments of the country. The growth of the Institute has been rapid especially over the last decade. The institute is recognized as a Centre for Aeronautical Science and Technology by Cochin University with the offering of a host of academic qualifications for courses conducted at the institute such as MTech, BSc, and Diploma in Aeronautics etc.

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Technology Centre to be set up in Chhattisgarh

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/news/technology-centre-chhattisgarh/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

Technology Centre to be set up in Chhattisgarh

The Government of India is planning to set up a Technology Centre in Chhattisgarh in order to technologically upgrade the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the state.

The Union Ministry of MSME would soon commence the work for setting up a ‘Technology Centre’ in the state.

During an interview President of Urla Industries Association (UIA), Vinod Kumar Kejriwal said that if up-gradation of industries takes place in the state then value addition would start, as a result of this state would flourish.

“Even labourers in the state are not technologically upgraded,” he said.

The selection of places for new Technology Centres by the Central Government preference has been given to the states in which there are no MSME Technology Centres at present.

“Although Central Government is focusing on the growth of Chhattisgarh MSMEs but not much development has taken place here. A tool room was to be set up here for which the land was allotted but the work is yet to commence,” he revealed.

The Ministry of MSME is currently running 18 Technology Centres (10 Tool Rooms and 8 Technology Development Centres) to provide technological support to the MSME sector.

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Benefits of Cloud Computing

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/technology/cloud-computing-benefits/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

Benefits of Cloud Computing

Nowadays it appears as though everyone is discussing the cloud yet what is the cloud or cloud computing? More importantly, what can it do for you? When you get down to it, the cloud is just the Internet, and cloud computing is a way of accessing your organization’s applications, data and documents directly over the web from anywhere at any time – on any device rather than from your computer’s hard drive or on the website server. If you ever checked your email online, you’ve already used the cloud.

Unlike the cost of having and maintaining your own servers and software in-house, the cloud offers scalable out-of-the-box solutions that are faster, more reliable, more secure, and more cost-effective – up to fifty percent not as much as what you’re currently paying. With those sorts of advantages and savings, it just bodes well to discover more about migrating to the cloud.

Prior to public cloud computing, if you owned or ran a business, you would need to develop and maintain an expensive IT infrastructure for the efficient operation of your business. This included buying servers for capital expenditures, hiring skilled IT staff, and setting aside valuable business space for a server room, that required special security and precise cooling systems.

Additionally, capital expenses for operating systems and application software would be required. Conventional IT regularly form after some time into expansive  and server farms that expend a huge portion of your capital budget. Despite all of these expenditures, this would not have been an efficient IT system. In building this framework, much important business time would be reallocated.

Your IT infrastructure would provide little flexibility and scalability with added capital expenses. Because this, IT infrastructure would need to be built to accommodate time periods of peak need, there would be much waste during normal times or during periods when business is slow.

Additionally, on the grounds that keeping up an IT base frequently requires a pretty huge share of your IT assets, the focus of your division and regularly other staff would be designated far from critical priorities that would better serve your customers.

Today, with cloud computing you can get to practically the greater part of the business applications required for your organization to be compelling without your business expecting to put resources into capital expenses to manufacture an extensive IT framework, enlisting costly staff to create and look after it, and squandering profitable organization time and different assets to create it.

The cloud allows your company to pay as you go, without investing large portions of your CapEx budget in an inefficient infrastructure that will never fully meet the needs of your company. With cloud computing, another person will be in charge of your IT needs while your organization concentrates on addressing your clients’ needs as soon as required.

With cloud computing, your company will never again need to focus your valuable time, attention and expenditures on buying servers, buying and upgrading software licenses, IT maintenance, and expensive IT personnel.

The cloud can guarantee best in class security, software-level upgrades, redundancy of the bandwidth, the adaptability and versatility required to make your organization first to advertise, power repetition, every minute of every day IT oversight, backup and damage control without capital expenses.

On the off chance that your company is another startup, cloud computing will wipe out the requirement for a Capex budget plan. Only pay for the IT administrations you really utilize, and because of economies of scale, your IT expenditures will be reduced by about 50%.

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Why Online Education Is Growing At Top Universities

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/arcanemind/why-online-education-is-growing-at-top-universities/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

Why Online Education Is Growing At Top Universities

The reason why online education grows is clear to us today. It’s cheaper, it’s convenient, it helps you move beyond the foursquare system, and offers you an option to build a network throughout the world. Moreover, it’s encouraging lifelong learning and enhancing higher qualifications, notwithstanding predicaments from physical to geological. So, enrollment for online classes has ballooned within the last few years and it’s everywhere now.

