The document discusses curriculum development at AGORA Studio at MERIT, New Delhi to keep up with rapidly changing technology. It proposes a dynamic curriculum that evolves along with technological changes. AGORA Studio's vision is to create engineers and scientists for self-entrepreneurship through collaborative and individual projects exploring emerging technologies. A SWOT analysis of MERIT using a 4D model relates its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats across different modules like governance, budgeting, and access to information.

1. Dynamic Curriculum and its Implementation in AGORA Studio at MERIT, New Delhi Presented By Bhupindar Singh Puneet Gautam

2. Contents Introduction Curriculum Development in the Current Chaotic State AGORA Studio for Software Development Graphical Map of Agora Studio SWOT Analysis Conclusion

3. Introduction In this era of rapid technological improvements, the time between R&D State and Maturity State has decreased considerably. Despite of having affected modern living in ways unimaginable some decades back, it has certain complexities associated with it. The chaotic state of growth in this technology has been often explained through working together of ‘Three laws of Technology’, namely, Moore’s Law Gilder’s Law and Metcalfe’s Laws. To keep with the symphony of the chaotic growth and to provide balance & counter balance serious thoughts need to be given for the development of curriculum. A dynamic curriculum that evolves as fast as technology is the need of the hour.

4. Curriculum Development in Current Chaotic state IT, the 20th century boon to the humanity is growing in its application almost in an exponential acceleration. If one considers development in any other field of Science & Technology since the last 4-5 centuries, there is no discipline which has spread its wings anywhere comparable to IT & Computer Sciences . A Student when graduating from a University/College are expected to take up job on cutting edge technology. But with the present rate of obsolescence a student graduating with the static course could find himself ignorant of the current or developing state of IT technology

5. Thus he will find himself going into some other courses for finding his place in Industry. This paper describes strategies for curriculum development to cope up with the situation, so that this agony of the students is minimized.

6. AGORA Studio for Software Development Vision Mission Communication Technical Issues Maintenance/Clients/Users Regulation Governance Budgeting New Organization Individual and Organization Interest Project Management Access for information

7. Vision Our vision is founded upon the Quality of the human spirit practiced on a continuous basis in a committed environment of teamwork, leadership, expertise and innovation through value added education. The vision of this organization is build on strong pillars of Strength, Dynamic Adaptation, Team Work, High Dedication. The moto of this organization is: Create corpus of fresh engineers & scientists for developing self- entrepreneurship through floating their own venture. The plan is to have collaborative project for developing research on emerging technologies and provide individual projects to explore the avenues

8. Mission To mould our students into sound professionals and good citizens with character and integrity. To create environment and facilities for achieving the above. Blend well established traditional practices with modern teaching methodology through a judicious mix of gurukul system and state of the art learning technologies

9. Communication Communication is the key to the development of any organization . At MERIT, we have an open door policy which not only guarantees transparency but also help individuals from all levels to take part in decision-making. The communication link forms at different levels within and outside the organization. Formal: Communication through Memos, notices. Informal: Free and spontaneous share of ideas among peers. Internal: Balance sharing modes of communication in Formal and informal that helps both organization and individual. External: It believes in adopting a professional outlook while dealing with clients and is mostly formal in nature.

10. Technical Issues The organization has various technical issues dealing with the Environment, Development and the Networking. Environment: Software, Tools, User Interface Development: Domains (Software, web, networking/hardware), Competency Recognition and Management, Resource Management, Project Management Networking: Technology, Security, Scalability

11. Maintenance/Clients/Users The market conditions of current scenario has to be worked out in order to adapt and build strong relationship with the clients. Feedback: Stay in touch with the staff and students to constantly develop as a better organization as companies relate with clients. Feed forward: Moulding the students output into input for other phases of knowledge to cover. Regulation: Maintaining code of conduct by respecting rules and regulations thus helping to preserve coordination in the organization. Governance: Proper evaluation of laws by following code of conduct and flexibility in the regulations Community Help: Awareness of the social cause. MERIT focuses on awareness of computer education in society. Youth Counseling: To create all round professionals at Merit by seeking the current demand of the industry.

