The second staff meeting in the AY 2018/2019 was conducted on Thursday 13 December, 2018 from 09:00 to 10:00 in the VIP room. All the staff members of ELC attended this activity.
Dr. Sultan Al Ghafri, HOC ELC, chaired the meeting. He appreciated the efforts of the staff to run the matters of the centre smoothly and efficiently. He briefed the staff about different matters relating to teaching, learning, and quality assurance. He urged upon the staff to maintain the same efforts and motivation for the coming semester as well. Dr. Sultan also highlighted the targets to be achieved for GFP accreditation process during this academic year.
At the end he gave away the certificates to the coordinators and Staff of the Month, for their efforts in maintaining quality of teaching and learning. He also bade farewell to Ms. Belle, our outgoing staff member.
The Business Studies Department, represented by Mr Mohammed Al Sakiti, participated in a three-day workshop on “Train the Trainer” from 18 to 20 December 2018 in Muscat. The workshop was organised and delivered by Ishraqa as part of Khimji Ramdas Institute’s commitment towards the society. The training programme is certified by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM), UK.
On the first day of the workshop, different topics were covered, including the characteristics of an exceptional trainer, learning styles, and how to design a training programme. All the participants delivered a training session on the second day of the workshop and received immediate feedback from the trainer. On the third day of the workshop, the participants were taught in depth on adult learning theory, and how to evaluate a training programme.
The Risk Management Committee of the Engineering Department organised a presentation on Preventive Maintenance of Machinery in the Workshop on 19 December 2018 from 2 to 3pm.
Mr Mohammad Ali Taher, Lecturer, Engineering Department, conducted the programme.
The programme started with a detailed explanation about different types of maintenance and their importance.
Among all the types of maintenance, special emphasis was placed on preventative maintenance which ensures the optimal working, and conserving of, the life span of machinery in the workshop.
The speaker also explained preventive maintenance scheduling procedures that are already being followed in the department, and improvement suggestions were shared among participants. Practice was given to the participants regarding a proposed preventive maintenance template for scheduling periodic maintenance.
The programme was well received by the staff and highly beneficial to the participants.
Pedagogy and Curriculum Design is a dynamic process that has intrigued educators across the world. The demands of the knowledge-seeking world are high and educators are expected to meet the expectations to maintain the quality. English Language centre of Ibri College of Technology hosted a webinar titled “Pedagogy and Curriculum Design” on 11.12.2018. It was an initiative of Professional Development Committee. Prof. Mizanur Rahman Jewel, accentuated the definition of pedagogy and curriculum, objective of pedagogy and curriculum, benefits, teachers’ role/ other concerned persons role, resource materials, techniques and procedures, design format and other key considerations. . Prof. Mizanur Rahman Jewel is a seasoned and a passionate educator. His areas of expertise include English language teaching, and Applied Linguistics. In addition, he has a diploma in TESOL from American TESOL Institute, Florida-USA.
In an effort to create awareness on the alarming rise of the predatory journals in the area of research, the research and consultancy team of ELC, organized a presentation entitled “Awareness on questionable practices: Identifying genuine and predatory publishers” for the lecturers of ELC. The presentation presented by Dr. Rehna Veerankutty Jameela, Lecturer, Engineering Department, IbriCT, was held on 11th December 2018.
As part of introduction of her informative, enlightening and detailed presentation, Dr.Rehna explained and defined the term “Predatory” and highlighted the ground reality of the existence of alarmingly huge number of predatory publishers world-wide in all disciplines of study . She brought to limelight as well the reasons behind the crisis of genuine journals and the statistical figures of the academicians mostly from Asia and Africa falling prey to the trap formulated by these predatory publishers.
The presentation in detail did focus upon the underlying motives behind the operation of these predatory journals, the primary one being making profit through illegitimate means. It shed light with numerous examples on the varied strategies and tactics employed by the predatory publishers namely unprofessional homepage and alluring offers to entrap the academicians. She further explained that the alluring offers like speedy publications of the research articles and papers, privilege to publish the thesis as publications, high impact factors, less publication charges and many more entrap even the prudent academicians, if they are not highly cautious and alert.
One of the highlights of the presentation was Dr. Rehna enlisted the various parameters to be considered by the academicians to determine the predatory journals and the genuine journals. The predatory journals, she emphasized, always fail to follow the standards of scholarly publishing journals. They do not provide the peer review, which is one of the hallmarks of genuine scholarly journals .Other cues to determine predatory journals are their non-professional email addresses, contact details and indexing of journals with fictitious names of eminent scientist as members of the editorial board, she added.
A demonstration on the criteria to define genuine journals was praiseworthy as well. Dr. Rehna explained the different parameters that genuine journals adhere to namely professional homepage without any gaudy colours and scrolls, less impact factor, professional email addresses and no alluring offers and privileges for the authors of the papers. She too offered a note of caution to the participants to keep at bay the hijacked journals, the journals of OMICS groups and journals claiming to possess UGC approval.
The presentation ended with the useful links and websites on the fake and genuine journals provided by Dr. Rehna and clarifications from the participants to her.
The presentation did serve as a real eye-opener to the audience and as a token of gratitude and appreciation, a certificate of appreciation was handed over to Dr.Rehna Veerankutty by Mr. Abdullah Al Balushi, of ELC.
