This is a presentation made before Planning commission Member in 2011. Outlines briefly ten steps for upstreaming the professional fisheries education in India

1. 10 steps to
excel in
professional
fisheries
education
Prof.M.J.Modayil
© mohanjosephmodayil 2011

2. Why Good Teaching is
important?
Good teaching leads to good learning, good
skills, good understanding, good analysis, good
application, good research and good thinking
DO WE HAVE ALL THESE IN OUR
STUDENTS WHO PASS OUT EVERY YEAR ?

3. Are we producing stereotypes
form a teaching machine?
1990s 2000s
2010s 2020s

4. Where do our students
find opportunities?
What is the market value of our
students?
Are they globally competitive and
employable?

5. Where is the rainbow ?
What can be done to produce
the best fisheries manpower talent?
How do we make the students passing out from our
colleges professionally skilled and competent,
employable and globally competitive ?

6. Some statistics
Institutions
• 18 fisheries colleges
• 2 fisheries universities
• 1 deemed university
9/16/2015 MODAYIL 6
Annual outputs
• 570 bachelors degree
• 250 Masters degree
• 93 Ph.Ds

7. Performance in NET
All Agricultural
disciplines
85 % from 4 ICAR
Deemed Universities
and 10 SAUs
15% from all other
SAUs and UGC
Universities
9/16/2015 MODAYIL 7
Fisheries disciplines
100 % from 3 SAUs
&
1 ICAR DU (CIFE)
Cut off marks for pass: 40 % for UR, 35 % for reserved.
Pass % = 23.8 %

8. • 4 ICAR DUs – 39 %
• 10 top SAUs – 39%
• The rest of SAUs – 15 %
• UGC Univ. – 7 %
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Performance in ARS

9. 10 STEPS TO EXCEL
1. INFRASTRUCTURE
2. FACULTY STRENGTH &
SPECIALIZATION
3. DELIVERY OF TEACHING
4. EVALUATIONS
5. STUDENT RESEARCH
6. STAFF RESEARCH
7. MENTORING & FIP
8. LINKAGES & EXCHANGES
9. BENCHMARKING & ACCREDITATION
10. TQM AND GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS
9/16/2015 MODAYIL 9

10. Infrastructure
• Essential infrastructure
– well equipped laboratories
– Experimental hatcheries
– Functional farm, nursery ponds
– Post harvest processing equipments, cold storage
facilities
– Engineering workshop for craft and gear
– Computer lab, internet facilities for students
– Facilities for swimming classes
– Minimal recreational and hostel facilities
9/16/2015 MODAYIL 10

11. Faculty strength & specializations
• Faculty specialization, number and competence
• Specialized teachers in all core disciplines
• Aquaculture, Fisheries Resource Management, Post Harvest
Technology, Fish Nutrition, Fish Health, Fish Genetics &
Breeding.
• it is very important that Ph.Ds in these disciplines are available
as faculty
• A unified faculty structure is to be adopted by all colleges.
• In my understanding most colleges are functioning with only
< 50% faculty
• Critical mass of faculty to be ensured in all colleges
• The present practice of offering a course through guest lectures
must stop forthwith
11

12. Delivery of Teaching
• A handful of faculty members offer the full range of subjects in
the UG and PG levels.
• Non fisheries faculty who have no understanding of fish offering
fisheries courses
• Old notes are recycled and even dictated
• There is no teaching, only ppt presentations !
• Some courses are ‘offered’ during study tours through guest
lectures in the visiting institutions
• Students do not get hands-on experience in the practical
classes; they simply watch a demonstration
• Instead of teaching, reading assignments are given in PG
• Most colleges do not have lecture outlines, laboratory manuals,
question bank, schedule of classes and topics
9/16/2015 MODAYIL 12

