Teaching a course without knowing its thrust and without clarity about what should be taught is increasingly alienating teachers as well as students, according to Rajan Gurukkal, Vice Chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council.
“This artificial exercise helps train students only to memorise rather than understand. This keeps the teacher off from her primary responsibility of teaching how to learn,” he said at the opening lecture on the art of writing the learning outcomes of courses organised by the council at Sacred Heart College, Thevara.
Mr. Gurukkal said even a good teacher thus failed to decide how best to teach. Naturally, the teacher hardly knows how best to assess learning.
“Our courses are relatively up-to-date in content, but utterly obsolete in pedagogic methods. The course content has to be linked to four general types of knowledge — factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive,” he said.
Exam system
Stating that the existing examination system in State universities was in total shambles, Mr. Gurukkal said boards of question paper setters consisting of teachers in the alienating system drew blank about the science of framing questions.
The workshop organised at Sacred Heart College was part of the council’s campaign for quality assurance through reorienting higher-level teaching or learning in alignment with Outcome Based Education (OBE) recommended by the University Grants Commission and National Assessment and Accreditation Council.
