The Faculty Development Centre of the College is constituted to take up the professional upskilling of the faculty members of the College as well as those outside. As is well known, Teachers, like all other professionals, need to be continuously exposed to the emerging thoughts, skills, aptitudes and technological developments related to their career. In a world which is changing at such a rapid pace, it is essential that the faculty members are kept updated on the emerging scenarios. The Centre will help improve the academic quality of the institution and meet the emerging needs of the students and faculty members. A culture of continuous learning will be built in the faculty members of the institution through the Faculty Development Centre.

The Faculty development Centre will:

• Help understand and reinforce the role of the faculty and the community expectations about their responsibilities
• Ensure that all faculty members of the College are rigorously trained to meet the classroom, campus and career challenges.
• Ensure that they are upskilled and reskilled to align their skill levels with the best in their category and to make them aware of the shifting skill requirements in the career front
• Ensure that the faculty members apply their newly acquired skills effectively in their teaching learning practices
• Organize various professional development outreach and extension activities connecting to the teaching community around
• Organize fraternity of teachers based on their subjects and pedagogical practices so that sharing of experiences and resources will be made possible.
• Establish a Faculty Innovation Centre to drive the teaching community to experimentation and creativity, preparing ground for innovative modes for teaching the adults
• Collaborate with institutions of excellence in the field of Higher Education and Research to help them find models and guides for their careers
• Push for meaningful technology integration into the curriculum
• Support and encourage the faculty of the College in accessing scholarships and research funds related to their areas of interest

Faculty Development Strategies at ACAS

Session Recording: The classroom sessions by the faculty members are randomly recorded and the recordings are made available to the faculty members to reflect on. This will help them to sift between what went right and what could be improved in the sessions to come. During the next stage, these sessions are shared with the Content Delivery Expert who will be the consultant of the College and will be followed up with a one to one session with the faculty members concerned. The system is put in place to make the faculty members capable of observing what transpires in the learning space and to enable them to take it to the next level, with expert inputs.

In House Training: sustained in-house training will be provided to the Faculty members, periodically analyzing the Training Needs Analysis (TNA) of the faculty members. The in-house training sessions will be delivered using experts of quality

Centre for Flipped Learning: The College promotes the practice of Flipped mode of learning. This currently popular, active mode of learning yields excellent returns in terms of student learning and skill development. Hence the College has set up a Centre for Flipped Learning which will not only assist the faculty to upscale their efforts in the methodology but it also will help as a house for consultancy and training for faculty from other institution too.

Peer Observation: The College has put in place a mechanism for Peer Observation of classes. The peer observation practice helps observe classes while it happens and helps improve the classroom practices of the faculty members. Not only does it help them improve one another, it also lends confidence to the faculty members. They can also collect structured inputs while their sessions are observed and commented upon in the follow up one to one session with the experts from various fields like classroom management, pedagogy, flipped learning, professional development, assessment and technology integration.