Creativity and Innovativeness: The two prime aspects of Higher Education
NEP is currently focusing on competency-based education, outcome-based education, and value-based education. The policy also puts its emphasis on creating what is most important today is imbibing the innovative and creative abilities of the students who come to the universities and colleges in our country. Creativity and innovativeness have suddenly become important and the teachers have been realizing it to a great deal.
ASMA’s “Thought Leadership Forum” on “Challenges and opportunities of higher education in 2022 and beyond” focussed on crucial discussions on how higher education in India is changing and how students are now made to work on the self-learning process. This discussion was joined by Dr. P. B Sharma, who is the Vice-Chancellor of Amity University Haryana, Gurugram.
Dr. P. B Sharma begins by saying that Creativity and innovativeness require critical thinking. This is absolutely essential but unfortunately in the past, our emphasis is was more on assimilating the vast body of knowledge; not so much on critical thinking or gauging innovativeness within the campuses. We thought that the mundane responsibility of the learned teachers is to translate and transfer much of the knowledge of the textbooks to the minds of the higher education students.
The teachers thought that this knowledge will take them throughout their professional life and make them relevant to the community and to the industry. But today we are in a different set of terms because we belong to a new era today. We belong to the new age of knowledge and innovation and the education sector like any other sector of the economy is also under tremendous pressure to align its entire strategic framework of creativity all over the higher education sector.
Dr. P. B Sharma also says that the focus must be given on the attitude & aptitude and therefore lifelong learning should be promoted. The future of education is an era of openness and era of flexibility in the curriculum. Students are now given a tremendous amount of space for self-learning through online learning and teachers make sure they are given more time to spend on critical thinking and spend more time studying, learning, doing research, and other aspects of creativity and innovativeness. Teachers today have started promoting the idea of collaborative learning, deep learning, and team teaching along with the culture of team learning. This has become the reality on the campuses of every university.
As per Dr. P. B Sharma’s views, although the NEP policies are a compulsory mandate, it is all about how the schools and other educational institutions implement them. In 2022, we can see that much of the learning is being done outside the classroom in higher education. Teachers these days don’t teach the students rather teachers are inspiring the students to utilize their minds and do their own work.
Teachers are now helping the students grow in a manner that we are able to develop their critical thinking, creativity, and innovation on top of that become champion in the self-learning process. This major shift has occurred in the way the curriculum is designed and implemented in the future of education.
At the end of the Thought Leadership Forum discussion, P.B Sharma requests the panel to create a space for collaborative learning, creative learning which promotes creativity and innovativeness. He says that we need to create an environment of team learning. He also says that students should be given an environment of technology-based learning or online learning in which we are already entered.
