Corona has come as a blessing for higher education as it has facilitated the digital transformation of many institutions. It has also made the teacher tech-savvy.

1. Skills and
Strategies for
Higher
Education in the
Corona Age
Prof. M J Xavier
Email: xavier.mj@gmail.com

2. University
Teachers’
Owes
• 3 people were waiting at the gates of heaven
• GOD said there was room for only one of them
and asked each one to make their pitch
• 1st- I was a priest. I have worshipped you all my
life.
• 2nd- I was a doctor. I have served humanity all
my life.
• 3rd- I was a Assistant Professor. Apart from
teaching I had to perform a number of duties.
God asked what were those duties.
2

3. Duties performed by Junior faculty members
• Newsletters,
• IQAC,
• Placements,
• College Magazine,
• R & D cell,
• NSS activities,
• NBA,
• NAAC,
• Autonomous,
• AICTE, 3
• Attendance record,
• Result Analysis,
• Official work,
• Administrative work,
• Social work,
• Aptitude tests,
• Group discussions,
• Entrepreneurship cell,
• Revaluation,
• Practical oral exams,

4. Duties performed by Junior faculty members
• Workshops,
• Faculty Development prog,
• Journal publications (that too annexure
refereed )
• Exam duty,
• Floor duty,
• Admission Round duty,
• Assignments,
• Term work,
• Invigilation,
• Paper Checking, 4
• University Affiliation,
• Kaizen report
• 5s maintenance
• ISO
• Intra college events,
• Seminars,
• Conferences,
• Symposium,
• On Duty
• Class committee,

5. Duties performed by Junior faculty members
• Banner design,
• Admission duty
• Guest lectures,
• Annual sports,
• College day
• Annual
• Dept meeting,
• Lesson plans
• Assessment in google form,
• Mentoring, 5
• Paper setting,
• Counselling,
• Remedial classes,
• Industrial visits,
• Discipline,
• Website,
• Hospitality,
• Exhibitions,
• Student Clubs,
• Pamphlet design,

6. Attending Webinars
Tears started rolling on the eyes of God.

7. Duties performed by Junior faculty members
• Mini project Incharge,
• Weekly absentee's report Incharge,
• Monthly report Incharge,
• Class room projector Incharge,
• 2-5 days hrs week stay after working hrs,
• And........
• Difficult to type so many others......
• …
• …
7
GOD-
Please stop!
Don't make me cry
You have already gone
through hell,
Welcome to heaven!

8. Where are we
in Kubler-
Ross Cycle

9. Corona
Impact at
Three Levels
People
Business
Higher Education

10. Impact on People

11. New Normals
after Covid-19
• Wear mask when you go out 18 to 24 months – New
designs
• Work From Home – Metrics and performance
measures – Remote working Solutions
• Zoom meetings – Less Business Travel
• Social distancing and general Hygiene at home,
workplace and public zones.
• Larger proportion of purchases through Digital
platforms – E-Commerce Tools
• Healthy eating habits – Traditional food/organic
food/Home cooked food
• Value seeking Consumers – Minimalist approach

12. New Fashion

13. Mask as a fashionwear

14. Corona Cot
for Couples

15. Post
Pandemic
Office

16. Hygiene and Safety

17. Physical to Virtual
• Courts Go Digital
• Museum Go Digital
• Political parties Go Digital
• What about Education?

18. Impact on Businesses

19. Impact on Industries

20. People’s lives
turned Upside
Down

21. Job Scenario
• Middle class IT dream shattered. 28% less
recruitment this year by IT majors (ToI, May 12)
• Degrees will be less relevant compared to skills
• Salaries will go down for the next two years and
then pick up
• Working hours will be increased
• Job security will become a thing of the past
• The youth in the 20 to 30 age group who lost
jobs will have to struggle a lot to find jobs
• 30 plus age group will have to retrain
themselves and struggle much harder find new
jobs.
o
o o Reskilling market will be larger than regular degree programs

22. What skills will
be in
Demand?
• Specialized skills in AI, Analytics,
IoT will be in high demand
• Digital Marketing and e-commerce
will be in demand
• Courses on UX, Design Thinking
and Digital Transformation will do
well due to Technology adoption
by companies
• As more people turn online cyber
security will be a hot course.

23. What skills will
be in
Demand?
• Public Health, Health Management,
Dietician, Nutrionist, Pharma, Chemical
Engineering will be in demand.
• Hybrid courses that combine Technology
and Healthcare (Medical Electronics)
will do well. All allied health courses will
do well
• Psychological counselling will be in
great demand. One in five will need
help.
• Dieting and exercises, yoga and
meditation, music will do well

24. What skills will
be in
Demand?
• Courses on agriculture will be a great
idea – With reforms in agriculture. the
need for agri graduates will go up.
• MSW will be a good course as
opportunities open up in social
entrepreneurship. (Funds crunch is
there)
• Supply chain and Logistics– Delivery
jobs will be plenty.

25. Strategies for
Companies –
Next Two
years
• Physical to digital - Education, Digital transformation of
retail
• Reinvent your business – Delivering food to delivering
groceries - Swiggy
• Reposition your products – Moving People to Moving
goods – Singapore Airlines have converted planes to
restaurants.
• Revise the product mix – From Luxury to Economy
range – Cars, Formal wear to Home wear (Mynthra)
• Retarget – From International to domestic customers
(tourism)
• Innovate – products, processes and people
management

26. Long term
strategies
• Plethora of opportunities will open up.
• Manufacturing should flourish (Shifting of
companies from China)
• Several start ups would come up in Low
tech to high tech (hotels to AI powered
coaching)
• If India can join hands with China and
Russia, the trade block could beat the US.
Or India could join the US and UK and beat
China.
• Hopefully the Economy will take off from
2023 and would peak by 2028 or so.