In brief, the main reasons behind the mounting popularity are:

-Everybody is eager to boost the intellectual property to keep pace with the rising demand.

-Campus learning that keeps you engaged from 9-5 isn’t a good choice anymore.

-People don’t prefer making sacrifices in professional and personal commitments for the sake of knowledge.

-Employer-based courses offered through online learning is helping to enhance the workforce.

And now, it has evolved with options like:

 1) Video conferences and video instructions to enhance an engaging learning atmosphere.

2) Free access to study materials making knowledge available anywhere in the world.

3) Online platforms through which a programme can be tailored according to preferences.

4) Online tools to discuss, debate on and include comments on any recent topic are encouraging independent ideas. Rapid and better connection with the educators and peers for an effective educational environment.

Bonus: Learn courses on Interview Preparation on Arcanemind.com, You can use a coupon code ” GIVE50 ” to get 50% discount on any of the courses. – Click here forInterview Preparation course list So, no need to visit campus anymore?

But the growing fame of online courses isn’t making the experts happy. The trend of acquiring knowledge through machines and technology is slowly eliminating the human element from the entire process of learning and teaching. A computer can never be equivalent to a teacher. Human guidance, which actually helps to groom the personality of learners, will disappear completely if online learning becomes a mainstream practice.  So, what’s the solution?

Whether the online classes are able to address the sustainability issues, deliver qualitative knowledge and guide you through a right career path are not relevant at this time, it is quite clear that the facilities and freedom they are offering is being preferred over traditional form of learning. So, quite a few measures have to be taken on urgent basis to save universities.

A fair deal is immediately required. Students have been spending fortunes for university courses. Higher learning is a financial burden to most of the families. The problem of loan debts is increasing in every nation. Learners today, want to get rid of expenses. If accreditation is available at an affordable price at home, a few would care to set foot on campus.

Adopting practical methods are essential for universities. Blending the advantages of various learning approaches is an intelligent way to encourage campus education. Wasting a great amount of productive time on campus to earn a degree doesn’t seem viable to many.

Adding an online curriculum to the syllabus is a great decision as they open many options to develop a better communication between the educators and learners. Moreover, including technological equipments can help building an engaging learning environment.

Opening more professional and employer-based courses is important. Most of the learners are choosing to enhance qualifications to maximize their career opportunities. So, the courses relevant to the market and employers make them happy.

Including some exclusive attractions besides reducing costs is also important. This inclusion must add facilities on campuses that are able to contend online offerings and will successfully draw students’ attention toward residential education. Welcome change! It’s necessary to accept that open university courses online are getting attention from the new age learners for quite a few reasons. So, opening an online option will not only enhance enrollment but help the universities reach a wider section of academic aspirers. Hence it will expand the service and also the goodwill of the university.

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15 Tips to Grow a Social-Media Audience for Your Startup

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/arcanemind/15-tips-to-grow-a-social-media-audience-for-your-startup/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

15 Tips to Grow a Social-Media Audience for Your Startup

  Here are 15 tips for growing your startup’s audience on the three top social networks, starting with strategies common to all of them:

1. Create strong social profiles and pages.

The starting point for growing your audience on any social network is strong profiles and pages for your social accounts. This requires including branded cover photos and profile photos. It also requires filling out all of your details. On Twitter, that’s as simple as a 160-character bio, website link and location. Facebook wants a short description, website link, address and phone number. In short, fill out as many fields for your social profiles and pages as you can.

Next, share a few updates (five to ten) before you start your quest to build an audience. This will give people who visit your social accounts a reason to follow you. If you don’t know what to post, do the following:

2. Share quality content.

Even before your startup gets going fully, start building your audience on most networks by sharing content your target audience will enjoy. For example, if you have a startup for a Facebook marketing tool, start sharing content about Facebook. That could mean blog content, podcasts, videos, presentations, infographics, etc., created by you or by others.

3. Use friend-finding features.

Most networks have a way to connect you with people you know. Twitter allows you to search email contacts, Facebook allows you to search email contacts and utilize an advanced people search. Instagram guides you to your Facebook friends on Instagram in its app. LinkedIn allows you tosearch your email contacts and suggests current and former classmates and work colleagues based on your profile information.