12. Regulation This aspect forms an important part of the discipline and thus to the governance. Government Authority: Respect the laws and follow the strict rules of the organization. Self regulation: At MERIT the rules are flexible to provide ample opportunities for creative innovation of the ideas of Individuals to perform tasks. Market regulation: Demand and Technology keeps on changing so we at MERIT keeps tune with the government regulations. Co-regulation: Exchange of knowledge and applying skills by having good communication at hierarchy levels. Code of conduct: Free mind to pursue any activity they desire to help them use their creativity. Ethical and value system: These codes of conducts are primarily concerned with ethical and moral issues .

13. Governance The firm conduct of the activities inside the organization following rules and regulation. Competence Recognition: A tool used for Skill Analysis, Succession Planning, Competence Analysis& Profiling and thus used to ensure individual standard in an organization. Rules and Regulations: The individuals creativity cannot be restricted it has to be conducted firmly by applying flexible rules and regulations. Structure: MERIT, An NGO but based on the corporate model providing free and congenial atmosphere in the organization. Human Resource Management: Structured procedure ensuring better recruitment. Performance Appraisal: To find the worth of an employee. Exams/Evaluation: Evaluation of students based on yearly exams to evaluate their capabilities. Communication : Formal, Informal, Internal, External.

14. Budgeting A crucial part of every activity to be carried out in the organization. Time: Most crucial part sometimes even more then money. The project undertaken has to be completed in the decided time frame, this accounts to planning and discipline Resource: This includes money, efforts and staff and the technical devices. Cost: Cost Estimations of the project after dealing with the market moving strategies .

15. New Organization Security Competence Budgeting Access of information Vision/Objective: Regulation

16. Individual and Organization Interest Self development: Individuals skill development is must as they forms the origination, so let them make their wings flexible enough to fly freely and contribute their thoughts independently. Relationships: Good relationship within the organization and with the clients is important. Organization Goals Individual Efforts: Complete dedication towards the job being assigned to the individuals. Team Spirit and Synergy: At Merit, lots of effort is put on an individuals growth and creativity to work as team spirit.

17. Graphical Map of MERIT

19. Access for Information Security Governance Quality assurance through data gathering: Countless resources are providing the information but vital information providers are only the few ones. Copy Rights: The administrator holds the privileges to make changes in the database of the system Limitation to Non-Public Information Access/System Logins & Passwords: Only access to the public information else copyrights would be violated. System logins would ensure the security System Logs: To maintain a log table of information accessing members to check the information most accessed by users so as to ensure them latest updates and also the accessing non-valid users.

20. Working Plan Total Quality Management/Total Management: While working here at MERIT we are focusing more on the Quality. Budgeting: Before scheduling the plans we work out the budget for efficient utilization of resources. Feasibility: Technical, Political, Economic Feasibility is carried out to achieve better results. Flexibility: The plans should be flexible enough to enjoy working and save extra effort on budgeting. Governance Interaction: This component is focused to share the knowledge and enhance the skills. Cooperation: The staff is cooperative and always ready to hold the job.

21. Strategy of Transmission The flexible dealing with the plans for swift transmission from one plan to the other. Plans: Two to three possibilities are charted out with feasible factor in case of failure of one. Flexibility Code of Conduct: Thorough governing of rules and regulations. Budgeting Communication Level: Due to cooperative nature and high level of communication planning of strategy is quite easy. Interoperability: Seamless shifting of the plans, unaffecting various other factors.

22. SWOT Analysis Create corpus of engineers for self Entrepreneurship. A++ Infrastructure, Guidance/Expertise people, High Dedication, Moto, Inter-development. Best approach is to provide individual projects to explore the avenues. Planning curriculum development on emerging technology with open Universities.

23. Weakness Marketing Emphasis can be inspired. Some time one feels the organization is too meticulous on Value system/Ethics . Opportunities Non Profitability Links in Government & Industry is very strong since everyone in India & abroad values expertise Decision implementation is quick A++ Infrastructure

24. Threats Market Threat. Long term goals. Resource threat. Competition through corporate. Complexity of technical environment. Lack of awareness and motivation to react. Attack on network and its components.

