Caught in the Web

The Adhyapana Team's Website is finally ready. Please visit our website at www.adhyapana.in and provide us your feedback.This is just the first installment of the website ; we plan to add a lot of new content and information in the coming months. In the pipeline are a gallery with updated training photos, online tests, online registeration for our courses, information about our upcoming courses, guestbook,etc. Your thoughts and suggestions about the website are most welcome. Please write to us at info@adhyapana.in

Questioning Answers

The Adhyapana Team has come out with a set of Adhyapana T-shirts. The t-shirts designed by us will be unveiled in our next training session at Pune. The shirts in black and white bear the adhyapana name and motto.

We have chosen "Questioning Answers" as the tag line for the shirts.The phrase encompasses a lot of what we do at Adhyapana. The following are some aspects of our team and training that reflects through this phrase.

Unconventional Approach - Just as it is unconventional to question answers, similarly the entire training methodology adopted by us is unconventional and effective.We use various means to effectively teach students.

Commitment: The Adhyapana Team goes beyond just answering questions. We do not just stop with the course, but also go beyond it and provide support when ever the student needs it.We are totally committed to help students

Independent Thinking: At adhyapana we encourage students to think on their own and not just accept answers to questions.We help them question answers!!.

Freedom to innovate: We provide students with a platform where they can put forward their thoughts without any hesitations. We guide and help them to explore new concepts rather than have hand-holding sessions.

Confidence:Questioning answers needs courage and confidence . Through our course, we aim to make our students more confident of themselves and provide them with the courage to face the placement process.

March Musings

March has been a busy and eventful month for us.We have been involved in a number of activities including our regular training sessions, supporting Katalyst in identifying new students, and working on our future plans.

Many weekends were utilized for the in-house training of the students of Katalyst. It was a unique experience since we were teaching a varied group of students ranging from semesters 1 to 7 with different engineering backgrounds .The students included people from non engineering background as well.It was indeed challenging to retain the attention of all the students and at the same time cater to all their needs. This training session was also one of the longest programs we have conducted in the recent past,streaching for over a month.

The Adhyapana team was also involved in helping Katalyst identify new students for their scholarship program.As a part of this, we helped in organizing college visits and facilitated interactions with students. The team also helped identify deserving students and aided in the post processing of the applications. This was a new experience for us.We learnt a lot through the interactions with the students and the college management.

Another key activity we have taken up this month is to create our website. This was a long pending activity on which we are currently working. Soon we should have our own website and email ids.The coming months surely promises a lot of activity.

Katalytic Reaction

The Adhyapana Team reacently joined hands with Katalyst - an NGO working in the girl child education domain - to help them with their placement training activities. The first training session was held at Katalyst's premisis on 28/2/2009. It was a good experience to interact with students from different colleges and streams. The placement training course for Katalyst will continue in the month of March. We will update the blog with more information in the coming weeks.

Experimental Learning

We visited APS Polytechnic, on 10th Jan as a part of the yearly training sessions we conduct there. Based on last year's feedback,we decided to have shorter sessions, focussed on particular topics. For the first sessions, we chose to concentrate on the basics of communication skills. Yet again, the nmber of students attending the sessions were far more than what we expected - nearly 80 students attended the session.
The session was also special ,due to the precence of Ms. Mahalakshmi from Katalyst who was there to talk to the students about higher education and the support provided by katalyst for pursuing it.

We were also attempting to teach through activities in this session. We had taken up some specific aspects of cummunication and we wanted to illustrate these aspects through activities.The students were very enthusiastic about the session. Several students volunteered to help out with the activities. Some topics we covered as a part of the session are

• importance of two way communication
• listening skills
• Non-verbal communication
• confidence building activities

The response for these sessions were overwhelming. The students thoroughly enjoyed the activities. We have promised to go back to APS with another session soon. Some of the student feedback are added at the end of this post.

Feedback

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This program was very different from other personality development programs i attended.it was very effective and easy to understand because of the games.
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The program was very interesting.there are lots of points which will be very useful.I request you to conduct this session again in our college.
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This program gave me confidence and got me thinking about myself.It was a very good experience.
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I liked this program.I learn about many things which i never thought about before.I am very happy to say that the program was very useful.Please give mores such programs in the coming days.
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The personality development was too interesting. It felt like we were on a picnic.I request you to conduct mores such classes.
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It was very interesting and enjoyable.Thanks for spending your time with us.Please conduct a session on interviews.
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The program was very interesting and made us think about ourselves.You have inspired me to know more about me and what i want to do in the future.

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Reaching Out

The Adhyapana Team will be conducting free courses at the Ragigudda school premises in J.P.Nagar.This will be a part of our initaitive to reach out to students in need. The Sri Prasanna Anjaneya Swamy Charitable Trust is already conducting free tutions for engineering students in many engineering subjects. The placement training course will be an addition to this initaitive. We have proposed to conduct classes on weekends - saturday evenings and sunday mornings.The course will commence from 8th March 2008 and is currently proposed to continue for 4 weeks.The initial course will be open to 6th semester students(of any branch) only. We are planning to start additional courses based on future requirements.

Adhyapana in the news!!

Adhyapana has been featured in the Indian Express on 29/8/07.
Following is the article that was published.The complete article can be found on the first page of Wednesday's (29/8/07) edition of the City express(Bangalore edition).



"
Doing their bit

Wednesday August 29 2007 12:36 IST
Jaunet Gurudas
At a time when the IT industry is crying hoarse about the lack of an employable workforce and the State has taken a ‘hands off’ stand stating a faculty crunch, a group of young software engineers are trying to do their bit to polish the technical and soft skills of students.

Arun Kumar, Deepak Dhananjaya, Samarth Prakash and Shiva Krishnan, are four techies who graduated from RNS Institute of Technology in 2005 and formed Adhyapana in the same year, with the aim of helping students in rural engineering colleges.

Says Shiva Krishnan, a team member, “We saw that students had difficulties securing a job since those with technical skills lacked communication skills or vice versa. Since, all four of us had a common trait which was a passion to teach, we decided to bridge the gap by designing a short term placement training programme.”

The programme comprises of technical and non-technical sessions. The technical part of the course includes C, C++, data structures and microprocessors, and focuses not on teaching but helping students apply what they already know.

The Non technical sessions focus on resume writing, improving aptitude, polishing communication skills and preparing students to face group discussions and interviews.

Adhyapana conducted their first course at S J C Institute of Technology, Chikkaballapur, in September 2005 for mechanical and civil engineers.

“The feedback which we received after the first course reassured the faith with which all four of us started. Though it was a pilot project, our course had helped students in gaining confidence and realising their goal of getting placed,” Shiva recalls.

Now, they conduct programmes in two more colleges: Alpha College of Engineering, Doddagubbi and A P S Polytechnic, Somanahalli.

Another commendable effort of Adhyapana is that the team uses the fees collected through their programmes to provide scholarships to students.“Initially, we were conducting the programme for free. But, people started telling us that we should charge a nominal amount. Therefore, Deepak, a team member came up with the idea of using the fees to fund students,” Shiva says.

The team now funds the education of two rural school students and has contributed to the first year fees of four engineering students from APS Polytechnic.

About extending the reach of their programme, Shiva says that though they would love to, managing time between their jobs is a huge effort and they have restricted the programmes to weekends.

However, the team adds that talks are in progress with four more colleges.