5 – Best Practices That Enhance Quality Learning Experiences

The practices which add commendable value to an institution and its various
stakeholders are considered reliable benchmarks or standards of quality. The best
practices in higher Education for Quality Management are the aggregate of the best practices followed in different areas of institutional performance.

1. Identify – The identification of best practices depends on many variables such as institutional goals, pedagogic requirements, global concerns, local contexts, nature of learners, competencies of staff, infrastructure facilities, and governance requirements. All these
   should be kept in mind while identifying the best practices. Peter Drucker rightly observes that there is an incongruence between how we teach and how students learn. All these add to the complexity of the choice of best practices.
2. Implement – However, difficult it may be, all of us engaged in the educational activities have some gut feeling of what best practices are. The implementation is the Achilles heel. The academic world generally suffers from two limitations. Firstly, we are fond of debates
   and discussions and consider words as wisdom. Aristotle deprecated this tendency long back and considered action as a virtue.
3. Institutionalize – The process of making the best practices an integral part of the institutional working. The NAAC has organized the National Conference on Best Practices in Higher Education at Goa on 26th and 27th July 2004 in which around ninety heads of colleges and universities participated and shared their experiences of the application of best practices.
4. Internationalize – Internalization refers to making things a part of one’s nature by conscious learning and assimilation. Internalization of best practices means making excellence an integral part of one’s habit and nature. Aristotle rightly observed that: “We are what we repeatedly Excellence then is not an act but a habit”.
5. Disseminate – The institutions not only have the social responsibility of application of best practices, but also an equal social responsibility of dissemination of these practices for wider application in the system. Much higher education institutions do not attempt certain practices due to a lack of information about the feasibility and adaptability of the best practices.