Ibri College of Technology Health and Safety Committee - Ibri College of Technology is part of the national level blood donation campaign themed “Your Blood is a Life for the other”, organised by the Ministry of Health (MoH) and which was held on 27 November 2018. The blood donation camp was evaluated by the Guinness World of Records Team for the world record.
Being a nodal centre for the Al-Dhahirah governorate for this campaign, the college created widespread awareness among students, staff and the local community to donate blood to save lives. The seven governates of the sultanate recorded 5555 units of blood donated through this drive. Due to the support and motivation by the college administration, 715 units of blood were donated.
The Sultanate of Oman has now entered the Guinness World of Records by recording the highest number of blood donors in eight hours through the national blood donation campaign. This is the first of its kind in the entire Arab world.
The Students Research Committee of the Business Studies Department organised a presentation on Secondary Data Analysis Using E-Views and Report Writing, on 4 December 2018, from 12pm to 2pm in the Free Access Lab (A018B). The purpose of the presentation was to demonstrate data analysis acumen and report writing skills for students who are doing Research Project for the first time.
Ms Laly Antony, Lecturer, Accounting, handled the first session. She demonstrated to the project students how to draft the Project Report using Microsoft Word.
Dr M. Tamilslevan conducted the second session in which he gave a presentation on how to perform data analysis using software such as E-Views and MS Excel. He performed regression analysis using independent and dependent variables and showed the cause and effect relationship between the variables.
The 25 students who participated learned how to perform data analysis and interpret the results. Students from both Advanced Diploma and Bachelor classes had a very interactive session which was coordinated by Dr Ansarul Haque, Project Coordinator.
The Staff development committee of the Information Technology Department conducted
a seminar about Blended Learning by DR.Virendra Gawande-CAS-Ibri on 05 December 2018 in VIP room.
DR.Virendra Gawande defined blended learning and discussed blended learning Continuum, blended learning models. He also explained flipped classroom model. He explained about the usefulness of blended learning in Blooms Taxonomy. He enlightened us by blending the learning environment. He also highlighted the various universities that use the blended learning.
DR.Virendra Gawande discussed the blended learning benefits of the Learners and Instructors. He has explicated his blended learning proposal submitted in IBRI- CAS. He further told us that blended learning is useful for the pedagogical framework, which can fascinate the students to learn the courses.
Overall, the session was highly interactive, with many faculty members clarifying their doubts. In the end, feedback was collected from faculty who attended the seminar. On a scale of 5, the average feedback was 3.15.
To commemorate the ‘Oman Mathematics Day – IV’, the Mathematics Section of the Information Technology Department conducted the monthly math quiz starting from November for the AY 2018-2019. The aim of quiz is to encourage and motivate students to improve critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities. The quiz was designed to enable students to be professionally competent and to improve aptitude and logical reasoning skills. The students were informed about the quiz through the media displays, website posting, and posters pasted in all Math classrooms. In addition, teachers encouraged the during their respective classes to actively participate. A drop box was placed near the department for students to drop their answers which were marked by the teachers and results were announced. The students actively participated and successfully completed the first round in the month of November.
The winners of the November Math Quiz are:
1. Ikhlas Hamoud Saif Al Shuhomi
2. Amal Sulaiman Al Shuhomi
3. Al-Ghaliya Matar Al Yaqoobi
The HoD of the Information Technology Department, Dr Duhai Al Shekaili, awarded the prizes and certificates to the winners and appreciated the students for their talents and interest in the field of Mathematics.
Mathematics Section
IT Department
To celebrate the ‘Oman Mathematics Day – IV, the Math section along with the Student Services Committee of the Information Technology Department, organised group competitions on presenting the “Role of Mathematics in IT / Engineering / Business” for all the in-house students on 4 December 2018 in the VIP Hall to develop their competitive skills. The objective of the event is to encourage to gather-process the information from a variety of sources and communicate effectively while demonstrating good interpersonal skills to work in teams. The students were informed through the media displays, website posting, and posters pasted in all Math classrooms. In addition, teachers encouraged the students during their respective classes to register for the event. Fourteen groups from various departments registered for the event.
The students, Ms Hasna Al Ghassani and Miaad Al Farsi, compered the event. The event was inaugurated by a welcome address by Dr Pugalarasu (HoS, IT). He welcomed all the invitees, students and the staff and briefed that the objective of the event.
A panel of three judges, one from each department, evaluated the presentations and the winners selected based on the average scores.
1. Mr T.V.V. Rao (Information Technology)
2. Dr Vishwanath Bijja (Business)
3. Dr G. Kumaravel (Engineering)
The winners were:
First Position:
1. Saif Mohammad Salim Al Badi
2. Tariq Mohammad Al Mandhari
Second Position:
1. Al Ghaliya Al Yaqoobi
2. Al Jalila Alwia
3. Alia Al Yaqoobi
Third Position:
1. Algaliah Naseer Al Kalbani
2. Amna Khalid Al Yaqoobi
3. Noor Badar Al Ghribi
Dr Duhai Al-Shukaily, HoD, IT, awarded the prizes and certificates to the winners and appreciated them for their interests in the field of Mathematics. The event concluded with the vote of thanks by Mr Wasim, Lecturer, IT department.
The students were delighted to be a part of the event, which is evident from the feedback result 4.33 on a scale of five, collected during the program.
