Education is a basis of national development, making it impressive to position both the accessibility and the quality of higher education. Increased access ensures that more individuals can pursue higher learning, while quality focuses on the relevance and excellence of the academic programs offered. To support this dual focus, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has been established. This organization enables institutions to voluntarily assess their performance against predefined standards, fostering a culture of introspection and continuous improvement. By encouraging active participation from institutions, the NAAC aims to enhance the overall educational landscape, ensuring that it meets the evolving needs of society.
Vision,Mission and Value of National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC)
Revealing the glossary of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council as follows:
Academic audit
An exercise that serves to provide assurance that the delegated responsibilities for quality and standards of academic provision are being appropriately discharged.
Academic calendar
The schedule of the institution for the academic year, giving details of all academic and administrative events.
Academic flexibility
Choice offered to the students in the curriculum offering and the curriculum transactions.
Accreditation
Certification of quality that is valid for a fixed period, which in the case of NAAC is five years.
NAAC’s Assessment and Accreditation Process
Assessment
Performance evaluation of an institution or its units based on certain established criteria.
Assessors
Trained academics or experts who represent NAAC on peer teams
Benchmarks
An example of good performance that serves as a standard for comparison of one’s own performance. It is a technique in which an institution measures its performance against that of the best of others.
Beyond syllabus scholarly activities
Participation in academic activities beyond the minimum requirements of the syllabus.
Blended learning
A mixing of different learning environments, such as traditional face-to-face classroom methods with modern computer-mediated activities.
Bridge course
A teaching module that helps to close the gap between two levels of competence.
Carbon neutral
A term used to describe fuels that neither contribute to nor reduce the amount of carbon (measured in the release of carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere.
Catering to student diversity
The strategies adopted by institutions to fulfill the needs of a heterogeneous group of students.
Choice-based credit system
A mode of learning in higher education that facilitates a student to have some freedom in selecting his/her own choices across various disciplines for completing a UG/PG programme.It is popularly known as the cafeteria model.
Citation index
The number of times a research paper is referred to by other researchers in refereed journals is a measure of the validity of its contents.
Co-curricular activities
Activities which support the curriculum, such as field trips, display of academic achievements, quiz, debates, discussions, seminars, role-play, etc.
Collaboration
Formal agreement/understanding between any two or more institutions for training, research, student/faculty exchange, or extension support.
Completion rates (course/programme)
The ratio of the total number of learners successfully completing a course or graduating from a programme in a given year to the total number of learners who initially enrolled in the course/programme.
Constituencies
All the academic, administrative, and support units of the institution.
Counseling
Assisting and mentoring students individually or collectively for academic, career, personal and financial decision-making.
Course outlines
List of the course modules, similar to a table of contents in a book or the outline used for writing papers. The outline defines the scope and content of the course.
Course schedule
Details of classes being offered, its time, location, faculty, and its unique number, which students must know in order to register. The course schedule is published prior to the commencement of registration for each semester / session.
Criteria
Pre-determined standards of functioning of an institution of higher education that form the basis of assessment and accreditation as identified / defined by NAAC.
Curriculum design and development
The process of defining the contents of units of study is usually obtained through needs assessment and feedback from stakeholders and expert groups. Curriculum design and curriculum development are procedures that are closely linked to the description of learning outcomes.
Cycles of Accreditation
An institution undergoing the accreditation process by NAAC for the first time is said to be in Cycle 1 and the consecutive five-year periods as Cycle 2, 3, etc.
Dare Database: International Social Sciences Directory
Provides access to worldwide information on social science, peace, and human rights research and training institutes, social science specialists, and social science periodicals.
Dual degree
Pursuing two different university degrees in parallel, either at the same institution or at different institutions (sometimes in different countries), completing them in less time than it would take to earn them separately.
EBSCOhost
EBSCOhost is an online reference resource designed to cater to user needs and preferences at every level of research, with over 350 full text and secondary databases available.
Elective courses
A choice is available to students to select from among a large number of subjects.
Emerging areas
New areas of study and research deemed important to pursue. These areas may have been identified by national agencies or international bodies.
