Workshop on
DEVELOPMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CURRICULUM
FOR BUSINESS
Guwahati, India; 17-18 Sept, 2015
WORKSHOP REPORT
Venue
Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship
Near
Game Village, Lalmati,
Guwahati, Assam 781029
Organised by
Indian Institute of Management Kashipur
Bazpur Road, Kashipur 244723, Uttarakhand
Tel: 05947-262211, 262177 Fax: 05947-262178
In partnership with
National Institute of Technology, Silchar
Silchar-788010, Assam, India
Tel: 03842-240055
ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT CAPACITY BUILDING IN
SOUTH ASIA
However, there is a strong need to build capacities of key
stakeholders on EA in India. These stakeholders include regulators, policy
planners, project proponents, consultants, contractors, investors, environmental
NGOs, research and academia. Building of capacities should essentially address
the stakeholder "ecosystem". Importantly all these efforts need to be
carried out on a sustained and strategic basis.
In response to The World Bank’s call to develop a
sustainable green management stream within PGP, IIM Kashipur is now
running a pilot program to systematically address the dearth of environment
management skills in India by offering specialized environment management
courses, short term training and undertaking case studies. In order to develop
curriculum, elective courses and training modules for specific target groups
IIM Kashipur, in partnership with NIT Silchar is organizing this workshops on
thematic area of Environmental Law.
The overall vision is to develop the IIM Kashipur as a
Regional Centre of Excellence for EA and to expand the program to other
countries in South Asia subject to successful completion of the activities in
Phase I (2014-2016) and availability of support from the World Bank and the
Government of India.
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT KASHIPUR
Encompassed by lush green fields, IIM Kashipur campus
provides an ambience of tranquillity which helps the young minds in generating
bright ideas while the state-of-the-art infrastructure smoothens the
implementation. The Institute has modernized classrooms equipped with all the
facilities to prepare the students to be the leaders of tomorrow. The
audio-visual aids enhance the learning experience.
The Center of Excellence on
Public Policy and Government (COEPPG) at
the institute as platform to serve as a bridge between policymakers, government
agencies, civil society, industry and academia by supporting scholarly
research, public policy and administration training programs, and other
capacity building activities at the intersection of government and society
addressing some of the most important public policy and governance issues.
DEVELOPMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CURRICULUM
FOR BUSINESS
Environmental law and Regulations cut across multiple
themes. Although compliance requirements such as clearance, consent etc. under
various laws / regulations are independent of one another, prior to
commencement of specified industries/developmental activities, all the
requirements have to be met. As such, there is a need for industry and business
persons as well as regulators to understand the requirements under all the
applicable laws. It is also necessary for them to appreciate relevant court
verdicts since non-compliance could invite court intervention.
This training cum curriculum development workshop seeks to
familiarize environmental regulators with all the principal legislations,
important subordinate legislation and relevant court rulings. The context is
their interface with industry and business. Curriculum and training material
developed in this workshop and suitably updated from time to time would form
the basis for training workshops in future.
OBJECTIVES
The principal objective of this workshop is to provide a
platform for exchange of knowledge, ideas & learning experience among the
environmental experts, forest officials, regulators and the academics. The
workshop will also be used to identify emerging areas of regulatory concerns of
the industry in order to validate a standard curriculum, training modules for
specific target groups like regulators, management students and executive
trainees. Input from the workshop will be used to validate the design of a
modular training program on Environmental Law.
THEMES
·
National Environmental Policy
·
Environmental protection and Interface
with Industry
·
Forest Conservation, Wildlife
Protection and Biodiversity Conservation
·
Pollution – Air, Water; Hazardous Chemicals and Waste Management
·
The National Green Tribunal – mandate
and powers
PARTICIPANTS
The main target participants were experts, officials of
regulatory bodies, government departments, forest officials. In addition,
researchers, academics, business leaders and environmental NGOs also
participated at the workshop. The workshop which was held
at the Indian Institute of Engineers (IIE), Guwahati on 17-18 September 2015 was
attended by delegates particularly from North-eastern states of India. The
state governments of the region deputed senior officials who had practical
experience in the field of environment and forest regulation. Academics from
IIM Kashipur and other institutions as well as independent experts too part in
the workshop to bring in the pedagogic perspectives on curriculum development
in management /legal education. In addition, the invited resource persons (See
Annexure- 2) addressed the workshop on specific themes and their presentations
included:
·
A brief
description of the environmental regulation and legal processes prevailing in
the country;
·
A review
of methodologies used for regulating and monitoring environmental standards;
·
Current
problems and possible situations that may lead to innovations in curriculum
development to cope with new requirements from the world of industry and
business;
·
Future
trends and issues in this field.
