CPSC Acting Director General and concurrent APACC Acting President, Prof. Dr. G. Kulanthaivel, attended the 3rd World Summit on Accreditation (WOSA) at The Leela Ambience Hotel, Gurgaon, Delhi, India from 18th to 20th March, 2016.
WOSA is a biennial event first organized by the Indian National Board of Accreditation (NBA) in March 2012. Since then, close to a thousand academicians, industry and policy makers across the world gather every two years to share their experiences and expertise related to the summit's theme. For 2016, the summit focused around the theme "Quality Assurance through Outcome-Based Accreditation", which aimed to facilitate exchange of best practices in accreditation leading to an improved quality of education that would produce a globally-competent and industry-standard workforce.
NBA Chairman Prof. Surendra Prasad delivered the welcome address and gave an introduction about the summit during the inaugural ceremony. Honorable Minister of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) Smt. Smitri Zubin Irani also graced the ceremony as Chief Guest, together with AICTE Chairman Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe and MHRD Additional Secretary Shri R. Subrahmanyam, IAS as Guests of Honor.
The summit was divided into two plenary sessions, five technical sessions and paper presentation sessions. Speakers for Plenary Session 1 delivered the following topics: Interpreting and Actualizing Learning Outcomes, The Indispensable Role of Integrity in the Accreditation Process, Quality Assurance of Global Engineering Education through Outcomes-Based Accreditation, and Accreditation: Leapfrog from Skills Shortage to Creating Quality Talent Pool. Plenary Session 2, on the other hand, imparted talks on: Evolving Accreditation Standards around the World, Developing an Engineering Problem Level Descriptor for Accreditation in Korea, and Pursuing an Outcome Based Approach for Research Based Academic Programs.
Technical sessions were divided into the following themes: (1) Accreditation: Global Best Practices, (2) Improving Quality through Attainment of Learning Outcomes, (3) Technical Education – An Indian Perspective, (4) Industry Expectations from Academia, and (5) Effective Use of ICT Education and Learning.
Prof. Dr. G. Kulanthaivel shared his insights on the "Asia Pacific Accreditation and Certification Commission (APACC) for TVET Institutions during the paper presentation session under the Accreditation: Global Best Practices theme.
The summit concluded with a presentation of the summary report by Dr. Avichal Kapur of Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai followed by the concluding remarks from the NBA Chairman and a vote of thanks from the NBA Member Secretary Dr. Anil Kumar Nassa.
