Why boutique institutions important to higher education?

But, the pressing question is – why boutique institutions are new superhero of the higher education landscape? Many of the prestigious educational institutions are consistently failing to focus on the holistic development of the students career because they’re still limited to the quantitative learning that circles around a large-sized classroom packed with students and faculty. Sadly, Indian education sector is not matured enough to address some of the underlying challenges of the job-readiness of the graduates.

Many surveys revealed that by 2030 India’s workforce will be larger than that of China with maximum new entrants in the urban areas.

The need of the hour is imparting skill-based (qualitative) knowledge in the present scenario where many countries count India amongst the world’s most important emerging economies so that graduating students can take up their industry roles smoothly.

Also, it is equally important to remain competitive with high degree of professional competence and adequate exposure in the changing business world. A bachelor degree from a prestigious college is not going to help you to fetch a desired job because the educational institutes are constantly failing to maintain a right alignment of curriculum with industry requirements.

Qualitative learning nurtures the young aspirants with the following competencies – Power to Synthesise, Power to Take Decisions, Power to Collaborate and Power to Achieve & Lead.

By recognizing the pressing labor market requirements, the Boutique educational institutes nurture the students with the necessary skill and talent required for a job through a strategic partnerships between the industry and academia. They give a significant importance to skill-based education with a major focus on areas like creative thinking, problem solving abilities, interpersonal skills, leadership aptitude, business communication skills and decision making capabilities.

Unlike the large sized classrooms of the big UGC-approved universities that often fail to provide an inquiry-based learning outcome that leads to stress and high anxiety amongst the students, Boutique Institutions make sure the individuality, creativity and innovation of the students are not frowned upon.

They hold true for a student-friendly environment – regardless of the functional value and academic qualifications, but it emphasis more on better mentoring and high personal attention. At boutique institutes, students get a safe and congenial environment where they can prosper and bloom their sense of individuality. They’re not left behind as ‘a nameless spectator’ stuck in the drowning large crowd.

A boutique institute for higher education is all about…..

Imparting the quality higher education to the young aspirants and make them industry-ready. Inspired by the “Big Fish-Little Pond effect” at the core, these establishments provide a welcoming ambiance in a small-sized classroom where each student gets an opportunity to shape the willingness to tackle the real world challenges with full confidence.

Here, students get a safe and confined environment where they can conveniently prosper and bloom their sense of individuality with a maximum flexibility and industry-focused coursework. Let’s delve into some major positive educational benefits of choosing boutique institutes for higher education over top-notch universities:

1. Perfect student:teacher ratio

Still, there are many universities where “publish or perish” is the phrase of the day; the teaching staff is compelled to focus more on research instead of imparting education to the students.

At boutique institute, the major focus of the professors is to increase the learning of students and bridge the gap between academia and industry by giving significance to the job-readiness of the students. This way professors make every possible attempt to address a grave problem by training the aspiring youngsters with the necessary professional skills.

They align the academic curriculum with the various requirements and demands of the dynamic industry. Also, it is making changes in the existing classroom methodology and a theory-heavy approach by giving more importance to practical case studies. The institute offering a number of industry relevant professional programmes, which provide the young aspirants better deeper insights about the competitive industry.

2. No overcrowding means better attention

Unlike large universities where you find yourself in a big lecture hall fully-packed with the crowd of hundreds of classmates, attending your favorite professional course at boutique institutes will be entirely different experience. There will be no overcrowding of students, which means the students will get the attention they need from their teachers.

“Approximately 14-percent of all higher education institutes are exceeding capacity, and more than 8-percent are overcrowding their classroom size by more than 25-percent.”

In boutique institutes, you will find the small classroom environment with fewer than 30 students in a class, which provide you a much better opportunity to interact, ask questions, participate in discussion, learn and grow intellectually. You don’t have to be a nameless spectator stuck in the large crowd of a mega-university, which often make the students feel left-out. As a result, they’ve become more disruptive than ever and out of frustration, some students drop out.

