Dr. Rajan Saxena, Vice Chancellor – NMIMS Deemed to be University, talks to Shraddha Kamdar about the policies and processes needed to encourage students to engage with the learning material
Whenever I have requested him for an interview, he has always come through. Whether it as asking for a couple of days of time to set the interview date, or taking the time off from a busy schedule to answer with patience and panache the questions that I fire at him, he has done it all. Not for nothing can he be one of the senior most, deeply admired and approachable educationists around today in the city. This past week too, Dr. Rajan Saxena, Vice Chancellor & Distinguished Professor of Marketing, NMIMS Deemed to be University, devoted a better part of an afternoon to answer my questions for the benefit of our readers. Excerpts:
• To devise any curriculum, what aspects should be heeded to?
Today, the need is to focus on what the industry wants. This is necessary because the corporate sector wants the students to be job ready and to deliver results from day one. Companies today do not have time to train fresh graduates. From this perspective, one needs to focus whether a college or an institute have the adequate resources to support this kind of development of a student. If it doesn’t, then that is a matter of concern.
•What are some of the obstacles in achieving this, and how do we overcome them?
Students and educators often complain that the curriculum is archaic, not to mention that the pedagogy adopted by some teachers needs a major overhaul. To offer a simple solution, educators need to think why students get extremely excited for youth festivals and events. They willingly and voluntarily put in the effort and hard work with any expectations of returns, because of one factor – fun. It is not easy work, and yet fun provides the motivation. Also, they find events more attractive and interesting than the classroom. The contests provide a part of the impetus and the other part is provided by the greater involvements of all concerned at every stage. The interaction and exposure is immense. The questions that educators need to ask themselves is – “How can we bring this environment into an academic programme?”
•What is the role of the teacher in this process?
The teacher should make the course interesting. For instance, say in advertising, the class can begin with the teacher offering the students a problem, asking them to create solutions. May be, thinking about promoting existing products according to their ideas. Perhaps they could shoot short videos with their phones and put it up on YouTube and share it with the others, and report on the progress of the campaign over a period of time. That might just work, since based on what the students come up with, the teacher can derive several concepts like media planning and management and the like. It will work much better than lecturing since the concepts will be internalised by the students. They need to create situations where experiential learning holds the key. Can they think in terms of integrating non-classroom like activities with the classroom activities?
•That is great, but if the college runs under the pressure of a university-prescribed syllabus, this can prove to be difficult.
Oh yes, it can put a lot of pressure on the teachers because from time immemorial, the focus has been, and still is, on cognitive learning. This is because the courses are governed by the examination system, which leads with text book learning. Besides, the institutes need to check their assessment systems. If the focus is on the exam, then the rote learning cannot be escaped. When a university insists that a student has to write an exam to get a degree, the objective is destroyed. There are multiple was of assessing, not necessarily a closed-book exam. Institutes, however, need to develop individuals with skill sets and attitudes which will work in the practical world. But there are examples everywhere of teachers have created spaces where a balance of both can be achieved, even within the prescribed syllabus systems. These are the teachers who care about the future and do not hesitate to go that extra mile for the benefit of the students.
•How can students help with this process?
Students need to spend more time in exploring things in the area that they are learning. There are several mediums they can learn with – books, television, the internet, to name a few. Inputs are also available through open source material and programmes on the web. If the students want to delve deeper, MOOCs on several topics are accessible, and many of them are free. If the students are determined to acquire additional knowledge to develop expertise, nothing can stop them. Today’s generation is technology savvy, and smart phones make accessibility extremely easy. Applications like Whatsapp and social media make it easier to create connected communities. These social conditions should be taken advantage of, and brought into learning, to excite students about the curriculum.
• Do you see any particular examples of this happening?
Take for example the case of mathematics – especially algebra and trigonometry, which the average student despises. Unless a student has certain abilities with math, he or she does not favour it. Let’s say, about 95% would quit math if they had a choice! In such a situation, Khan Academy (an online learning portal) has made a huge difference in many schools. The videos that Khan Academy puts up teach students in a way that they do not realise that it is ‘learning’ per se. They are like a guiding hand. A student can pause, go back, look over it again, in fact multiple times and learn at his or her pace. It has been found that many students and schools are showing better results with the benefits of the Khan Academy videos and they have been integrated as part of the classroom in many schools.
• What steps can underprivileged students take to build their skills and improve their knowledge?
For that, at a systemic level, a university should identify the strong colleges to mentor the weaker ones.
It happened with the IITs and the IIMs, where the older and established institutes mentored the newer ones. There are several other changes that are needed at the systemic level, and hopefully with the prime minister’s idea of brining education to the child instead of the child to education, some of the changes in using ICTs for education will be implemented better.
At the student level, aside from the internet, they should spend time in accessing some of the well-stocked libraries of the established colleges and other independent ones to learn more.