27. Impact on Higher
Education

28. Admissions Hit All
Over the World
• Do not dilute standards
• Offer Fee rebate as scholarships
• Rule of thumb (Fee cannot be more than one-year salary)
• Bring average fee collected to average one-year salary
on completion of the course

29. Avoid Crowding in Campuses

30. Cleanliness and
Hygiene in Schools

31. Social
Distancing
Strategies for
Colleges
• Get on to the online band wagon;
Just as corporates have adopted
WFH, implement SFH (Study
From Home) with online classes
• Conduct online exams with
proctoring systems.
• Introduce Robot Teachers who do
not get tired.
• Introduce Three shifts

32. Robotization
of Education
Image Courtesy: Indus International
School, Bangalore

33. Thrust for
Online
Education
UGC is pitching for use of SWAYAM courses
for the forthcoming semester
Soon Universities will be permitted to offer 50%
courses online
A student can spend two years at home or in
internship during a four years undergraduate
course
https://www.financialexpress.com/education-2/top-100-universities-online-courses-from-may-30-ugc-
modi-govt-study-from-home-initiative/1961613/

34. Jokes on Online
Education

35. Comprehensive
Online Delivery
Model
© M J Xavier

36. Delivery Model
• Professors can teach in a smart class-room in the campus ①, or can teach from their
office or Institute studio ②
• Professors teaching from home, or other campuses in India or abroad ② will come
through the Internet.
• Only the students attending class in the smart classroom ① can ask questions directly to
the professor.
• All others will have to go through the moderators ④ (Typically tutors or research
associates) sitting in a call center like of set up. The moderators will field relevant
questions as judged by them to the professor at the appropriate moment.
• Students enrolled in distance mode will be assigned to study centers ⑥ and can attend
classes in their respective study centers or can attend from home or office ⑦.
• All connections are through the cloud ⑤ that can be Google cloud or Amazon Cloud.

37. LEARNING
STYLES
 Visual – learn best by seeing
(Those born between 1980
and 2000)
 Auditory – learn best by
hearing (Born before 1980)
 Kinesthetic – learn best by
doing (after 2000)
http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks1/ict/multiple_int/index.
htm
Online learning style test

38. Mode of Delivery and Assessment
© M J Xavier

41. Delivery
• Use LMS
• Be Very precise
• Use Analytics (have they watched the video,
download the file)
• Polls
• Periodic summary
• Look in to the camera
• Take care of lighting and angle
• Control outside Noise

42. AI in
Education

43. More AI Applications
• Attendance Taking
• Class participation Marking
• Proctoring of online Exams
• Paper correction
• Chatbots for doubt clearing
• Robot teachers
• Precision teaching
• Authoring books and academic
articles

44. Precision Learning
• Just like precision medicine and precision
agriculture, learning will become
personalized and customized.
• Future will belong to those who develop
platforms for customized, personalized and
individualized course offerings using
Artificial Intelligence.
• Metacog is an App for IIT JEE coaching
on Google Playstore that serves lessons
based on prior knowledge of the student’s
aptitude for different subjects and speed of
learning.
• A time will come for example MBA program
itself will run on artificial intelligence
platform that would customize the content
based on the ability and the aptitude of the
learner.

45. Hop on – Hop off Model of Education
• Degrees will be less relevant in the future as compared to
credits. The students will earn credits throughout their life by
hopping on to education whenever they need and hopping off to
employment from time to time.
• To make this possible, vertical and horizontal linkages have to
be made across colleges and courses with the use of
technology.
• Ultimately it will lead to uberization of education with clusters of
Institutions offering programs rather than Individual colleges
and Universities.

46. Jio Mart
• Just as stores get attached to
Reliance JioMart, can
educational institutions get
attached to a big brother.
• IIMs get attached to IIMA
• IITs to a central Institution
• NITs to another central
Institution
• Clusters of deemed/Private
Universities
• Clusters of Central Universities

47. “Uberization
” of
Education
• Like the Reliance JioMart model, smaller
colleges will get attached to a central Institution
which will market and assign students to them
for different subjects.
• It is like an affiliate model of large Universities.
But the Central Institutions will play a much
larger role in shaping the local colleges.
• Local colleges will receive online classes from
the central node. For selected subjects the local
colleges will teach for the entire network.
• Specialization and use of technology will
improve overall efficiency and effectiveness.

48. Where UGC, AICTE, MHRD,
and other regulators failed,
Corona has succeeded in
speeding up the Digital
Transformation of Education.
With automation, most of the
report preparation work for
statutory bodies and ranking
and rating agencies will get
reduced.

49. Skills and
Strategies
for Faculty
• Get used to technology (Authoring tools,
virtual class-room, and LMS)
• Get certified on online teaching
• Focus on three or four courses and be
the best in them. One of them should be
an unique course. (Doing Business in
China or Marketing in Madurai Rural)
• Create your own content and
continuously update them
• Get comfortable with skill training,
executive education and extension
programmes.
• Create your own brand. (All me-too
products will get killed).

50. What kind of person
are you?
• Do you want to:
• Make things happen
• Watch things happen or
• Wonder what happened?

51. "It is not the strongest of the
species that survive, nor the most
intelligent, but the one most
responsive to change"
- Charles Darwin

52. Email: xavier.mj@gmail.com