AICTE Student Learning Assessment (PARAKH)

Background

Despite rapid increase in the quantity of technical students in India, little is known about their quality. In particular, less information is available about the major specific competencies, knowledge and soft skills of individuals. So, this project aims to assess the technical knowledge, creativity and cognitive skills of undergraduate and postgraduate students of India. Earlier the similar project was implemented by Stanford University, USA. They have implemented the student assessment for various countries such as USA, China, Russia and India. For India, they have selected 167 technical institutes for their study.

Purpose

Student Learning Assessment Project (SLA) is to evaluate technical students of India and to assess their overall qualitative and quantitative growth during the course of study in order to get suitable employment. All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) SLA (PARAKH) project has been designed to measure the benchmark levels and gains in academic and higher-order thinking skills of students and faculties to understand the various factors that affect skill development in technical institutes across India.

Scope

Gathering and analysing data about student’s achievement is only worthwhile if the information is utilized to improve outcomes for students. The data gathered by the project is used to evaluate the performance of lower level (academic gain) and higher-order thinking skills gains and provide the enhancement methods by which the Indian students can lead for a better opportunity in their profession and personal graph.

About SLA

All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) is going to implement a large-scale program to assess and improve the skills of engineering students in India in AICTE approved Technical Institutions across the country. In respect of analysis, each of the online assessments (including those testing academic skills and those testing higher order thinking skills) may be used for comparing student outcomes. More specifically, each of the online assessments will be considered as unidimensional, reliable and good at measuring a range of student ability. The vast majority of the items should also demonstrate psychometric characteristics of students.

Vision

Vision of AICTE SLA (PARAKH) is to motivate bridging the gap between academics and industry by providing a platform for self-assessment of knowledge and 21^st century skill capabilities in students and faculty members to ensure global competitiveness.

Mission

AICTE SLA (PARAKH) will enable policymakers and institutions to assess global competitiveness of students, faculty members and stakeholders to trigger necessary interventions creating a more effective system of education in the country.

Problem Statement

India's higher education system is the third largest in the world, next to the United States and China. As of 2021, India has over 1000 universities, with a break up of 154 central universities, 438 state universities, 126 deemed universities, 395 private universities, 7 institutes under State Legislature Act and 159 Institutes of National Importance which include IIMs, AIIMS, IITs, IIITs, IISERs and NITs among others. Other institutions include 52627 colleges as government degree colleges, private colleges, standalone institutes and post-graduate research institutions.

Indian higher education is radical in terms of accessibility, and needs reforms in standards, providing values and pacing. A focus on enforcing both streamlining and holding higher standards of curriculum, value-oriented and innovative, personalization of the sector for students to gain immediate and valid transferable credentials in their own pace, empowering students to enter the work-force with necessary building blocks of knowledge that leads to set of skills from an academic fields. India can be a world leader by creating skilled technical persons who have good academic knowledge and are able to apply academic information to innovate new research applications by the critical, analytical and cognitive skills. Prior to this project, very less work has been done in India where cognitive skills are assessed to enhance growth for the students.

So, through this project AICTE would be assessing the quality of students and faculty members by evaluating their academic, social, cognitive, critical and behavioral development during their course of study. Student Learning Assessment is likely to be enhanced further as this information will be used by faculty members and the institutions to:

• Build students’ confidence and motivate them to make progress in personal and professional careers.
• Develop new learning programs that match with the student’s interest and their skill sets.
• Identify the next learning phases for students and faculty members.
• Analyze the causes of learning difficulties and make a policy to overcome these issues.

Goals

• Skilled Graduates: To produce skilled graduates by attaining academic skills and higher-order thinking skills.
• Placement: To fill up the gap between passed and placed students in the country.
• Altruistic: To develop civic, social and personal responsibility among the students of India.
• Innovation: To inculcate in student’s intercultural knowledge and collaborative problem-solving skills.
• Wealth: Skilled graduates can contribute towards productivity and innovation, which will lead to higher economic growth.

General Guidelines

• Every institute and student should participate in PARAKH Assessment.
• Assessments may be assigned to students at least twice in a year.
• Overall performance of students can be seen through the Reports and Dashboards.
• Recommendation and gaps should be addressed by the institute.                 

Key Features of Portal

• Interactive Portal: An interactive and user-friendly online portal, which is easy to understand and simple to use.
• Multi-lingual Support: Supported with multiple languages for better understanding of the assessment in regional languages.
• Dynamic Dashboard: Illustrated dashboard designed to view the performance journey and gaps in the learning.

Source: AICTE Student Learning Assessment (PARAKH) Portal