Principal Speak: SCMS has its Coil around the MOOC
The learning experience is further enriched by a multitude of clubs, ranging from dramatics, music and business games, to entrepreneurship and social initiatives, all run by the students themselves
PUNE A conversation with Adya Sharma, director, Symbiosis Centre for Management Studies, Pune, is a lesson in post-modern, dynamic, online education courses. Terms like “Coil” and “MOOC” seem jangly, to say the least, but, in business management, staying ahead of the curve is what it’s all about. Symbiosis is not just ahead of the durve, at its centre for management studies, it is trying to re-define the whole shebang. Sharma has been connected to the industry as a corporate trainer with companies like Goldman Sachs, Tatas, Amdocs, McDonald’s, Wipro and Coca Cola on her CV. She brings with her a missionary zeal to keep the learning environment vibrant and energised.
What’s the elevator pitch for Symbiosis Centre for Management Studies?
The Symbiosis Centre for Management Studies, Pune, was set up in the year 2004. The institute offers a BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) degree and the luxury of choosing subjects from across disciplines, known as the “cafeteria approach”.
The learning experience is further enriched by a multitude of clubs, ranging from dramatics, music and business games, to entrepreneurship and social initiatives, all run by the students themselves.
The track record for placements has been rising. Students can choose from multinational companies to startups. The college has a dedicated placement division.
If you had to pick a USP?
At SCMS Pune we maintain a balance between academic rigor and co-curricular/extracurricular activities for overall development of the student. Regular activities, like industry visits, workshops and various club activities, alongside academic lectures has become common practice across institutions. We at SCMS go step ahead and experiment with various pedagogies, like implementing Hubspot certification and Facebook projects in regular classrooms, allowing students to gain practical experience alongside theoretical knowledge. This also makes the classes more active, interactive and engaging for both, the students and the faculty. These initiatives have been appreciated by our students and they have gone ahead to complete various other online courses as per their interest.
What’s on the must-do list?
The institute provides opportunities for international exposure through the university’s Global Immersion programme. Students during the course of the six semesters at SCMS can also choose to undertake courses for twelve credits in any one of our partner universities abroad. What we are most proud of is the exposure that our students get as a result of the diversity that is there on the campus, we have students from all the states of the country as well as students from 27 different countries.
From here, to...
We have now taken another step to provide relevant exposure to students through Coil (Collaborative Online International Learning). As a step in this direction we had our first Coil collaboration with an institution from the USA in August 2019. Acknowledging the role of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in future learning, we at SCMS made MOOC courses a part of our regular curriculum four years ago. We are now working on creating MOOC courses. Going forward, the focus will be on training our faculty to create MOOC courses so that good education can be available to a larger audience.