Lack of quality education is the major problem faced by the students in our country. This leads to the rising number of unemployed adults who are incapable of fulfilling the job requirements in the industry. The institutes apply for the NAAC accreditation process to assure high quality of education is offered in the institutes. The NAAC looks up the evaluation reports generated by IQAC of the institute.
What is IQAC?
The NAAC Bangalore has proposed that all the accredited institutes must create an Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC), as a measure for improving the quality of education and sustenance. Quality assurance is regarded as a constant process in the institutes hence the IQAC should become a part of the institute to evaluate the quality of education.
The main task of IQAC will be to establish a process within the institute that will bring conscious, catalytic, and consistent growth in the institute’s performance at regular intervals. To develop this rate of improvement, the institutes must channel their efforts towards building holistic academic excellence during the post-accreditation period.
What is AQAR?
The colleges that have received NAAC accreditation are required to submit annual progress by self-evaluation known as Annual Quality Assurance Report (AQAR). This report is prepared by IQAC of the institute by undergoing constant evaluation and generating progress reports throughout the year, especially in the areas which have been specifically pointed out by the IQAC NAAC guidelines at the beginning of the academic year.
Guidelines for College IQAC and submission of AQAR for Autonomous Colleges
Here are the guidelines that are needed to be followed by institutes to implement IQAR and submit AQAR report of colleges annually.
In the first step, the institute has to fill in the basic information such as
- Name of the Head of the institution
- Institutional status should be mentioned wherein the University could be
- Registered email, alternate email address, followed by the physical address of the institution
- Phone number/Alternate phone number/Mobile number
- State/Central/Deemed/Private, then the type of institution which could be
- Designation
- Does the institution function from its own campus
- Co-education/Men/Women
Moreover, information about financial information and contact details should be answered. Further, other information such as accreditation details must be filled in. The institute can also submit the quality assurance report for such initiatives by submitting AQAR online.
Steps to follow for submitting the AQAR report for colleges
1) Registration-
- The institutes which are not already registered can register and others can just login without registration.
- A question pops up on the screen asking if you are accredited. Click Yes
- If the previous accreditation details fed by the institute do not match with the NAAC data, the registration will require approval by NAAC for the institute to fill out AQAR
- For future submissions, the institute may log in to their portal with a registered password
2) Form filling and submission
- Filling basic details
- Filling data as per AQAR format of the previous completed academic year
3) Success
- On submission, auto-generated mail will be sent
- NAAC will review and add comments. Institutes will receive email notifications
CRITERION 1: Curricular Aspects
Designing Curriculum
This involves designing and revising the syllabus in such a way that it focuses more on increasing skills and polishing students’ knowledge instead of just bookish learning. The programs should be designed in such a way that they increase employment.
Encouraging Academic Flexibility
The new courses and programs developed with new ways of assessment and better flexibility for the institutes. CBCS or ECS must be applied at the university level.
Curriculum Enhancement
Increasing students’ knowledge and skills through various activities such as internships, projects, hands-on experience, and field trips
Improving Feedback System
Developing a feedback system that helps to improve the institute’s performance and outcomes by taking feedback from teachers, students, managers, stakeholders, and others
Criterion 2: Teaching-Learning and Evaluation
Student Enrollment and Admissions
Details about the number of students enrolled along with program name, seats available, and data about applications received for a particular course.
Student-Teacher Ratio
The institute must focus on improving student diversity in the courses. They should keep track of the number of students enrolled in the institute for undergrad and post-grad courses. Further, the number of full-time teachers, number of teachers teaching undergrad courses, post-grad courses, and other details should be considered.
Teaching-Learning Process
Keep track of a number of teachers that make use of technology, learning management systems, and e-learning for teaching.
Awards and Recognitions Received by Teachers
This includes awards and honors received by the teachers at national, state, and international levels from the government or other known bodies.
Student Performance
All the student-related programs and their outcomes should be mentioned on the website along with the number of students who passed, failed, attempted and not attempted the exams.
CRITERION 3: Research, Innovations & Extension
Encouraging Research
This involves details of awards, honors, and appreciation given to the teachers for their research during the academic year.
Resource Mobilization
Information regarding various types of research, and investments received by several bodies
CRITERION 4: Infrastructure & Resource Allocation
Physical Facilities
This includes allocation of resources for infrastructure development such as campus, ICT facilities, Wi-Fi, Seminar halls, and LCD facilities. Also, this includes library facilities, books, learning materials, ebooks, and journals.
CRITERION 5: Student Support & Progression
Student Support
- Grants and scholarships provided by the institution
- Financial supports provided by the institution and third party agencies
- Capability enhancement schemes including counseling, soft skills, and entrepreneurship
- Number of students aided by schemes for the preparation of Government examination and names of schemes
- Measures for addressing student grievances, prevention of sexual harassment, and ragging cases
Student Progress
This includes details about the campus placements as well as student progress at the state, national, district levels.
Student Participation and Interest
This includes the number of awards and certificates the students have received during the academic year
CRITERION 6: Governance Leadership & Management
Vision and Leadership Abilities
This includes information about participatory management and decentralization at various departments of the institution.
Strategy Development and Execution
This involves curriculum development, learning, teaching, examination, and evaluation, library, ICT and Physical Infrastructure / Instrumentation, and other places which have a scope for development in the institute.
CRITERION 7: Institutional Values and Practices
This involves the policies that are established by the institute to encourage gender equality, focus on using sustainable energy sources, and care for the environment. This also includes building facilities for the differently-abled like ramps, rails, washrooms, and others.
Conclusion-
In this way, the main aim of IQAC and submission of AQAR is to improve the performance and learning outcomes of the institute and ensure that the students coming out of the institute are highly skilled and capable of bringing positive changes by their contributions in the society.
