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Soft skills training for teachers

TIRUCHI: Fifty faculty members of engineering colleges affiliated to Anna University – Tiruchi (AU-T) will be attending a soft skills training programme at Chennai this week-end.

The two-day free training programme to be conducted by eight front-ranking IT companies including Cognizant Technology Solutions, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro, would be attended by about 250 teachers, mostly drawn from the English department and placement divisions of four government technical universities.

The teachers would be split into groups and initiated into training at eight company locations. This exercise is a joint initiative of the Anna Universities and the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu. The faculty members are expected to transfer the acquired skills to their respective institutions.

Akin to the soft skills training, a technical skills training programme would be conducted for college teachers during this month-end, informed V. Damodaran, Chairman, Department of Management Studies and Director, Centre for University Industry Collaboration.

In addition to the study of English in the first year, the AU-T has made ‘Technical Communication’ a core component in the engineering and MCA syllabi during the fifth semester.

By virtue of compulsory study of the subject on technical writing skills towards the latter part of their programme, the confidence of the students would be higher by the time they completed their studies, said Vice-Chancellor V. Ramachandran.

To improve the communication skills of students, the university has also insisted that its affiliated colleges have language laboratories.

The university had, earlier this year, conducted a campus placement training that was attended by 140 pre-final year students drawn from affiliated colleges. They could gauge industry requirements by interacting with experts representing top-notch institutions and industry.

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