These presentations formed the basis of discussions of various topics
so far evolved to be part of any environmental law curriculum and the benefits derived
from the workshop interactions were envisaged to provide quality training under
the proposed Green MBA specialisation program at IIM Kashipur. As a result of
these discussions, various issues were raised with a view to optimizing the
delivery under the existing MBA level program. Solutions were suggested to
assist the sectors represented and for the benefit of the future leaders of
industry. Recommendations have been made for future orientations and
development of curricula for a variety of training needs in management
education.
A special aspect of the workshop was the
participation of a number of law students from post-graduate level in order
that the process of curriculum development be optimized to meet the ‘legal’
professionals’ needs who will ultimately work with the business head in
corporate law arena. It is hoped that the experience of the participants
reflected at the workshop, along with the comments, recommended themes, will
help IIM Kashipur in developing their own strategies for the improvement of management
education vis-à-vis capacity building for the industry. It is proposed to
follow-up this workshop with the first pilot-batch of PGP students who will opt
for this course under their PG Program in Management (2014-16 batch). A
list of participants is attached as Annexure- 1.
CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT: THEORITICAL POSTULATES
Although, the theoretical debate continues, it has been generally
agreed that Curriculum should be seen as an overall plan for instruction. It
consists of a statement of aims and objectives, of content in terms of
theoretical knowledge, practical skills to be acquired, attitude towards work
and necessary support materials to be used in its presentation. Curriculum
Development has long been regarded as a core-component of Legal or Management
Education and Training.
In the history of legal education and curriculum development, a
systematic approach to curriculum development is relatively recent. Due to lack
of resources, experience and traditions, there have been certain tendencies in
some developing countries simply to copy existing Curriculum materials from industrialised
nations without proper adaptation to the local situation and needs, which has
often proved to be inappropriate and expensive.
During the past decade, there has been a growing
awareness of the need to bring greater innovation to the process of curriculum
development in technical and vocational education to cope with the changing
requirements for employment created by rapid socio-economic and technological
developments. Indian higher education institutions like Indian Institute of
Management (IIMs have been active in the field of Management Education for many
decades now and they are considered to be the centres of excellence. As the
World Bank’s Project on Environmental
Assessment Capacity Building in South Asia aimed
at developing and augmenting the Post Graduate
Program in Management at IIM Kashipur with environmental management courses
(“Green MBA”), the project team is focusing on the exchange
of information, the establishment of a network of participating institutions,
stakeholders, and facilitating co-operation of high-level specialists at the
national, regional and international levels. This workshop is a part of the
curriculum development activity to offer a course on environmental Law,
Regulation and Policy
Preparing managers for the realities of corporate world today is a
responsibility shared by many different groups of people both inside and
outside the education sector. All are aware that it is vital to ensure that the
young managers gain the best possible academic and professional qualifications,
in order to provide them with a realistic chance of succeeding in today's
highly competitive job market. The quality of training provided should be
judged above all by its impact or potential impact - on their practice. New
approaches of effective training and new strategies in their implementation
have been developed during the past many years in improving the quality of training
imparted. The aim of the training process is to help the development of
competencies to carry out various industrial operations effectively and
competently. This is achieved through careful implementation of well-developed
Curriculum.
The word Curriculum has the meaning of educational
path and describes the learning process in a much
more comprehensive and complex fashion than is possible with Plans of learning
content or learning material. These days, curriculum development is expected to
be increasingly more oriented towards the learner
- the student/trainee and his learning process than towards the
content of learning. Unfortunately, there is no precise definition of just what
a Curriculum is? The increasing amount of research and literature in this field
has been accompanied by an increasing fuzziness in the term
"curriculum". For this reason, one adopts the term curriculum instead
of teaching plan.
In such an approach, not only teaching material and its organisation are
analyzed, but also several interconnected areas of curricular decision-making,
namely the goals, subjects and organisation of learning are stressed and new
comprehensive trades researched.
A curriculum, in contrast, provides information on the following
aspects of learning:
-
At
whom is the educational processes aimed ?
-
What
goals and qualifications are to be achieved ?
-
What
contents are to be learned ?
-
What
teaching methods and aids are to be used ?
-
How
is the result to be tested ?
EFFECTIVENESS OF CURRICULUM
The effectiveness of a training system, dependant on a well-developed
curriculum, must be measured by the extent to which:
-
it is able
to attract the young generation into the occupation of the future and skills
which employers need
-
it is able
to deliver not only technical contents (technical skills) but also help students
to learn how to cope with new challenges (coping skills) and prepare them for lifelong
learning
-
it is able
to provide people with the basic set of skills it takes to transfer from one
job or area of work to another, once they have entered the workforce and
-
it offers
open access to all without the constraints of entry requirements.
MODELS OF CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
Curriculum developed for management education should not only meet
the goals and objectives of training but also be implemented effectively. There
have been a variety of models that have been tried in the past and hence
curriculum development has either been in the subjective or objective mode. But
recently the trainers and educationalists have developed competency based
curriculum which can be implemented using multi-media educational resources
that have now become available. Such an approach allows open entry/open exit
philosophy of Curriculum implementation to be adopted to allow the trainees to
learn at one's own pace in the most flexible way.
