Jain university is starting Virtual Learning Arena

Bengaluru: World is under pandemic, forcing educational institutes across the globe to prevent access to campuses, various universities have suspended regular classroom sessions and migrated to e-learning.

Jain University is starting implementing project-based learning to enhance the learning experience in an online classroom.

Project-based learning is a particularly strong strategy introduced by the university during the online learning phase for challenging students toward effective learning outcome. Since the online group projects model real-world application, the university in association with its industry partners has created applications and programs that are designed for collaborative projects.

Postgraduate students and faculty at the School of Sciences, Jain University have collaborated online on a research project about COVID-19.

A paper authored jointly by Dipti and Dr K.V. Ramesh titled: “Binding site analysis of potential protease inhibitors of COVID-19 using Auto Dock” from bioinformatics, the domain has been accepted for publication in a Web of Sciences indexed Springer Journal, “Virus Disease” (formerly Indian Journal of Virology).

As part of Springer’s commitment towards sharing knowledge with the whole world about the outbreak, the research findings, and the paper have been shared by Springer journal with the World Health Organization.

“I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it is possible to generate a higher-order cognitive discourse with my PhD students on an online platform. I had always assumed that face- to- face interface was a must to interact with learners on abstract topics like ‘personality’”, says Dr Harold Patrick, Dean (Academics) of CMS Business School.

The University has rolled out a combination of not only online platforms like Google Classroom, Google Hangouts Meet but also methodologies to promote interactive learning through demonstration, to emulate the learning experience in a classroom.

For instance, while teaching the students “Security Features” as part of the module on cloud computing, the faculty shared the tools beforehand with learners and then interactively explored the security features of multiple platforms like AWS, CISCO, and Microsoft during a video conference.

Eventually, the learners were encouraged to write code and share the screenshot of the output through Google Classroom which was then used to evaluate the output and interact with the students.

In conclusion, Dr Chenraj Roychand, President, Jain Deemed-to-be University said, “Our faculty and students, with the right kind of support and guidance, have constantly innovated and found new ways of achieving outcomes through online collaboration using a repertoire of ‘fit for the purpose’ tools and platforms."