13. Evaluations
• Almost in all colleges, QP is set from old question papers.
As a result most questions are repeated often and known
to students
• No effort is spared to make a “balanced’ question paper
where the subject area is fully covered, the three difficulty
levels are adequately distributed and jumbled, the balance
between the topics is well maintained, new knowledge,
analysis, synthesis, reasoning and application are all
tested with equal weightage
• Workshops on question paper methodologies and question
paper setting, teaching methods, evaluations etc. are
unheard of. But teachers scramble for workshops on
climate change, global warming, biotechnology and
livelihoods!
13

14. Student research
• The topic of research comes out of wishful thinking in any area,
irrespective of the specialization of the teacher.
• I have seen teachers ‘guiding’ students on topics in which the
teacher has no knowledge, competence or publications.
• Much of the student research is ‘cut and paste’ work which are
sent to close friends of the teacher and in a few days the
evaluation report, always highly complimented, arrives.
• There is no guidance, monitoring, reviews or proper
discussions. I am yet to see a thesis rejected by an external
examiner.
• If such wonderful research is being done in our DU and
colleges, why such works have not made any visible outcome or
impact in the fisheries and aquaculture scenario ?
9/16/2015 MODAYIL 14

15. Staff research
• The concept of scientist-teacher in the agricultural education is
that every teacher is also a scientist in his area of Ph.D.
specialization and s/he will continue to do research in that area
to generate new knowledge as well as keep abreast with latest
research elsewhere and pass on these to the students.
Unfortunately, this is not happening.
• Teachers take up external research projects only for procuring
equipments, laptop, travel funds
• In that process, they migrate to areas where they have no basic
qualification or expertise, but still manage to get funds from
agencies. They even guide students in those areas !
• The faculty should be allowed to take up research only in his/her
area of specialization and the student community should benefit
from the research methodologies, data, results, analysis and
inferences

16. Mentoring & FIP
• Every professional discipline needs training before
practicing, but teaching in university needs no training !
• Teaching is an art and science and the required skills are
to be acquired through mentoring !
• In-house teacher mentoring to be made mandatory to
improve
• National workshops/summer school on teaching
methodologies must be thought of by ICAR
• HRD funds must be used for teacher mentoring and not for
research tourism as at present
• Teaching methodology workshops must be organized
during semester breaks by inviting skilled teachers
9/16/2015 MODAYIL 16

17. Linkages, exchanges
• Most institutions work in isolation
• There is no intellectual exchange
• Invited faculty lectures from other fisheries colleges are
rare
• All 20 fisheries teaching institutions must form a
network and share the intellectual capital and skills
they own through exchange faculty lectures
• Both students and faculty will gain from experiencing
new blood
9/16/2015 MODAYIL 17

18. Benchmarking & accreditation
• Accreditation by ICAR and benchmarking need to be
revisited with clarity and objectivity
• The present benchmarking standards are inadequate and
skewed
• Financial support from ICAR should be linked to certain cut
off points
• A highly skilled and empowered committee should visit all
20 institutions and benchmark using new indices.
• If this is given priority and done in a time frame, further
deterioration can be reduced
• It is also worthwhile looking at the UGC pattern and
standards of accreditation / rating.9/16/2015 18

19. TQM and Global Competitiveness
• There are no attempts for TQM
• As long as students do not go on strike, all are happy
• How many VCs or Deans sit in a class at least once in a
semester and observe the delivery of subject matter?
• Most institutions keep away from others for fear of being
exposed of their weakness
• The poor employability of their products is indicative of their
national and global competitiveness
• The objective of making the upcoming genre of fisheries
professionals globally competitive, can be achieved only by
a complete and drastic revamping of the entire fisheries
education processes followed presently.9/16/2015 19

20. Way forward
• We need to recognize the urgent need to upstream our
fisheries education.
• A central quality assurance mechanism on the line of
the Veterinary Council of India (VCI) is the need of the
day.
• Guidelines and quality standards for the fisheries
education needs to be fixed for quality assurance in
all areas of fisheries education
• I hope that this august body will appreciate the
importance of this initiative and take a positive and
creative outlook for future
9/16/2015 MODAYIL 20

21. For more information: mohanjosephmodayil@gmail.com