New Delhi: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has urged Higher Education Institution (HEIs) to facilitate the implementation of two-credit course on Community Engagement and Social Responsibility effectively. The Commission has urged HEIs to take appropriate action as per the guidelines stated by the UGC in their respective institutions. The Community Engagement and Social Responsibility course aim to provide community engagement to all undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students so that their appreciation of rural field realities will be holistic, respectful and inspiring.
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The 2 credit course will include one credit for classroom and tutorials and one credit for field engagement. Students will spend at least 50 per cent of the course time in the field during the 30 hour course. The UGC has developed a Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on Community Engagement and Social Responsibility which will be shortly available on the SWAYAM portal– swayam.gov.in. SWAYAM offers hundreds of UGC-recognized online courses and provides an ideal platform for multidisciplinary learning.
Earlier on February 28, UGC invited feedback and suggestions on the draft National Curriculum Framework and Guidelines on Fostering Social Responsibility and Community Engagement in HEis as part of Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (UBA) in India. Considering those feedback and suggestion, the UGC has prepared the final Guidelines on Fostering Social Responsibility and Community Engagement effectively in HEis in India 2.0.
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“As the Guidelines recommend teaching of a two-credit course on Community Engagement and Social Responsibility, the UGC identified seven Regional Centres for Capacity Building of faculty as Master Trainers (MTs) for Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) under UBA. Towards this, UGC has conducted two online training programmes for nominated faculty members from the seven centres on January 27 and February 15, 2022,” Professor Rajnish Jain, Secretary, UGC quoted in a letter to the Vice-Chancellors of all Universities and the Principals of all Colleges.
“A Three-day face to face training programme was also conducted in each of the seven UGC Regional Centres from April to July 2022 as supervised by UGC Subject Expert Group (SEG) resource persons and supported by local resource persons so that trained faculty members can start teaching the course from the next academic session,” it further states.
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