3. Skill-based learning

In the dynamic industry, the demand of more world-ready professionals with the core skill set is constantly rising. Considering the urgency of the fast and newer skills, the skill-based learning has become the top priority of aspiring youngsters nowadays. At boutique institute, the focus is more on imparting Skill-based education, which is somewhat missing in most of the reputed UGC recognized higher education institutes.

It emphasis more on practical and dynamic approach. It nurtures students with theoretical knowledge along with skill-based education with a careful emphasis on the personality development and behavioral aspects, interpersonal skills and leadership capability, higher level problem solving ability, excellent written and communication skills as well as decision-making skills and innovation.

4. Up-skilling for practical exposure

Boutique focus mainly on imparting the students the much-needed practical workplace exposure via short-term industrial projects in collaboration with industry experts, internships, and corporate interactions. This way, the students not only sync with the prevailing and current industrial trends, but they get an idea about how the corporate industry operates. Also, they get familiar with the current realities of the workplace, which is quite imperative in determining the career success graph of these individuals.

The heart of the matter: Boutique Institutions for higher education

Boutique institutes with lesser number of students in classroom definitely plays a critical role in fostering better quality education and higher achievement. You may be surprised to learn the many positive learning effects that various studies on classroom observations have revealed:

• personalized student attention and the higher level of flexibility that the students really appreciate.
• small classroom sizes instantly rise attendance percentage by 11% students are less likely to drop out.
• small classroom environment results in better student engagement and achievement.
• teachers provide better and more-tailored education in smaller classes.

Attending a professional diploma or short-term certification course at Boutique Institution over a full-time degree course in university, will surely offer a student-centred learning environment. Albert Einstein famously said, “I have no special talents… I am only passionately curious.” The same psychology supports the concept of boutique institutions for higher education, which equips the students with academics and skill-based training while satisfying a deeper curiosity of every student present in the classroom. It nurtures the student’s general cognitive ability rather than the intelligence quotient. Always remember: overall skills matter, not just academic excellence.

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Presently, the world is in the midst of making the massive efforts to revolutionize the education and to keep up with the emerging requirements, much attention is paid to the use of technology. The influx of new classroom technologies simply aims to bring positive changes in the education and improve learning outcomes for most students.

Technology is everywhere in education

In 1922, Thomas Alva Edison declared that the motion pictures are destined to revolutionize the educational system, but it failed to bring any changes. Later, the radio has emerged as a robust technology in the 1930s to beam experts directly into classroom. The idea was to provide maximum learning outputs at lower cost and fewer skilled teachers.

Next comes in the row is educational television somewhere between the 1950’s and 60’s. As an audio-visual medium, the potential of television as an educational tool is widely accepted and as of result, the early 1960s became an era of change. In the 80s, computers gained much hype as the effective revolutionary solutions to solve the education failures and improve the procedural reasoning skills, but the results were obvious.

By now, several initiatives have been taken in support of a common theme of the proposed education revolutions to upgrade the process of teaching and learning. An enriched digital textbook, showing interactive content through a TV, e-learning videos, podcasts, engaging animations, and giant oversized videodiscs are some most notable options. But none of them will be able to bring a significant change in the classroom of tomorrow.

In the 21st century, we have aplenty of things like smartphones, tablets, smartboards, and M.O.O.C.s that are destined to revolutionize the education. Over the past few decades, we have been trying to make the massive changes and that’s not what a revolution looks like.

What could revolutionize interactive education?

Well, referring to the past failures, one thing is very clear i.e. applying technology inside the classroom is not enough. To improve the process of learning, we have to introduce a meaningful kind of thinking that increases engagement and motivation of the learner.

In this context, Gamification can be an effective solution as it promotes “Digital Games-Based Learning” within a non-game context. It became popular in the mid-2000s and the concept had previously been used across the world to incentivized customer behavior. But, Gamification has emerged as a way of engaging lower-achieving students in the 21st century and helps the teachers in bringing the bottom of your class up.

In the 21st century classrooms, the concept of game-based learning is embedded as a viable approach for 

(i) Better learning experience with the high level of engagement leading to an improvement in recall and retention abilities

(ii) Better learning environment that facilitates better knowledge retention 

(iii) Catalyzing behavioral change. 

