The ADBU tradition of holding faculty development program at the start of each semester had two day-long sessions for some 80 plus faculty members of both the Schools of Technology, and Social Sciences at its Azara campus, 15-16 July.

The resource persons from Larsen & Toubro Mumbai who facilitated the program included the Vice-President and Global Head of Training & Development, Mr Neville Lobo, and Training & Development Officer Mr Rohan Athalye.

The sessions started off early in the day at 8.30 am with “corporate theatre” games held at the atrium in which the entire faculty including Vice Chancellor, Registrar and other ADBU senior officials joined younger faculty members for a two hour session.

The various ice-breaker games helped to shed the ego and inhibitions between the senior and junior faculty and help form team spirit and bonding.

The rest of the sessions were held at the Conference Room with several group activities for self study on various learning styles and how it could be applied in classroom situations.

The topic of the two day sessions was: “Transformation through Reflection and Critical Thinking.”

The afternoon sessions included departmental group work to discuss, plan and implement lesson plans incorporating four learning styles: Concrete Experience (feeling), Reflective Observation (watching), Abstract Conceptualization (thinking), and Active Experimentation (doing).

The day concluded with each departmental group coming up with a lesson plan to incorporate the above four stages of the learning cycle to address the four types of learners in the classroom.

The second day started with the presentation of the lesson plans and further group discussions…the major learning module on the second day was on “Practicing Joy at Work.”

The resource persons helped explore strategies and to become aware of and minimize the unconscious bias and common assumptions so that we can help create for the students an environment that supports risk taking and engagement with the curriculum.

After the screening of the short film “Fish” which showed the four elements needed for joy at work, namely: play, make their day, be there, and choose your attitude.

Group discussion was followed by group work on “what we want our smart pupils for their employability” taking into consideration what practices we need to ‘start’, ‘stop’ and ‘keep’.

The entire training in the art of critically reflecting on the teaching profession, its culture and ethos was to help the students to get into the habit of being given to reflecting on their own lives.

The training also underlined the necessity of ‘getting into a state of being stressed enough to be successful’ – involving effective harnessing of goals, assignments and time to be successful.