4. Add links to your top social accounts on your website.

You can do this by adding small square social network icons to your website’s header, footer and sidebar. You can also add the official buttons for each network on your website. You can find the official brand assets, buttons, badges and widgets on Facebook (brand assets and button generator), Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can also look into social network icons on stock image sites like DepositPhotos.

Bonus: Learn courses on Interview Preparation on Arcanemind.com, You can use a coupon code ” GIVE50 ” to get 50% discount on any of the courses. – Click here forInterview Preparation course list

5. Add links to your top social accounts to your email signatures.

Make sure that everyone you communicate with via email knows about your startup, by adding links to your top social accounts in your email signature. You can do this using small square social network icons or standard text links. You can also use services like WiseStamp to create professional signatures with your social links.

6. Cross-promote your social accounts.

Already have a large audience on one account? Ask its members to connect with you on another. That will be as simple as sending a tweet to your Twitter followers asking if they are on Pinterest, and if they are, they should follow you there, too.

Also look for opportunities to link from one social account to another. Pinterest, for example, will allow you to link to Twitter and Facebook.Woobox, a Facebook app maker, has apps that allow you to add tabs to your Facebook page for Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest for free.

7. Follow your target Twitter audience and engage with them.

Twitter allows you to follow up to 5,000 people. You can follow more after people start to follow you. When you follow people on Twitter, they get a notification that they are being followed. In addition to following people, start chatting with them.

Use Twitter Search to find people that match your target audience. Twitter will search keywords in people’s bios as well as their tweets. When you see a tweet from someone that you can reply to, do it. If people like your reply, they just might follow you back.

8. Use Twitter advertising.

If you have an advertising budget, try Twitter advertising. Twitter will promote your account to your target audience members to encourage them to follow you.

9. Use your Facebook page to ‘like’ other pages.

If you click on the drop-down arrow next to your photo at the top right of your Facebook dashboard, you have the option to use Facebook as your page by selecting it from the list. This will allow you to ‘like’ other Facebook pages as your page and comment on them. Find pages where your target audience are engaged and start communicating with them with your page.

10. Open your profile up to Facebook followers.

Facebook has a setting that you can enable to allow others to follow your personal profile. Any public updates you share will be shared with your followers in the news feed without your having to accept them as a friend. This will help you grow an audience that you can promote your business to while keeping your private things private.

11. Participate in Facebook groups.

Another way to utilize your personal profile on Facebook is to engage in groups related to your niche. Find groups your target audience would be interested in, join them and start engaging in the discussions.

12. Follow others on Twitter.

As happens with Twitter, when you follow other people on Instagram, they will be notified. You can find your target audience by searching for hashtags they would likely use when they post on Instagram. Then follow people and engage with them by commenting on their photos and videos in the news feed.

13. Use hashtags on Twitter.

When you share photos and videos, be sure to use hashtags in your captions. Hashtags are utilized by Instagram users to find visual content on specific topics. As people come across your photos and videos in a hashtag stream, they will be able to click a button next to your name to follow you.

14. Participate in LinkedIn groups.

LinkedIn groups are great for engaging with other active LinkedIn members. Participate in the discussions and provide valuable answers to get people to want to connect with you.

15. Comment on LinkedIn’s blog posts.

LinkedIn allows members to post blogs, and some of those members have thousands of followers. Find people in your niche with lots of followers, follow their latest posts and engage with your target audience in the comments of those posts.

Bonus: Learn courses on Interview Preparation on Arcanemind.com, You can use a coupon code ” GIVE50 ” to get 50% discount on any of the courses. – Click here forInterview Preparation course list

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Tips And Strageties For Those Preparing For The GRE

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/arcanemind/tips-and-strageties-for-those-preparing-for-the-gre/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

Tips And Strageties For Those Preparing For The GRE

The GRE stands for Graduate Record Examination and is the exam by which most universities in the United States judge a candidate’s qualification into a graduate program. The GRE tests vocabulary, reading comprehension, text completion, mathematical abilities (ranging from geometry to algebra to numeric problem solving) and writing. There are very few graduate programs in the United States which one can enter into without having taken the GRE (with the exception of business schools, which tend to prefer the GMAT). Therefore, adequate preparation for the exam is essential. Read on for the best GRE preparation tips.

Familiarize Yourself

Before taking a practice test, simply look through each section of the GRE and get a feel for what the content is going to be and how the test is going to work. There are three sections: Verbal Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning and Analytical Writing. You can familiarize yourself with the questions online, through a website like ETS, or by purchasing or borrowing a GRE test preparation book from your local bookstore or library.

