Dr. Lakshmi Mohan, Deputy Director and Campus Head, ITM Kharghar, talks to Shraddha Kamdar about student development and involvement and life-long learning among other things
She is a person who has been with Knowledge since its inception, even before it was christened. As an advisor for the paper, she has provided innumerable valuable ideas, and has stayed with it since then. Whatever she has done in her 20 years of teaching and training life, her singular goal has been the betterment of her students. She has headed several reputed institutions and brought in her corporate experience in companies like Elbee and DHM to her academic world. Equipped with her expertise, experience and education, dear readers, Dr. Lakshmi Mohan, Deputy Director and Campus Head, ITM Kharghar, talks to Knowledge of the various aspects of student development.
How do you encourage students towards academics when the syllabus sometimes is archaic and outdated?
As an educator I always insist that teaching- learning process must be an updated one, and not an outdated one. We must relate learning to the latest trends in the industry. So even if universities have not upgraded their syllabus, teachers have the moral responsibility to make the subjects relevant to modern times and that is where autonomous institutions like ITM B-School tweak their syllabus to suit the industry with the assistance of industry experts who form the Board of Studies.
Learning has to be inspiration-driven and that is the role of a teacher who moves out of the monotonous methods of teaching to more dynamic, innovative forms of teaching and using technology which students enjoy working with.
Should students in a college, institute or university be empowered to a certain extent that they can participate in policy decisions regarding their education?
Institutions like ITM and many others have committees headed by professors, where students are important decision makers. In fact students are brilliant at giving suggestions for improvement in education. When we tailor make products to suit customer’s tastes, why not listen to preferences of students who can make sensible opinions. I feel the student community deserves to be heard out and I interact closely with students through open house and various committees.
It is imperative that students need to consider marks, especially until class 12, since the admissions to undergraduate courses depend on marks. But do they really get out of the marks mode once they are admitted to an undergraduate or even postgraduate course?
Marks form an ongoing demon that threatens students all through their education lives. Marks must be the eventuality of good learning but for our education system marks become the reason for learning. Can they be blamed if the Harvards and IIMs and IITs do not even consider a candidate for applying to their institutes let alone selections, if they do not have requisite marks?
How can educators motivate students to work towards the goal of ‘knowledge’ and not just marks in their particular subject, on a daily basis in the classroom?
It is sad that the whole education system is governed by marks. But this is how it has been from kindergarten onwards. The idea is ingrained within the students’ minds to such an extent that at the higher education level it becomes impossible for us to bring serious learning without dangling the ‘carrot of marks’ in front of them. However, even if marks form the motivating factor, they also indirectly drive the students to learning and acquiring knowledge. I feel emphasis has to be laid on daily participation and performance and a passionate teacher can always infuse thirst for knowledge and make it eventually the goal rather than marks.
Do educators and students work towards getting out of the university mode and into the ‘real world’ mode, especially during the final year or semester of postgraduate course?
Education must lead to employability and this cannot happen unless students are exposed to reality of the industry arena. To fulfil this purpose, ITM has added a five-month industry internship in the second semester which leads students to realise the ground for which they are preparing themselves. However, this internship has to be properly monitored, otherwise it might be a wasteful act. That is why, students are assigned an industry mentor and a faculty mentor to enable guided learning during their internship.
Apart from that, live projects and operation workouts have to be embedded in every course to enable practical understanding of the learning. There are many such examples. Prof. Arun Sharma, marketing professor at ITM uses Maverick, a live game and competition to teach students the seven Ps of marketing. That makes it so interesting that the learning is lifelong. Learning demand and supply in economics became very interesting when students did a live project on the Amma Canteen in Chennai. They explained the impact of demand and supply on pricing through an interactive video showing interviews of stake holders of Amma Canteen.
Whenever students are looking at campus placements, they are always looking at the large companies which have some glamour attached with their names. Most students don’t look at smaller, lesser known companies. Is there a way to counsel them that they should start small and when they climb the corporate ladder, they can move on to the larger companies with experience?
This is a huge challenge that most B-Schools face as students’ expectations are high, they wish for fancy designations, dream of multinational companies and expect fat pay-packages. We work a lot on managing their expectations through the counselling done by our alumni. They are live examples of how one can grow from small to big. For last three years, we have also included ‘insight training’ in our curriculum. It creates humility and better understanding of the inner self and the world. We carry out the leadership series that talk of great personalities whose rags-to-riches stories demonstrate that they did not become successful overnight, but through years of perseverance, wisdom and hard and smart work.
There are a few students who perhaps don’t have the means or resources themselves or within their colleges to gather the knowledge and experience that others have through different means. What can these proactive students do to improve themselves?
They should:
What message would you like to leave for our young student readers?
Many times students enroll for programmes and don’t care about attending lectures. Sadly, they lose out on precious learning that they could get from experienced professors. I advise students to be open to learning. Never judge the teacher or the content, just be there and gather gems of learning that will surely help in their lives and careers. Be a continuous learner!
