Increase in number of students taking online training rather than offline
Jaquard is a training institute providing a highly specialised training package which consists of four separate training programmes of Nedgraphics software and the basic Jacquard and Dobby weave concepts. Vikram Juneja, Professor of Jacquard Training institute, speaks to Fibre2Fashion about how educational institutes are coping with the Covid-19 pandemic by shifting their focus on online training.
How has the worldwide lock-down impacted the educational institutes and the students? What are the immediate concerns?
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected educational systems worldwide leading to total closures of schools, universities and colleges. To cope with this situation, we are providing students with an online platform that will lift their careers in the textile industry by giving them online training with the help of our self-made training videos and screen sharing software like TeamViewer and Anydesk.
How easy or difficult is to secure an admission? Any scholarships on offer?
Students of any age group with no specific qualification, can apply to our institute. Any person having some basic knowledge of computers can enrol in our programme.
Which are the various courses offered by you?
We offer a highly recommended training package which consists of four separate programmes of Nedgraphics Software (Texcelle, Loom editor, Weave Editor and Product Creator) & The Basic Jacquard and Dobby weave concepts.
How are you realigning your course offerings in the era of Covid-19? How has the crisis reshaped education in more than one way?
According to our statistics, there is an increase in the number of students taking online training rather than offline. Due to the pandemic, our focus has shifted to online training which has obviously broadened our vision as now we our serving our students from all over the world.
Have you devised a roadmap on how your institute can go the e-learning way that will ensure continual learning for the students from home?
Yes, our roadmap is clear. We are taking major steps to ensure success to our online training strategy in order to benefit our students.
Please tell us more about Nedgraphics. What is its application area?
NedGraphics is a leading developer of CAD software solutions created specifically for apparel and retail, home furnishings, flooring design, and various other textiles. NedGraphics products allow designers to exercise full creative freedom while improving efficiency, productivity, and accuracy to create production-ready artwork. For 37 years, NedGraphics has worked directly with top companies in the retail and apparel, home decor, and floor design industries, inspiring creativity by developing new and improved solutions tailored specifically to customers’ needs. NedGraphics provides dedicated tools for print, woven, and knitted fabric design, carpet and tuft, colour management and calibration, merchandising and more.
How equipped are your students to be a part of the textile industry from the word go – bridging the gap between theoretical studies and practical demands of a job?
We have seen that after doing diploma in textile designing, many students fail to get placement in the industry and then they search for other training institutes. This is due to the lack of practical training in colleges which provide 3 year diploma where students are not trained as per the industry. On the other hand, the training which they get from us, makes them industry ready in just 1-3 months after which they are capable of doing jobs or their own work.
What impact do you think this engagement into online/distance learning by many/most institutions might have on faculty and student confidence in technology-enabled learning? Do you believe this will lead to more professors believing in the quality of online learning and wanting to incorporate the best into their teaching by forgetting the perceived quality gap?
I truly believe that the quality of teaching will increase drastically as there will be no feedback from anyone during the process that will force the teacher/professor to give his/her best that will at last improve the quality in such cases.
If the outcomes of e-learning are not that great, what can institutions and individual instructors do to ensure a better rather than worse outcome?
I think that constructive feedback from students will be the best tool to get information on which sectors need improvement in our roadmap to go online!!
What percentages of your students are absorbed within the textile industry and in which areas?
We give practical training to our students. So, all of them start working in the designing field; they either have jobs or have their own business in the textile industry.
According to you, what are the things plaguing the textile industry at present? What steps should governments and countries take to reduce textile related wastage?
We work in a huge worldwide competitive market today and face not only home but also global challenges. The main challenge is to reduce the prices while maintaining the quality. For achieving this, a lot of R&D, waste management and utilisation of proper resources needs to be done. Our government is taking many steps which need to be strictly implemented for desired results.
Could the move to online learning be the catalyst to create a new, more effective method of educating students?
Online learning will revolutionise the educational sector as now the teachers and students will be more focused on practical knowledge instead of theoretical knowledge. The society that we live in today is learning from the past and surely, we will together eliminate the “old-school” way of teaching.
How was Jacquard Training institute formed? Does it have franchises/branches in any other part of India?
Jacquard Training Institute was formed in 2015. Since then we are serving our students with high quality training in textile field making them industry ready. We have only one head office and no franchises.
What are some of the emerging fields in textiles?
Technical textiles like nanotechnology and bio-synthetic textiles which provide performance features, as well as environmental advantages such as re-cycle-ability and biodegradability, are some of the emerging fields in textiles.
What are your future goals? Any major announcements in pipeline?
On demand, we are working on to add multilingual subtitles support in our training videos so that students who do not understand Hindi & English can also benefit from them.
How many members/instructors does the institute have today?
We have 3 instructors who are well qualified and experts in their field.
Published on: 11/06/2020
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