25. SWOT Analysis of MERIT using 4-D Coordinates

26. The above cuboids structure shows 4-D SWOT analysis of MERIT. The 4-D forms the Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats . The edges of the cubical structure forms the different modules of the MERIT as Budgeting, Governance, Vision& Objective, Regulation, Access to Information, etc. Thus addition of every different module would form the edge of the cuboids. The further addition would convert the 4-D Diagram into 5-D. With every module of the organization relates the Strength, Weakness, Opportunities & the Threat and thus calculates the impact of these factors in one module with the other module. The four factors are being numbered from 0-5 to calculate the SWOT value at every edge and thus check its impact on the other module so that proper re-organization of these modules can be done to gain positive result.

27. Strength – 5 Weakness – 4 Opportunities - 3 Threats - 2 A base value is being set for accepting the SWOT value. The value lower than the base value would help the organization to seek the weaker factor in the module of the organization and thus work further to strengthen it. In the above structure there are coordinates (0,1,1,0), (1,0,1,0), (1,1,0,0) which are having the direct impact at the end result and the coordinates (0,0,1,0), (1,0,0,0), (0,1,0,0) are having the indirect impact. (1,0,0,0) – Strength (0,1,0,0) - Weakness (0,0,1,0) – Opportunities (0,0,0,1) – Threats

28. 1. {(0,1,0,0) -Opportunities (1,1,0,0) – Strength, Opportunities} = (1,1,1,0) – Strength, Weakness, Opportunities The coordinates (0,1,0,0) and (1,1,0,0) shows that opportunities derive the Strength of the organization and the new opportunities opens the gateway for the weak points in the different modules in the organization and so the resultant is (1,1,1,0). 2. {( 0,1,0,0) & (0,1,1,0) – These coordinates shows the weakness further followed by the opportunities thus giving the chance to the organization to strength itself. 3. {(0,0,1,0) & (0,1,1,0) – The opportunities followed by the weakness shows that the new opportunities gives the way to heal the weak points in the module. 4. {(1,0,0,0) &(1,0,1,0) – Here the coordinates shows the strength followed by the opportunities thus the new opportunities giving the way for the organization to strengthen itself and gain the result positive. 5. {(0,0,1,0) &(1,0,1,0) – Opportunities followed by Strength motivates the organization to be confident, enthusiastic and positive about the growth.

29. Relationship between Strength and Opportunity The above diagrammatic analysis shows that the relationship between the Strength along X-axis& Opportunities along Y-axis. As the Opportunities for an organization are increasing along the different modules as Governance, Budgeting, Access to Information, Project Management etc the strength of the organization also increases and thus it adds to the overall increase in the strength where at some point in the future it becomes constant along the Y-axis. Strength Opportunities

30. Relationship between Opportunity and Threat The above relationship between Opportunities along X-axis and Threat along Y-axis reveals that as the opportunities for an organization are increasing the chances of threat are decreasing. As the threat chances are rare for any organization so it will remain at a constant point as the opportunities are increasing thus strengthening the organization. Opportunities Threats

31. Relationship between Weakness and Threats The above relationship shows Weakness along X-axis & Threats axis Y-axis that if an organization shows prolonged weakness in its modules then at some point it would give the chance to the organization to recover from that weakness and if it does not able to do so then the resultant would be that organization would be at much weaker point from where it would not be possible for them to recover back and thus leading to the close of organization . Weakness Threats

32. Relationship between Strength and Threat The above relationship shows that Strength along X-axis & Threats along Y-axis .When the organization has strengthen its wings the occurrence of the threat does not deal big to it. As still the threat has rare occurrence but it puts a major impact for a sustained period of time and then after that the opportunities helps the organization to recover from the threat and strengthen its wings again. Strength Threats

33. Conclusion The conclusion follows that every module in the organization has direct and indirect impact over the other module thus setting out the base value for the SWOT we can calculate the four factors namely Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat at every module and mould the growth of the organization accordingly. Sometimes the impact could be additive but non-linear .