In the competency-based individualised and multimedia curriculum
development, the subject matter has been divided into modules. The modules are
studied through workstations. The Learning process is student-centred and not
teacher-centred. The modules are sub-divided into learning
elements.
These are learnt by carrying out tasks
which help to acquire employable skills. This approach of
curriculum development, obviously, assumes the availability of resources for
its implementation. Is it always true - remains to be verified? The
industrialised nations can afford such a capital investment but it may be a
problem for the developing countries.
CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT, IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION
Experience of implementation of comprehensive, long-term curricula
has shown that the people who develop them are not the people who put them into
practice. This often leads to misunderstanding and suspicion. People who are
engaged in the development area are often accused by "practitioners" of
understanding nothing about the practical aspects and of drawing up totally
impracticable plans. In contrast, the practitioners are often accused of being
hostile to reform, ignorant of theory and incapable of new sights into
practice. In reality, such accusations have a grain of truth to them.
Everywhere we can observe remoteness from practice on the one hand and
unfamiliarity with theory on the other. For this reason, attempts have been
made to develop models in which the strict division between imposition and
execution is abolished.
The problems in curriculum development can be divided into two sections.
One section represents problems involved with the explanation and justification
of the goals and contents of learning and the other the areas of execution and
evaluation of educational measures. The problem complexes can now be displayed
in sequence. The individual stages of curriculum development can be labelled
roughly as follows:
Situation analysis
-
orientation
towards the learners and their needs, previous education, aptitude, employment
opportunities (social demand approach), orientation towards social needs, such
as need for qualified skilled professionals, regional development (manpower
approach).
Main considerations:
-
who is the
curriculum aimed at?
-
what
individual and social needs are to be met?
Preconditions
-
establishment
of training level, tests, final examinations,
-
gaining of
(state) recognition and eligibility for financial support,
-
relating
of the particular curriculum, to the educational system as a whole.
Main considerations:
-
how can
general recognition of and support for the training be secured?
-
can the
planned course be fitted in as a "building block" within a
comprehensive educational system?
Didactic analysis
-
selection
and justification of contents, determination of what specialised scientific and
technological fields should be taken into consideration, choice of a didactic
starting point.
Main considerations:
-
which of
the justified contents are to be learned?
-
what point
of entry will provide good access to the contents'!
Goals of learning and training
-
formulation
of objectives and qualifications,
-
assignment
to areas of learning, levels of objectives and training levels,
-
arrangement
of objectives.
Main considerations:
-
what
goals, abilities, attitudes and skills is the curriculum to impart?
-
how can
the objectives be ranked and arranged?
In the fourth problem-area the two circles intersect. Having been
justified, the curriculum now passes to the stage of implementation and of
evaluation in practice. The point of departure is orientation towards
objectives and the contents embedded within them. This is followed by:
Organisation of learning and training
-
creation
of learning segments,
-
establishment
of method plans and media plans,
-
working
out of a timetable (for days and weeks).
Main considerations:
-
how can
the objectives and contents be structured into learning and time units?
-
what
methods and media can be used to help the learning process move forward towards
the goals?
Teaching and learning process
This position describes the implementation of
the Curriculum:
- the teaching (training) is carried out,
- the course takes place.
Evaluation
-
the
leaning process is tested,
-
the
effectiveness of the way in which the Curriculum has been carried out is
tested, the conformity of content and goals is tested.
Main considerations:
-
in what
ways has the curriculum been successful?
-
to what
can deficiencies in the results of the training be attributed?
-
to the way
the curriculum is designed?
-
To the way
it was carried out?
-
To the
students?
It can thus be seen that evaluation is not confined to testing of
the students, but also applies to possible faults in the planning or
implementation of the Curriculum. This stimulates continual revision of the
learning programme. In conclusion, it should be noted that the above remarks
are an attempt to represent and classify the complicated business of
educational planning and implementation in simplified form by using a
two-circle model.
OUTCOMES
1. The Workshop reviewed and analysed the existing practices in the
design, implementation and evaluation of curriculum, particularly in the
development of competency-based curriculum, in the field of technical and
vocational education and training facilitating the exchange of experiences
among the participating countries.
2. The Workshop identified some common trends and successful
practices, based on the experiences revealed in the participants' discussion
papers and their deliberations, which will be disseminated through the workshop
report to faculties participating in the present project.
Dr. Kishor Chandra Satpathy
MA, MLIS, PGDLAN, PhD,
Mortenson Associate, UIUC, USA
Librarian & Organising Secretary, WNL 2015
National Institute of Technology
(Institute of National Importance under Ministry of HRD, GOI)
Silchar-788010, Assam, India
Tel: +91-3842-240055
(Off) +91-9435175531 (M)
E-mail: ksatpathy@gmail.com