This way, most game mechanics are making the great contributions towards an interactive process called “adaptive learning” through gamification of education into the classrooms, which is destined to transform the education system, now and in the future. We cannot predict the future of education, it is only with time we will realize the significant improvements.

Debunking Some Popular Gamification & Interactive Education Myths

Almost everything else is accepted in India except the “Digital Games-Based Learning” that are destined to revolutionize the education. Oftentimes, it might seem like a battle lost, but not everyone has given up hope on the concept of game-based learning as a viable approach towards the significant improvements in the 21st century classrooms.

There are still a lot of people making the great contributions to bring major transformation with better engagement level at the learner’s level with the help of engaging mechanism of “Digital Games-Based Learning” within a non-game context.

So here’s debunking some commonly followed Gamification myths:

MYTH 1: ALL THE GAMIFICATION SOLUTIONS AND EDUCATION GAMES ARE THE SAME

Or we should rather say that both are destined to Game-based learning. Gamification solutions are using a few game elements just to teach knowledge and skills to the learners.

It is just a way to encourage them to participate in activities that majorly consist of earning points, overcoming challenges or receiving badges for accomplishing tasks. On the other hand, a learning game is a self-contained unit where a learner is engaged in a definitive start, game play and ending.

Learners already aware of this fact that they are seriously engaged in an entire game from start to finish and at the end there is a “win state.” We have to recognize the in-depth significance of this ‘Gamification’ concept that has exploded in soaring popularity as an effective approach of learning.

It is a powerful educational tool that encourages motivation using game elements, mechanics and game-based thinking to separate fact from fiction in a truly synthesized and participatory way.

MYTH 2: GAMIFICATION IS FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

This is part of a larger myth that anyone of a certain age do not like Gamified solutions. The concept of gamification as a learning strategy has little to do with their age. Unlike playing video games, every learning perspective’s person who is interested in refresh the knowledge will always like gamification efforts.

MYTH 3: GAMIFICATION IS ALL ABOUT FUN AND GAMES

Many people think that there is no science behind Gamification, but the fact is all the Gamification solutions work on two factors – retrieval practice and spaced repetition. These help the learners to increase learning and retention. Spaced repetition give learners the content spaced over time instead of bombarding everything at once. On the other hand, retrieval practice allows learners to recall information and promote long-term retention of knowledge.

Image Credit: Google

MYTH 4: GAMIFICATION MEANS COMPETITION

False. Like any other learning activity, gamified solutions simply engage the participants in early-to-implement zero-sum mechanics like leaderboards and contests without any vibe of competition. Collaborative game-like experiences – rich and varied – are the main priority of such education solutions.

MYTH 5: GAMIFICATION IS ABOUT LEADERBOARDS, POINTS AND BADGES

A well-designed gamification effort is not like games. People don’t get engaged in such solutions for any points or badges, they say ‘YES’ to gamified solutions to overcome obstacles and get deeply engaged in learning. That’s why gamified applications and platforms like Fedda.com are a huge success in the learning environment.

We have to understand that Gamification is not a magic pill, it is just an effective approach using game thinking and mechanics to makes students more motivated, engaged, and able to retain the information they are learning inside/outside the classroom. Particularly, Gamified solutions provide the learners a situation where they have to perform and win something amazing i.e. CONFIDENCE & KNOWLEDGE by answering trivia questions.

Gamification solutions to be effective generally have three key elements: Motivation, Momentum and Meaning. These are the major ingredients that make gamification an important part of learning. And as an effective strategy to revolutionize the current status of education, it is not using superficial game elements, but it simply has extrinsic rewards just to drive short-term motivation.

“Gamification is a new way of learning if implemented well, it can be a winner! It holds tremendous potential to transform the education industry. It’s not always about competing to win, but sharing how you won.”

FURTHER READING

McGonigal, J. (2011). Gaming can make a better world. | TED Talk |  Retrieved from HERE

Zicherman. (n.d.). Fun is the Future: Mastering Gamification | Retrieved from HERE

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