UGC to soon notify modified academic performance indicators
The contentious Academic Performance Indicators (API) that had the university teaching community up in arms across the country since 2010 has been modified and made flexible with onus back on teaching while caps on various sub-categories of research have been removed.Also for the first time, student feedback has been introduced. Only students with 75% or more attendance will be able to evaluate their teachers. UGC will shortly notify the modified API. “The existing API despite few amendments in the past was not favourable to teachers who only do teaching and was also resulting in poor quality research and publication in all sorts of academic journals,“ a source said.
In the new API, under the category of teachinglearning evaluation, a teacher will have to annually get 100 points at the level of assistant professor, 90 at the level of associate professor and 80 for professors. Student evaluation has been introduced and the five sub-categories of earlier API has been made into four.
Categories of co-curricular activities and research earlier evaluated together will now be evaluated individually as well as collectively depending on certain factors. Sources said in the earlier API too much subjectivity was involved in case of co-curricular activities with college principals and vice-chancellors often acting as final authority .Now it has been simplified and scores have been reduced. Also, evaluation of these two categories will not be done annually .Even new field of co-curricular activity has been introduced to inculcate value education. The new fields are sports, NSS, NCC, field trips and few others.
In case of research, sub-categories remain the same but cap of minimum score from each sub-category has been removed.For instance, in earlier API a teacher had to get 55% from research paperspublications, 20% from research projects, 10% from research guidance undergraduate dissertations and 15% from training course and conferenceseminars. Now a teacher can score from any sub-category .
In the new API, under the category of teachinglearning evaluation, a teacher will have to annually get 100 points at the level of assistant professor, 90 at the level of associate professor and 80 for professors. Student evaluation has been introduced and the five sub-categories of earlier API has been made into four.
Categories of co-curricular activities and research earlier evaluated together will now be evaluated individually as well as collectively depending on certain factors. Sources said in the earlier API too much subjectivity was involved in case of co-curricular activities with college principals and vice-chancellors often acting as final authority .Now it has been simplified and scores have been reduced. Also, evaluation of these two categories will not be done annually .Even new field of co-curricular activity has been introduced to inculcate value education. The new fields are sports, NSS, NCC, field trips and few others.
In case of research, sub-categories remain the same but cap of minimum score from each sub-category has been removed.For instance, in earlier API a teacher had to get 55% from research paperspublications, 20% from research projects, 10% from research guidance undergraduate dissertations and 15% from training course and conferenceseminars. Now a teacher can score from any sub-category .
Source| The Times of India (Mumbai), May 13 2016, p.17
