NBA India: World Summit on Accreditation - Themes include Bridging Academia & Industry and Outcome Assessment Tools

I came across a very interesting advertisement in Today's Hindu about India's National Board of Accreditation organizing the 2nd world summit on accreditation (8th to 10th March 2014). 

The program schedule is available here: http://nba-wosa.in/ContentPages/Broucher/ProgramScheduleWOSA2014.pdf.

The sessions have the following topics (besides inaugural. plenary and valedictory sessions):

*) International Recognition of Professional Qualifications

*) Harmonization in Accreditation Practices

*) Bridging Academia and Industry

*) Outcome Assessment Tools

*) Role of Government and Public Policy in Accreditation

The speakers in the various sessions include some current and former top (very powerful figures) of Indian academia:

• Prof. Surendra Prasad, Chairman, NBA
• Prof. R. Natarajan, Former Chairman, AICTE, Former Director, IIT Madras
• Padmashree Dr. M. Anandakrishnan, Chairman, BOG, IIT Kanpur
• Prof. Dinesh Singh, Chairman, NAAC (to be confirmed)
• Prof. S. K. Khanna, Former Chairman, AICTE
• Prof. Devi Singh, Director, IIM Lucknow
• Prof. B.S. Sahay, Director, IIM Raipur
• Dr. S.  G. Dhande, Former Director, IIT Kanpur
• Prof. D.P. Agrawal, Chairman UPSC, New Delhi
• Prof. Prafulla Agnihotri, Director, IIM Trichy
• Prof.  R. K. Shevgaonkar, Director, IIT Delhi
• Prof. Ved Prakash, Chairman, UGC
• Prof. S.S. Mantha, Chairman, AICTE

Wow! That's a who's who of top Indian academic administrators - UGC, AICTE, NAAC, NBA, IIMs and IITs.

It also has speakers from foreign academia and foreign accreditation agencies including ABET.

The chief guest is Shri Ashok Thakur, Secretary, MHRD.

This page, http://www.nba-wosa.in/ContentPages/CommitteeMaster.aspx, gives the names of the members of the committees associated with the event.

From my small interest area of improving the practice of software development in Indian Computer Science and Information Technology academia, I am very happy to see the two sessions on bridging academia and industry, and outcome assessment tools. I think the latter may enable some sort of measure of learning outcomes of the practice of software development which could then help academic administrators to reward good teachers (of the practice of software develoment) and ensure that poor and mediocre teachers (of this area) are incentivized to improve their teaching (of this area). In my considered opinion, the lack of a good measure of learning outcome of the practice of software development is a key reason for the, by and large, poor quality teaching of the practice of software development in Indian academia.