KATHMANDU
One of the first educational institutions in Nepal to affiliate with a foreign university, Islington College aims to provide quality education in the country. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Information Technology (IT) and Business and has adopted a unique student-centric learning style.
Rohit Pandey, the Chief Academic Officer at Islington College, said, "Before 2011, the requirement for a university degree was simple - get the Diploma and the Advanced Diploma. But we felt a student should get an undergraduate degree after studying the subject of their choice for four years. So, we decided to work together with the London Metropolitan College and started providing our students with foreign Bachelor's degree (in Business and IT) and Master's degree (in IT)."
From offering a career-specific Multimedia Technology degree (undergraduate) to a general degree like Computing, the college has made a name for itself among prospective students in the country.
The college also offers a Master of Science (MSc) in IT and Security, Bachelor of Science Honours (BSc Hons) in different subjects - Computing, Computing with Artificial Intelligence, Computer Networking and IT Security, Multimedia Technologies, and Mobile Application Development - for the students interested in studying IT.
It also offers Bachelor of Arts Honours (BA Hons) in Business Administration and Accounting and Finance for those interested in business studies.
The college is also adept at adapting and changing all courses it offers according to the market requirements. For instance, it has integrated Nepal's laws and cases of cyber ethics in its course content to make its students aware of local situations, as per Pandey.
The college, located in Kamal Pokhari, also engages the students in several co-curricular activities. The three-semester system (applicable for all programmes) adopted by the college engages the students in course-based learning during the spring and autumn semesters. The summer semester is reserved for skill enhancement programmes where students learn degree-required skills through specified classes.
The autumn semester runs from September to October and ends in January. The spring semester starts in February and extends to May/June. Following the end of the spring semester, the summer semester begins in the middle or the end of June and ends in early September.
"The courses of autumn and spring semesters do not include the skills taught during the summer semester," informed Pandey. "These specified classes (of summer semester) help shape the students' careers."
"We also offer classes on current market trends in the summer," he added.
"For example, if new development occurs in the IT world like Flutter (an open-source UI software development kit), the students are taught about it by industry professionals. We cannot include every new trend and development in the current world in the main course. So, we impart knowledge about such contents to the students in the summer semester."
Besides these, the college also offers extracurricular activities like Sports Week, where the students get involved in physical sports, and talk shows featuring industry-specific experts. The student clubs also organise college events like design contests.
The Islington College also has a mandatory course - Work Related Learning - that requires students to work in an organisation of their interest. It offers its students an organisational perspective and prepares them for jobs in the industry.
"Over 150 companies work with us to provide our students with work-related studying," Pandey said.
"One such example is Vairav Technology, an in-house organisation, where 95 per cent of our graduates either work as permanent employees or interns."
The reason for offering such programmes is to meet one of the primary objectives of education - "a good job placement in the future" as per Pandey.
"By having our students work for us, in an ecosystem of academia and organisation, we are not only providing them with job opportunities but also proving that our students are capable to make themselves spaces in the job market," he said.
"While we work extensively on maintaining and providing good quality education through regular adaptation of the course content, it is incomplete without proper delivery," Pandey said.
"To ensure we are delivering quality education, our teachers are also engaged in skill development programmes so that they can provide the best to our students."
The lack of good teachers is one of the problems of most educational institutions in Nepal.
"With no certain career paths, people are reluctant to go into the teaching profession," said Pandey but claimed, "However, here at Islington, our teachers are assured of their careers as almost 80 per cent of them are full-timers. Such an environment not only encourages our teachers to give their best but also increases the learning drive of a student."
He also highlighted Islington's student-centric teaching model. "We use a student-centric teaching model called 'Lecture, Tutorials and Workshops' (LTW) where students learn the primary course material through lectures, exchange queries and familiarise themselves with the content through tutorials, and implement their learnings practically through workshops," Pandey said.
Meanwhile, the college boasts of infrastructures and research-friendly spaces, which amplify the learning environment, Pandey said.
At the same time, the educator also claimed that their teaching-learning model is a success. He said so based on the feedback the college has received from its students and their parents.
"At present, 80 per cent of our undergraduate students in IT (second year) are employed," Pandey informed.
"We often hear parents saying that once they admit their children into Islington, there is no need to send them to foreign universities. Such feedbacks are like approval that our teaching model is just as effective in practice."
With course fluidity, skill development programmes through internships, and good quality of teachers, the college has been successful in creating an environment similar to foreign universities, Pandey claimed.
"We have been able to replicate the teaching process of foreign universities - from the course content and quality to its delivery - at our institution," Pandey said.
"For students who are in a dilemma about venturing to foreign lands or wish to get a foreign degree in Nepal, we have been successful at fulfilling their wishes."
Pandey pointed out, "Nepal's education system lacks provisions of course adaptability, quality teachers, and infrastructures that foreign educational institutions provide. Thus, there is a stark difference in the quality of education, too."
He then claimed, "Our college can serve as an example to other educational institutions in the country as a beacon of change and quality education."
Nonetheless, to prepare the prospective and new students familiar with the college's environment, Islington also organises different transitional programmes, Pandey informed.
The students are required to go through the University Preparation Course - it helps them transition to an international university programme where the college teaches them the integral parts of college education, like report writing and conducting further discussions about it.
"These are short-term solutions to ease this transition. We are also planning on making changes to the teaching style of the country by making it more student-centric and implementing the LTW model right from the school level via our digital platform 'My Second Teacher'," Pandey shared.
"Digitising our University Preparation Courses and increasing its accessibility (to students) will help us in the long run by minimising the differences in the country's quality of education."
Pandey hopes that the efforts of the college will help reduce the number of students who leave the country for a foreign land and Nepali students who come to Kathmandu for quality education from different parts of Nepal.
"We have expanded our teaching models to Herald College in Kathmandu, Informatics College in Pokhara, Itahari International College in Itahari, and Biratnagar International College in Biratnagar," Pandey informed.
"The success of our teaching model here has encouraged us to go beyond our institution. At present, we are limited within some educational institutions, but we hope to impact Nepal's education system in the future."
Taking it a step further, Pandey also informed that Islington college plans to expand its degrees to countries like Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia in partnership with institutions in these countries by November.
The students in these countries will be able to access the course materials online, take physical assessments in their country's educational institutions and obtain online degrees.
He added, "All of our efforts go into reducing the difference in the quality of education of our country."
A version of this article appears in the print on September 10, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.
