Getting prepared for choice-based credit system
A. SRIVATHSAN
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More choices, more flexibility, yes. But improving choices and ensuring transparency in evaluation are required.
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Photo: V.V. Krishnan
Pick and choose: More interdisciplinary courses can lead to more choices for students.
The credit system proposed for collegiate education in Tamil Nadu has been welcomed for its flexibility, choices it provides for students and freedom for teachers to design their own courses. Another highlight of this system is that external evaluation is done away with and is replaced by internal valuation. As a teacher who taught in a credit-based system in technical university, I have experienced the merits of this approach, but I am equally concerned by the unpreparedness of the colleges to take full advantage of this opportunity.
The core strength of this system is the choices it offers for a student. In order to increase the choices, the institutions have to offer a reasonable number of courses within different bands of interest. This seldom happens. At the end of the day the students have either no choice or little choice. For many years in the institute I was teaching there were not many choices available. It was after long persuasion some elements of choice began to be introduced. The main reason for this is the bare staff strength. There are not enough teachers to offer enough courses. Where this could be made up by cross-registration with related departments, institutions seldom offer or make provisions for it. There are also not many interdisciplinary courses that can attract cross-registration. The worst affected are the doctoral students. It would do well for them if they can take courses across institutes. Some bare working arrangements existed between Anna University and IIT for registration and transfer of credits was possible some time back.
An umbrella arrangement between institutes in a city would facilitate this. The good example is the cross-registration that exists between neighbouring Harvard University and MIT in United States. Some American universities have even gone further and charge students in proportion to the number of credits they register. This facilitates more flexibility and planning of the academic career.
The second demand on the institutes that go for credit system is transparency in evaluation. When more trust is placed on the teachers and when external evaluation is done away with, the assessment methods must be made clear and informed upfront to the students.
The students must be periodically informed about their internal evaluation and mechanisms must exist for grievance redressal.
The strength of the credit-based system is widely acknowledged but without a mechanism in place and conscious attempt to improve choices, it would never deliver its benefits either to the students or to the faculty.
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