Professional education includes specialised training by incorporating enhanced knowledge and skills necessary for responsible entry into professional practice. It is designed to impart students with the competencies to be evaluative, creative and innovative. This is the base of higher-order thinking skills-- critical thinking and self-regulation. Thus, the present study was carried out with an aim to investigate higher-order thinking in terms of critical thinking and self-regulation among professional students of Punjab in relation to gender and course experience. The data were collected via the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) and Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ). MSLQ and CEQ items were administered through a survey on a sample of 200 undergraduate professional students (95 Males and 105 Females) pursuing professional courses at Punjabi University, Patiala. The data were analysed using the two-way analysis of variance. The results revealed no statistically significant gender differences in critical thinking and self-regulation of professional students of Punjab. Also, it was found that the professional students having low and high level of course experience did not differ significantly in higher-order thinking i.e. critical thinking and self-regulation. Thus, it may be concluded that gender and course experience, neither independently nor conjointly, explain critical thinking and self-regulation of professional students of Punjab. However, it may be pointed out that professional students have shown moderate level of critical thinking and above average level of self-regulation. In other words, higher-order thinking skills among professional students need to be explored further for its causation and enhancement.

Information Assurance is an emerging field in Information Technology related subjects and responsible for the privacy and security. Information Assurance is broad and interdisciplinary than Information security, Information Technology security. And IT Security consist with few areas viz. areas of Web Security, Database Security, Network security and latest Cloud Security, Mobile Security, Multimedia Repository Security etc. The theories as well as practice of collection, organization, assuring and managing of information and knowledge are the core of Information Assurance field. Information Assurance deals with two sides viz. technological and manual information security and privacy solutions. Information Assurance is dedicated to the uses, processing, storage, and transformation of information with proper practice and principles. Information Assurance as a field of study available in developed countries. In United States itself it is available as Certificate, Diploma to Bachelors, Masters Program and even Doctoral Program. In US and many western countries availability of super specialty areas program i.e. the emerging and sub field of IT become common and important. Similar to this approach, Information Assurance is also available as a Doctoral Program. In India, academic program/ major in the sub fields and emerging areas of Information Technology is little rare and also in Doctoral program. Though the Ph.D. in Information Assurance has huge potentials. The paper highlighted the potentiality of Ph.D. in Information Assurance with model curricula based on Indian Ph.D. regulation 2016.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the enhancement of learning skills in students that chose science as a carrier subject using project-based learning (PBL). Eighty students (n=80) were analysed during the project designing, it’s execution and finally it’s presentation. Participants were grouped in two teams of 5 each such that one focusses on developing experiments and other on it’s technical part. The projects were assigned to each group taking into consideration it’s feasibility in school laboratory. Questionnaires that included items to measure i.e., ease of learning subject matter, teamwork, and developing communication skills were used to evaluate students’ improvement before and after the intervention. The students were also assessed to evaluate the effectiveness of intervention on a 5-point Likert scale (1 indicating an extremely negative rating and 5 an extremely positive rating). For the data taken from the closed response questions in the grid, we calculated the average. This study revealed that PBL significantly improved ease of learning, teamwork, and communication skills in school students. PBL proved to be beneficial and effective way of science education and inculcated managerial and professional skills in school students.

Positive Psychology is one of the newer fields to emerge in the realm of psychology. Two of its major components: Optimism and Life Satisfaction are redefining perspectives on psychological science and counselling today. Optimism can be understood as a stable tendency to believe that good rather than bad things will happen in the future. Optimistic individuals tend to have positive presumptions about people and situations in life which influences individual’s actions and thus with growing life experiences, such individuals lead a more happy, fulfilling and satisfying life. Life satisfaction can be defined as an individually-oriented way of reporting their well-being or welfare through a series of life episodes. The current study aimed to study a relationship between optimism and life satisfaction and to see if any gender differences exist. For this study, a sample of 168 young adults aged between 18-25 years were selected via purposive sampling method. The questionnaires administered to these participants were the Life Orientation Test (R) and Satisfaction with Life Scale. A Pearson Correlational design was used to compute the results. The results of the study revealed a significant correlation between Optimism and Life Satisfaction indicating that the ability to have a positive outlook towards the future can induce positive thoughts leading to actions and finally a positive, happy and satisfied life. In addition, the gender difference revealed a significant difference between males and females with males being more satisfied as compared to females. The study may aid in counselling processes by helping counsellors predicts client behaviours, plan assignments based on optimistic predispositions and help clients develop these competencies to lead a happier life.