| | 8 Mar-Apr 2017HIGHERReviewIN MY VIEWParticipative Collaboration for Knowledge GenerationBy Dr. J C Wandemberg, Dean and Dr. Agna Fernandez, Assistant Professor, Woxsen Business SchoolHe has over 30 years of international experience as manager, educator, and private consultant, in a range of fields and with a variety of organizations, from private businesses to international development agencies such as the World Bank, USAID, ACDI/VOCA. His motto has been "creating excellence on a daily basis!"Dr. Wandemberg H igher education must move towards a sustained com-petency-building model. Employability and genera-tive ideas are intimately linked to understanding the manner in which marketable competencies need to be embedded in every institution's initiative towards teaching, learning and research processes. As government and private colleges co-ex-ist, there is ample scope for innovation, evolution in accordance with global standards and increased focus on original thought con-tribution. Participative partnerships: Educational collaborations have taken the form of incubation centers for product development, business idea generation and evaluation, allocation of seed money towards flagging off an idea and hubs of innovation centers for re-search in teaching-learning practices. This is a true path towards a sustainable educational endeavor, whose goal is to push to the limit the critical-thinking skills of young minds so they discover their true potential and develop faith in their abilities by no longer just believ-ing in themselves but start knowing themselves. Traditional classroom techniques with their power-driven dom-inant hierarchies intimidate and restrict young minds in every way. Though they may act as powerful sources of knowledge transmis-sion, working on the knowledge transmitted along with the abili-ty to relate it to a workable commercial idea for a common good can be the cornerstone for developing global competencies. These centers help students become generative in thought and through an incremental model of independent decision making, they learn to anticipate and to get less paranoid amidst uncertainty and be com-fortable amidst fluid structures in workplace relationships. The studentteacher partnership in knowledge creation es-poused by many institutions of excellence, is a right-step in this di-rection. Mentored in the appropriate environment, students bloom from passive receptors of knowledge to active generators of thought.Participatory curriculum development (PCD) processes and models are just beginning to gain momentum in India. PCD pro-cesses links teachers, learners, parents, community leaders, govern-ment and private business representatives, to improve ownership for the entire learning process. Participative partnerships enhance ownership in the entire learning process and bench-marks practices, as per industry requirements for fur-ther learning needs. Industry today finds that there is a paucity of employable graduates - employability in the context of knowledge, attitude and skills. There are incessant complaints about the lack of commitment
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