Academic excellence is a challenging issue in most of the universities of Nepal. On the one hand, the number of universities is growing while on the other hand, the quality of education is posing a big problem. Quality teaching is directly related to quality learning. One of the major factors affecting academic excellence is students' engagement in the university. Their engagement does not mean the time spent in a school or university; it is the students' enthusiasm and passion for deep learning.

It is the teacher who plays a crucial role in students' engagement in the classroom.

Students learn more when their participation is active in the learning process than when just listening to the lectures. The teacher should have a plan to motivate the students by engaging them in the classroom.

The teacher, as a one-time student, should recall how they were frustrated during the learning process and inspire the students to learn with curiosity and critical reasoning.

There is a misconception among the teachers that students learn by choral reading and copying from the textbooks. Once the students learn by repeating the texts, students' engagement remains a struggle throughout life.

Carrying old notes to the classroom and never updating on teaching-learning activities will not encourage students' participation in active learning.

Completing a six-month course within a week and at the last hour of the semester cannot create a good teaching-learning environment.

How can our academic excellence be enhanced if our teaching-learning activities are targeted at just finishing the course as quickly as possible? The certificate-based studies and teaching will not only produce incompetent manpower in the society but we will also become detached from the international academic community because the world is moving rapidly, and there has been rapid development in teaching-learning technologies across the globe.

If you were a professor, how would you engage the students if you were assigned to give an hour-long lecture at a top university as a guest lecturer? If a teacher is well prepared to create enthusiasm among the students through better preparation of teaching materials, making good eye contact and is sensitive to the student's needs, the students will be committed to work hard. The teacher has a big hand in engaging students by creating a good learning environment and giving challenging assessments and encouraging a free discussion environment in the classroom with constructive feedback.

Every university has its own academic calendar and guidelines for running the academic activities smoothly. The prime factor is whether these guidelines and academic calendars have been properly implemented or not. Whether the attendance percentage of students in the classroom and teaching hours in the curriculum have been clearly mentioned in the guidelines. Are our university students attending every lecture, tutorial and practical classes regularly with at least 70 percentage attendance as per the guidelines? Are the teachers engaging the students for 45 hours or the mentioned number of credit hours as per the curriculum of the subject? Except for the technical programmes like medicine, science and engineering, in some non-technical subjects, students are seen in the classroom only during the exams, not during the regular classes. The students pass the exams without attending classes or being involved in them. This certificate-based teaching and learning activities will never produce competent manpower needed for the nation. It is a wrong belief that quality and academic excellence is guided by the number of graduates and the number of faculty of that university.

A university is a place which has a vision for social change and transformation of the society. It is a place where research and innovation occur. It is a place which develops guidelines and standards for coping with new emerging issues like climate change, food scarcity and disasters. How will universities contribute to the society if seminars and discussions rarely take place there? Engaging students in research-based, project-based and case studies-based studies in both technical and non-technical programmes will help promote student engagement in learning. The students should be engaged in reading and writing papers and for journals. The libraries should not include only textbooks but also recent journals and publications on different subjects. Students and teacher exchange programmes across universities at the national and international level will enhance the teaching learning activities in the universities.

The students should be engaged in class assessments and tests that help them develop problem-solving skills and promote critical thinking. We have to engage students, but this is not to make them study from morning till evening with lots of assignments and homework. Engagement works when they are constructively and practically engaged with the academic work in a classroom. We have to rethink whether our field visits and educational tours, internship programmes are really meeting our objectives or not.

Internship programmes should be introduced to engage students such that they develop practical professional skills before entering the market. The policymakers should focus on introducing resources that help students in active learning process. An examination and evaluation system should be introduced that evaluates the students on the basis of critical reasoning rather than writing the same answers of the questions from the text books or notes.

Neupane is Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, Mid-West University, Surkhet

A version of this article appears in the print on September 15, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.