| |19 November 2020HIGHERReviewDISTANCE LEARNINGINSTITUTES - 2020HIGHER EDUCATIONReviewTOP 10into an award-winning institute for their on-campus management pro-grams and Hybrid PGDM distance learning programs. As of now, WeSchool is providing PGDM with 18 different specializa-tions including Marketing Manage-ment, Finance Management, Human Resource Management, Retail Man-agement, Operations Management, Supply chain Management, Business Administration, E-Business Manage-ment, and Hospitality Management to name a few. Adding about the uniqueness of the program offered at WeSchool, Group Director, Dr. Uday Salunkhe says, "While the standard features like online video recorded lectures, online live lectures, per-sonal contact classroom lectures on weekends, e-learning toolkit, place-ment assistance, online video library and online student support helpdesk are offered to our distance learn-ing students, to make the program unique we take students for industry visits, rural visit, spiritual visit and conduct outdoor experiential learn-ing sessions even for our distance learning students. Individual projects and viva are conducted and students are given a platform to showcase their expertise and deliver a video lecture through Peer to Peer Learn-ing. Ample networking opportunities are provided through business sim-ulation games and other workshops conducted at regular intervals". Strong infrastructure to backup quality educationWeSchool has created a centre for research, which is envisaged to de-velop a research climate among fac-ulty members. The envisioned scope includes encouraging and undertak-ing quality research, projects, devel-opment programs, and institutional planning to set the process in vari-ous academic units; and extend all support to the faculty members and students to publish their academic re-search for the broader use of society. This helps to support the school ad-ministration in carrying out conduct-ing yearly planning activities in an ef-fort to draw up short-term as well as long-term research priorities, devel-op domestic and international link-ages to enhance the research output. To make distance education effective while at the same time hassle free, students of WeSchool can access all the features of the program either on-line on their desktop/laptop through the website or through a mobile app 24/7. Apart from regular learning resources, students at WeSchool are also given access to an online video li-brary for extra-curricular learnings.The team associated with the Hybrid PGDM at WeSchool comes with years of experience in teach-ing, along with high-industry expo-sure. As mentors, they ensure that students are exposed to professional, functional and soft skill training to meet high-level corporate demands. Various workshops on popular topics such as conflict management, art of influencing people, problem-solving and decision making, carving paths less taken are also conducted by the institute. Adding about the place-ment opportunities available to the students as well as their future plans, Uday adds, "Students have access to specialization-wise job vacancies on our website under the `Placement Opportunities' section from the day of their admission. Also, 90 percent of our students have found a direct correlation between the program and growth opportunities in a 2017 internal survey. At WeSchool, we invest our efforts in bridging the distance between the industry and academia. Our campus boasts of in-tegrated innovation and knowledge cells, as well as research and publi-cation labs. This is where students can imbibe and gain exposure to new concepts, gain a global outlook and become future-ready".Bringing in new educational methodologies and positive changes in the Indian distance education learning landscape is Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research
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