The National Education Policy (NEP)–2020 highlights on overall personality development of individual by inculcating 21st Century education skills to learners. NEP–2020 mentions that “Education would be aimed at developing all capacities of human beings – intellectual, aesthetic, social, physical, emotional, and moral in an integrated manner” (NEP, 2020).
It is very well said that:
Breakthrough innovation occurs when we bring down boundaries and encourage disciplines to learn from each other
What is Multidisciplinary and Holistic Learning?
A multidisciplinary and holistic learning is an integral education model that will relax the discipline boundaries for learning and make the system flexible enough for students to learn sciences, mathematics with humanities, languages, social sciences, professional skills, soft skills, ethics, morality, human values etc. in combination according to their needs and interests with the aim towards integrated competencies development including intellectual, aesthetic, social, physical, emotional, and moral. With such approach a student is no longer required to be confused on: Whether he can learn Mathematics and Psychology together. Now the answer lies in his interest only. If he wants to learn, he can not only learn but can choose an appropriate career option for him as well.
Gist of NEP 2020, towards multidisciplinary and holistic education
· A multidisciplinary education will focus on the integrated development of individual including - social, physocological, emotional, social and moral.
· All the disciplines including professional, vocational or technical of undergraduate programme will experience the methodical execution of such comprehensive learning.
· There will be no rigid boundaries between the learning of science, arts and humanities. All institutions will accommodate professional and soft-skills courses.
· The all-inclusive approach in curriculum will ensure the flexibility in courses and academic pathways thus would promote Multiple Entry Exit System.
· All Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) will encourage the foundation of all departments including Languages, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Indology, Art, Dance, Theatre, Education, Mathematics, Statistics, Pure and Applied Sciences, Sociology, Economics, Sports, Translation and Interpretation, etc.
· Students will be their own degree maker as NEP offers certificate after completing one year of professional or discipline course, diploma if one completes two years, a Bachelor’s degree after the completion of three years and the undergraduate degree with research if one completes the preferred duration of four years.
· Students will be their credits holder too with the initiative of Academic Bank of Credit (ABC) to create a digital account of their earned credit from various programs or institutes which can be considered to award the degree
· Exclusive Multidisciplinary Education and Research Universities (MERU), aiming to the best quality education at par with global standards will be established for holistic and multidisciplinary education.
· More incubation centers will be set up in Higher Education Institutes to enhance the interdisciplinary research culture including humanities and social sciences research and more efforts will be put for bridging industry-academic gaps for innovation and technology advancements.
During a national webinar on multidisciplinary and holistic education organised by the University Grants Commission (UGC), Union Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar stated that: the concept of Multidisciplinary and Holistic Education is not new. He mentioned that “The tradition of holistic and multidisciplinary learning has been followed in India from the times of Taxila and Nalanda where attention was given to overall personality development.”
He also emphasized that it is imperative for Higher Education Institutes to inculcate 21st century skills in the learners that comprises active learning, out-of-box thinking, critical thinking, effective communication, collaboration, technological skills and life skills in various fields, and a comprehensive education system is the path of the skills development.
In Today’s world of technology and globalization, skills play more important role in real-life than mere knowledge. Multidisciplinary and Holistic Approach in Higher Education aims to develop following skills and over-all personality building in the youth:
· Critical ability: With multiple discipline knowledge, a student will become able to think beyond the horizon of single discipline and can think about the logical connections between different ideas.
· Self-governance: With the choice of their own subjects, students will become able to set their priorities and knowledge landscape for a disciplined learning.
· Problem Solving: Quick and Effective solution to a problem, is the skill that the employers searching in the current time. The knowledge of different subjects in multidisciplinary approach will develop the logical and analysis skills in students to handle difficult situations.
· Communication: Knowledge is the confidence and an effective communication is the result of wide knowledge. With multidisciplinary and holistic learning students will be able to share ideas, express their feelings and contribute to national progress.
Recently, UGC has asked Higher Education Institutes to take appropriate action for implementation of Multidisciplinary and Holistic Education in their Institutes and share the initiatives taken in this regard on the University Activity Monitoring Portal (UAMP). So the methodical implementation of Multidisciplinary and Holistic Education has become the need of the hour. In this regard iCloudEMS has always proven itself a logisticsand smooth technical support to HEIs in taking the utmost care of all their requirements to simplify the realization of visionary guidelines.
How iCloudEMS assists in the reformation of Higher Education Institutes with multidisciplinary and holistic approach
iCloudEMS is an innovator offering unified solutions to the complex workflow problems in HEIs with its following unique features:
· A cloud-based platform to store huge database of the students and their associated attributes with quick information access services that will help the administration to get insights of any detail in no time.
· Smart solutions to course choice and allotment to encourage the much needed flexibility norms according to CBCS guidelines and empower multidisciplinary education.
· Digital portal to count and track the earned credits from the courses of the students’ choice works analogous to Academic Bank of Credit for a particular institute.
· Automating the important academic functions such as attendance record, timetable preparation, assignment uploading and many more with a couple of clicks only, saves the valuable time of instructors which can be utilized in their academic and research goals.
· Online Classes and Exam management system to beat the learning barriers and commit multidisciplinary and holistic education anywhere and anytime.
· Student Lifecycle management system to present a dashboard view to the integrated academic journey of student including his academic performance and pathways promote seamless management of Multiple Entry and Exit System.
· Personalized Learning management system with prime content creation and delivery utilities paves the way for creative teaching-learning and empowers student-centered education.
· It can help the Educational Institute to go for accreditation of various national and international bodies benchmarking each parameters and pulling out the necessary documents in the required format for couple of years.
We have rich ancient multidisciplinary education culture like Gurukul system, 64 kalas etc. in our tradition which always worked toward the complete development of individual with vast knowledge of many domains. Again the time calls to learn from the past and move toward the bright future. We can realize the multidisciplinary power in the global pandemic situations that how all the horizons assimilated to find solutions of this world-wide crisis. iCloudEMS has always brought the digital revolution in HEIs and ensured the accomplishment of better learning outcomes to develop responsible member of society with multiple skills.