Teaching is one of the oldest and most respected professions in the world. In good old days the students who had genuine desire to learn used to go to traditional Gurus and were usually self-motivated. The going through teaching-learning process was comparatively easy as concepts were relatively simple and straightforward to implement. With changing socio-economic and technological scene the whole process has undergone a tremendous change. In today's society there are certain students who come just to earn a degree so as to have a respectable social status and are not interested in learning at times. Not only that such students deliberately create problems for teachers in smooth conduct of classes. Moreover due to technological advancements in various fields, the concepts and applications have become quite complicated to understand, practice and implement. The teacher's job under these environments has not only become more difficult but has become challenging wherein he has to ensure that learning difficult to understand concepts takes place not only for the students who are interested to learn but also for the students who are not interested. This is to ensure so that all the passing out students attain minimum prescribed standards by the university before they pass certain university courses failing which the credibility and survival of the University will be questionable in today's competitive environment wherein lot of private Universities are mushrooming. This requirement poses new and here-to-fore unseen and un-heard challenges for the teachers in the field of higher technical education who have largely been involved in teaching the students who were basically interested in learning and were able to learn on their own as well with little or no guidance from the teachers. Keeping this in mind the attitude commonly shared among the breed of teachers involved in higher technical education that their task is to teach and the students will learn only if they are interested and want to learn is a negative approach to my mind. Teaching and Learning: The Missing Links What has largely been considered classroom teaching and learning process traditionally has got certain missing links to my mind, particularly in the face of changed socio-economic changes discussed above. I consider following to be the complete cycle of teaching learning process and I have tried to stretch it beyond learning to achieving proficiencies and developing competencies which is call of today in fast changing, highly competitive industrial environment. Today industry wants to hire the students who should be able to take on the task head-on without requiring much of training, which becomes quite costly affair especially for small and medium sized industries. The complete cycle as perceived by me is as shown below: - (a)Teaching (b)Creating Awareness (c)Making them Know Things (d)Complete Learning (e)Acquiring Proficiency (f)Developing Competencies What is the difference? Till very recently the situation was that if a teacher had taught and they (students) understand it was considered that Job was done well. But in today's challenging, competitive and rapidly changing industrial and economic environment is that sufficient? Will the passing out students from technical institutions be in a position to deliver the goods when they join any industry without requiring much of the 'on induction' training? Probably not! Let me quote an example from my personal experiences. We were in the process of installing the equipments at one of our sites where there was a requirement of programming the exchange for Direct Inward Dialing (DID) facility. I tasked one of our freshly inducted engineers to get it done and sincerely thought that after some introduction to the exchanges and the facility he would be able to do the job at least within a week. We had enough time as some other time consuming jobs were also required to be completed before launch of the services. I tried to explain the exchange to him and to my utter surprise he did not have any idea about functioning of exchanges though he had one of the subjects on the exchanges at his undergraduate level. It took one month of patient training before he could finish the programming of the exchange to our satisfaction. To our surprise one of the marketing executive who had background of commerce could pick up programming of the exchange in the process and could do better than the engineer who had formal teaching on the subject. I just put a question to my-self as to what was the point in hiring a communication engineer if he could not do the job and every thing had to be spoon-fed to him. The problem was probably at his undergraduate program where he had learned to mug up the things, reproduce it at the time of examination and then forget about that without thinking about its applications. This highlights the lack of learning taking place in spite of teaching being done. Improving Teaching Learning Process For making teaching learning process to be more effective a change in teachers attitude and approach is required following can be tried out: - Paradigm shift from "Catch me if you can" to "catch them if you can" approach: In today's environment a teacher can no longer think that he will teach to his level best and it is for the students to follow and practice what he has taught. One has to speak the language at the level and in the manner that students understand. Test the water before you take a plunge: It is better not to start with the syllabus full throttle from day one. At times there are few gaps in the sense that either the student has forgotten the prerequisites required for the course you are going to teach or may be there was a gap in the syllabus and students have not been taught the prerequisites required for the course. In both the cases it may be good idea to cover the barest minimum of the prerequisites required for the course instead of blaming the students or the framers of the syllabus. Keep them with you: Make sure that the students keep pace with you all through the course and do not abandon you in between. You could devise means to make sure that they stay with you as far as course coverage is concerned. One technique is to ask the students to repeat part of the teaching of the previous class in the beginning of the class as a practice which forces each student to at-least glance through the notes before they attend the next class. Moreover you should be able to identify the students who are falling behind for what ever may be reasons. Target such students for your questions very often and let it be known by them- after all it is for their own good. How to Ensure Learning Following points may come handy in ensuring proper learning: - Generate interest: If you can discuss some of the applications of what you are going to teach it will be better as students interest in the topic will be invoked and their understanding will positively be better. Test their understanding of what you have taught: This could be by way of discussions and question answers. You could also ask some good students to give answers to the questions raised by other students in the class. By doing so you will be able to judge their understanding of the subject, give them little practice to speak and also clarify the doubts, which others may be having? Force them to come prepared: you could take frequent class tests or you could ask some students at random to come on the stage and just give the brief of what was discussed during previous lecture. Strike a good rapport with students: Your attitude towards them is very important and they read it correctly always and every time. Be sympathetic but firm in your approach. Your approach could be almost fatherly. They should be able to sense that you mean their good and that should be shown by your actions rather than you talking about it. Read their mind and Eyes: You should be able to read question marks in their eyes. It is not difficult. Do look in their eyes and you will be amazed to see them speaking without using words. Do not ignore that as if you do that, they would soon loose interest and also the track of what you are teaching. Why wait. Take feedback for yourself in the very second week: Talk to them frankly and openly and try changing your style if required. After all what you teach is not important, what they learn is more important isn't it? Keep them on toes: If they do not put questions bombard them with questions. Basically your approach should be to ensure that they listen to you and are mentally alert. Show your genuine concern for their welfare: Do not only talk just do the best you can. Even accompanying some student to hospital in emergencies can earn their faith and respect. Earn respect by your behavior and knowledge not by your position: Even how you stand how you talk and how you dress up does matter. Do you remember your school/College days? Try to look back into those days and you will realize as to what needs to be done. Do your homework thoroughly: There can never be any short cut for depth of knowledge. Each lecture has to be prepared thoroughly as if you are going to teach it for the first time. Why Limit to classroom? Classroom teaching could well be just less than 50% of the total learning involved or put it otherwise it could be gateway leading to learning experiences. Use every opportunity presented to you to make them learn. Other opportunities to enhance teaching learning process could be following: - Lab Sessions Tutorial Seminars Projects Industry Visits Make use of this time to fullest advantage. Demonstrate the equipment in lab sessions and during industry visits and couple this with classroom teaching. Same way projects, seminars and tutorial time can be fruitfully used to a great advantage. Invoke the interest in the students by taking practical systems and examples from the visits, which you had undertaken to enhance the learning. Need to develop art of self-leaning End of studies at the college is going to be beginning of the actual learning about the real world where continuous update of the knowledge will be required. If continuous spoon-feeding is resorted to at the college/ institute level it may result in their incompetence to understand complex reading material at later stage. We should not let it happen at any cost. Where we fit in as teachers? Can't we motivate them to develop the art of self-learning and self-grooming to get ready for future? This will go a long way to completely develop the students to face the future. Some extra efforts will have to be put in by the teacher for this in the form of organizing seminars and other co-curricular activities for the students on beyond syllabus topics of common interest. There may be initial resistance on the part of students, which has to be overcome by way of rewarding the performing students. This will also develop overall personality of the students in addition to developing habit of self-learning. |