Enrichment courses
Value-added courses offered by institutions for student empowerment. They enhance the curriculum by amplifying, supplementing, and replacing such parts or features as have become ineffective or obsolete.
Evaluation process and reforms
Assessment of the learning, teaching, and evaluation process and reforms to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the system.
Extension activities
The aspect of education, which emphasizes neighbourhood services. These are often integrated with curricula as extended opportunities intended to help, serve, reflect, and learn. The curriculum-extension interface has educational values, especially in rural India.
Faculty development programs
Programs aimed at updating the knowledge and pedagogical skills of faculty.
Feedback
- a) Formative and evaluative comments given by tutors on the performance of individual learners.
- b) Evaluative comments made by stakeholders to the institution on the quality and effectiveness of a defined process.
- c) Response from students, academic peers, and employers for review and design of curriculum.
Financial management
Budgeting and optimum utilization of financial resources.
Flexibility
A mechanism through which students have wider choices of programmes to choose from, as well as multiple entry and exit points for programmes / courses.
Gender Audit
A tool and a process based on a methodology to promote organizational learning at the individual, work unit, and organizational levels on how to practically and effectively mainstream gender.
Graduate Attributes
Qualities, skills, and understandings a university community agrees its students should develop during their time with the institution. These attributes not only include but go beyond the disciplinary expertise or technical knowledge that has traditionally formed the core of most university courses. They are qualities that also prepare graduates as agents for social good in an unknown future.
Green Audit
The process of assessing the environmental impact of an organization, process, project, product, etc.
Grievance redressal
Mechanisms for receiving, processing, and addressing dissatisfaction expressed, complaints, and other formal requests made by learners, staff, and other stakeholders on the institutional provisions promised and perceived.
Ih-index (Hirsch Index)
An index that attempts to measure both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar. The index is based on the set of the scientist’s most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications. The index can also be applied to the productivity and impact of a group of scientists, such as a department, university, or country.
Human Resource Management
The process of assessing the human power requirements, recruiting, monitoring the growth and appraising them periodically, and planning the staff development programs for the professional development and providing the necessary incentives and feedback.
Humanities International Complete
A comprehensive database covering journals, books, and reference sources in the humanities. This database provides citation information for articles, essays, and reviews, as well as original creative works, including poems and fiction. Photographs, paintings, and illustrations are also referenced.
ICT
Consists of the hardware, software, networks, and media for the collection, storage, processing, transmission, and presentation of information (voice, data, text, images) as well as related services.
Impact factor (IF)
A measure of the citations to science and social sciences journals. The impact factor for a journal is calculated based on a three-year period and can be considered to be the average number of times published papers are cited up to 2 years after publication.
Incinerator
Waste destruction in a furnace by controlled burning at high temperatures.
Infrastructure
Physical facilities like buildings, play fields, hostels, etc. help run an institutional program.
Institutional Eligibility for Quality Assessment (IEQA)
Eligibility granted to affiliated or constituent colleges that are seeking assessment and accreditation for the first time.
Institutional Social Responsibility (ISR)
Focuses on the institution’s responsibilities to the public in terms of protection of public health, safety, and the environment, the public’s ethical behavior, and the need to practice good citizenship.
Interdisciplinary Study
An integrative approach in which information from more than one discipline is used in interpreting the content of a subject, phenomenon, theory, or principle.
Internal Quality Assurance System (IQAS)
Self-regulated responsibilities of the higher education institutions aimed at continuous improvement of quality for achieving academic and administrative excellence.
NAAC Accreditation: Step by Step Process Overview Council (NAAC)
Leadership
Term used for setting direction and creating a student-focused, learning-oriented climate, clear and visible values, and high expectations by ensuring the creation of strategies, systems, and methods for achieving excellence, stimulating innovation, and building knowledge and capabilities.
Learning outcomes
Specific intentions of a programme or module, written in clear terms. They describe what a student should know, understand, or be able to do at the end of that programme or module.
Library as a learning resource
The library holdings in terms of titles of books, journals, and other learning materials and technology-aided learning mechanisms enable the students to acquire information, knowledge, and skills required for their study.
New technologies
Digital tools and resources (hardware and software) and their application in the field of education.
