Vjbreathes

The Sino Japanese word Kaizen refers to ‘good change’ or ‘positive change’ in any process or system. It’s used in the world of business to denote “continuous improvement” and also development. However, there are several pundits who believe that Kaizen is more often than not, used to denote all kinds of efforts to improve quality thereby making ‘kaizen’ a broad umbrella of change indicators. Evaluation of course delivery in the higher education landscape is largely a matter of debate and subjective opinion. Though we would like to wish off the disagreements and the deliberations in this aspect, a conscious effort on the part of academicians, administrators and policy makers is called for, with respect to the variables that are many a times taken for granted. Course delivery is often under-evaluated and in some cases, considered as a mere documentation exercise. The customer centricity part is largely missing. In several instances, the course delivery evaluation will only inc...

"Where all think alike, no one thinks very much." - Walter Lippmann While conflicts may have several pros and cons, they cannot be completely avoided. Decision making, strategy formulation, process execution and  reviews always have a conflict element in them. While organizations look forward to disruptive innovation and up-gradation, maybe the 'conflict management' aspect is something that needs a re-look. People across disciplines have their take on conflict management. Ex: http://donnacardillo.com/articles/sevenstrategies/   details strategies  suggested by Donna Cardillo, an inspiration Guru. While the behaviour of people cannot be controlled by the organization, the organization can surely think of testing people on their conflict management skills in the recruitment and selection process. Probably a matrix marking structure can be used, where vertical heads are involved in deciding the ideal responses versus the actual responses and a score can be...

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." This quote by George Martin is an excellent insight into the motives of habitual book buyers. I know several habitual book buyers and most of them have an amazing level of intellectual stock. Conversations with these people are always interesting and engaging vis-à-vis others who mostly talk like newspaper echoes or television news analyzers. The advantages of reading books (not restricted to a specific genre) are many. The most distinctive advantage is the ability of such people to build rapport with people from diverse cultures, tastes and interests. It’s also a proven fact that reading has many positive cognitive consequences. ( http://www.csun.edu/~krowlands/Content/Academic_Resources/Reading/Useful%20Articles/Cunningham-What%20Reading%20Does%20for%20the%20Mind.pdf ). Further, reading books is a safe bet and can help you enhance your career prospects to a great extent...

‘Meeting student expectations’ is one of the most important quality indicators of any higher education/vocational education course apart from meeting the client expectations in any sponsored program. Several courses in the western world have a subscription based continuation policy. However, this is one criterion that is very difficult to quantify. Student feedback is one standard measure of the effectiveness of the course/faculty. However this system has its share of criticism. And much of the off-class interaction is not taken into account in this scenario, amidst growing relevance of the student-teacher interactions and impressions that happen off class. This article is centred around the rising student expectations and features. Recently, I came across a post on Facebook by a student which read, “Not All Good byes are bad. Example: Good Bye Class.”   This sums up the task that the next generation teachers could face. Teaching the next generation of students could be cha...