Additionally, familiarize yourself with the scoring process. Realize that it’s not a simple +1/-1 system for correct/incorrect answers. Rather, your score is assessed by the difficulty of questions answered, and the questions will either get easier or harder depending on how you’re doing as you move through the test. More correct answers on more difficult questions will yield a higher score.

  Take a Practice Test…

…a real one, where you have a timer and move through the material exactly how you would on test day. Kaplan and the Princeton Review both offer practice tests in their study books and online. Most universities also have GRE courses you can sign up for just to take a practice exam through the university’s testing center. As you take the test, pace yourself. Take your time with the questions, and don’t worry about answers that you don’t know. If you can’t make a good guess, skip it, and move on. After you take the test, review the questions that you missed and the ones you excelled at, familiarizing yourself with your strengths and weaknesses.

Study

Now that you’ve taken a practice test and familiarized yourself with the content on the test, you should have a pretty good idea of what you need to review. Make flashcards; use online resources; have a friend quiz you on vocabulary; or get a tutor. Again, Kaplan and the Princeton Review both offer GRE preparatory courses and tutors if you need them. If your quantitative score is low, ask a friend or family member for study help, or use your university’s tutoring center.

For vocabulary practice, one of the best things you can do is read. Read your local newspaper or books of literary merit. If you come to a word you don’t know, look it up. Find essay prompts from previous years, and write practice essays. Then compare your response to answers that have been published. Ask a friend or professor to read over your essay, assessing it for grammatical, spelling or sentence structure errors. Become confident in your ability to master the content.

On test day, eat a good breakfast; get a good night’s sleep, and go into the testing center prepared and ready to excel!

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Scaling Up Courses

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/arcanemind/809/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

Scaling Up Courses

With the new semester upon us, many people are getting ready to try out new course preps or revisit familiar classes. The too-brief break of the holiday season doesn’t provide much time for preparation, so find the last days before the semester begins can be a frantic time for revision and planning. we have previously addressed strategies for revising a past course, which can be particularly helpful if the dynamics of the course remain generally the same. However, increasing demands on universities for larger classes and different modalities (includingfully-online courses) mean that often we face the task of scaling up a syllabus.

Revising a course to accommodate additional bodies (whether 10 or 100) is not as simple as changing the classroom, although it may appear that way in the course catalog.

Here are a few of the steps to follow

Eliminate assignments that have low return on investment. If a course size is increasing dramatically, we find it helpful to be merciless with assignments. It’s better to provide meaningful feedback on fewer, essential, assignments than to dilute time and feedback by providing too many projects for assessment. If an exercise is important for learning but doesn’t necessarily require detailed feedback, consider switching it to a participation or completion grade.

Consider peer review for early stages of assessment where possible. While giving detailed feedback on iterative versions of projects (whether written, coded, or otherwise) can be ideal, it can become prohibitive at certain class sizes. Using course management systems tools for peer review or providing time in-class for immediate peer feedback can be a good solution for early stages of projects.

Examine the benefits of individual versus team projects. In project-driven courses, deciding whether to require collaboration or focus on individual work can be an essential decision. Individual work by necessity means more time spent grading and giving feedback, but team work can present other problems (particularly when teams hit problems with missing members and inconsistent contributions)

Anticipate questions and provide supplementary materials.  one of the most challenging aspects of teaching larger classes can be answering constant emails (particularly with technical questions, which can be numerous in my field.) we should take questions from last  teaching  course and use them to create FAQ pages for projects, which can then be a first resource on the course management system.

Streamline grading and rubrics where appropriate. Using rubrics with pre-written comments for common challenges can save time and energy, which we find leaves us free to spend  time writing comments on unique aspects of student’s projects or providing suggestions for future improvement.

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3 Ways to Make Your Content Marketing Shine

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/uncategorized/3-ways-to-make-your-content-marketing-shine/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

3 Ways to Make Your Content Marketing Shine

1. Revamp the average “just following up” sales email.

Prospective clients absolutely despise emails from sales reps that say something like, “Hey, remember me? Here’s an email that doesn’t provide any value to you, but does get my company’s name back in your inbox.”

The standard “just following up” sales email is ineffective, and it doesn’t take advantage of the great content your marketing team is producing. Instead of forcing your prospective clients or partners to read through bland emails that don’t serve them or meaningfully advance your relationship, try sending something valuable in your next follow-up.

Our sales team sends emails that look more like this:

Hi Joe,

I hope you enjoyed some rest and relaxation over the holidays!

An email like this keeps you top of mind by providing value to your prospective customers: an article that will help them better understand and sell your service to their colleagues and managers.

Bonus: Learn courses on Interview Preparation on Arcanemind.com, You can use a coupon code ” GIVE50 ” to get 50% discount on any of the courses. – Click here forInterview Preparation course list

  2. Reach out to get a quote for an article.

People love to be quoted, and if you’re selling to and developing relationships with knowledgeable, insightful company leaders, you’ll want to quote them anyway. Quoting experts and industry insiders indicates that you view them as valuable source of information. Furthermore, when the sources you’ve quoted share the content with their networks, it expands your distribution potential.

When we were putting together a blog post about why executive branding matters to CMOs, I felt like we needed stronger examples from the CMOs themselves. So my team connected with William Arruda, a speaker and social branding consultant, and Matt Preschern, CMO of HCL Technologies, and asked for their input. While we could have published the piece without reaching out, their insights proved valuable to our readers — the numbers showed it. The post was one of our most-read pieces of blog content for 2015.

So the next time you’re working on a piece of content that could benefit from a few quotes from industry experts, reach out to people in your network with whom you’d like to stay top of mind.

  3. Share valuable piece of content directly using Twitter DMs.

Beyond creating gated content that’s actually worth the download, marketers are tasked with finding creative ways to get said content in front of the right audience. One solution my team has found is to use this content as a way to reconnect with qualified followers on social media.

Recently, we sent direct messages to about 1,000 of my Twitter followers in the marketing industry and invited them to download a piece of gated content that we thought they’d find valuable. And while I was skeptical at first — I’d never used Twitter DMs as a marketing tool — more than 100 people downloaded the content, and dozens personally replied thanking me for reaching out.

You’re in a strategy meeting thinking back on last year’s near-wins: all those clients you could have signed, all the partnerships you almost landed and all the potential employees who pursued other opportunities. These near-wins likely leave a lasting impression on you. The problem is that all these almost clients, partners or employees have probably forgotten all about you.

Bonus: Learn courses on Interview Preparation on Arcanemind.com, You can use a coupon code ” GIVE50 ” to get 50% discount on any of the courses. – Click here forInterview Preparation course list

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Measuring gravitational waves — in layman’s terms

Originally posted on http://blog.arcanemind.com/news/measuring-gravitational-waves-in-laymans-terms/ -- Please visit: www.arcanemind.com

Measuring gravitational waves — in layman’s terms

How can a common man comprehend the nano-impact of gravitational waves detected in the landmark astrophysics discovery of the century?

Eminent astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar came out with an analogy for the benefit of the layman to explain the complexity involved in detecting the gravitational wave that emanated at a distance of 1.3 billion light years from the earth.

“Imagine a fly sitting on an elephant. The weight of fly is added to his body but the elephant will not feel it. What LIGO (the detector used in the discovery) detected was much smaller than the perceived impact of the fly sitting on the elephant,” Prof. Narlikar said while speaking to reporters at the Pune-based Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCCA), on Thursday night.

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Prof. Narlikar, who was the first head of the IUCCA, recalled that he and one of his scientist colleague Sanjeev Dhurandhar had put up a proposal seeking funding for research on gravitational waves in India in 1988 soon after the Centre was set up but had failed to convince the authorities who doubted their “credibility” to undertake such a project for developing a detector.

Congratulating the Indian scientists who formed a part of the international team, Prof. Naralikar said detection of the gravitational waves is a “remarkable discovery which will be remembered for long”.

Ajit Kembarvi, former director of IUCCA, said the team of Indian scientists called “INDIGO” which worked on the project made a significant contribution in developing methods for analysing data from the two detectors in the US that recorded the gravitational waves.

“IUCCA is also setting up a high performance computer in its premises for further analysis of the data,” he added.

In an announcement that electrified the world of astronomy, scientists on Thursday said that they have finally detected gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Albert Einstein predicted a century ago.

When two black holes collided some 1.3 billion years ago, the joining of those two great masses sent forth a wobble that hurtled through space and arrived at Earth on September 14, 2015, when it was picked up by sophisticated instruments, researchers announced.

Bonus: Learn courses on Interview Preparation on Arcanemind.com, You can use a coupon code ” GIVE50 ” to get 50% discount on any of the courses. – Click here forInterview Preparation course list