Open educational resources
Educational materials and resources are offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses, to re-mix, improve, and redistribute.
Optimum utilization of infrastructure
The infrastructure facilities are made available to the student for their maximum utilization, e.g., extended hours for the computer center and library, sharing of facilities for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary programs.
Organizational structure
The structure and functions of an institution to coordinate academic and administrative planning.
Thiruvalluvar Government Arts College’s Self Study Report
Outreach activities
Is the practice of conducting local public awareness activities through targeted community interaction. They are guided by a local needs assessment.
Participative management
Refers to an open form of management where employees are actively involved in the institution’s decision-making process.
Perspective development
Perspective development is a blueprint regarding the objectives and targets of long-term growth.
Physical facilities
Infrastructure facilities of the institution to run the educational programs efficiently and the growth of the infrastructure to keep pace with the academic growth of the institution.
Program options
A range of courses are offered to students to choose from at various levels, leading to degrees, diplomas, and certificates.
Promotion of research and research support system
The process of promoting research culture among faculty and students by facilitating faculty and student participation in research budget allocation, research fellowships, and other faculties.
Remedial courses
Courses offered to academically disadvantaged students in order to help them cope with academic requirements.
Research
Systematic intellectual investigations aimed at discovering, interpreting, and revising human knowledge.
Research grant
Grants generated or received from different agencies by the institution for conducting research projects.
Research output
Quality research outcomes are beneficial for the discipline, society, industry, and dissemination of knowledge, including theoretical and practical findings.
Resource mobilization
Generation of funds through internal and external sources such as donations, consultancy, self-financing courses, and so on.
Scopus
The world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources.
SJR (Scimago Journal Rank)
This takes three years of publication data into account to assign relative scores to all the sources (journal articles, conference proceedings, review articles, etc.) in a citation network (Journals in the SCOPUS database).
SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Person)
Source Normalized Impact per Person is the ratio of the source’s average citation count per paper in a three-year citation window over the “citation potential” of its subject field.
Stakeholder relationship
Affiliation and interaction with groups or individuals who have an interest in the actions of the institutions and the ability to influence its actions, decisions, policies, practices, or goals of the organization.
Strategic Plan
A specific, action-oriented medium or long-term plan for making progress towards a set of institutional goals.
Strategy development
Formulation of objectives, directives, and guidelines with specific plans for institutional development.
Student profile
The student community of the institution, their strength, and the diversity in terms of economic and social strata, location, and other demographic aspects such as gender, age, religion, caste, and rural/urban.
Student progression
Vertical movement of students from one level of education to the next higher level successfully or towards gainful employment.
Student support
Facilitating mechanism for access to information fee structure and refund policies and also guidance and placement cell with student welfare measures to give necessary learning support to the students.
Teacher quality
A composite term to indicate the qualification of the faculty, the adequacy meant for recruitment procedures, professional development, recognition, and teacher characteristics.
Teaching-learning process
Learner-centered education through appropriate methodologies to facilitate effective teaching and learning.
Twinning programmes
An arrangement between two institutions where a provider in source country A collaborates with a provider in country B to allow students to take course credits in country B and/or in source country A. Only one qualification is awarded by the provider in source country A. Arrangements for twinning programs and awarding of degrees usually comply with national regulations of the provider in source country A.
Web of Science
An online academic citation index designed for providing access to multiple databases, cross-disciplinary research, and in-depth exploration of specialized subfields within an academic or scientific discipline.
Weightages
Taking cognizance of the different types of educational institutions, differential scores are assigned to the criteria and key aspects.
Thiruvalluvar Government Arts College’s NAAC Assessment and Accreditation Certificate
Acknowledgements:
The Director, National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), Bangalore, Karnataka, INDIA
The Principal, Thiruvalluvar Government Arts College, Rasipuram, Tamil Nadu, INDIA
References:
Institutional Accreditation Manual for Self-Study Report Affiliated / Constituent Colleges, NAAC
COL (2009), Quality Assurance Tool Kit: Distance Higher Education Institutions and Programmes, P. 328
Bowden et al. 2000, from http://www.curtin.estu.my/T&L/doc/Graduate Attributes.pdf
World Bank http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTEDUCATION