FYUP's Foundation Courses – A teacher's perspective

I am fully aware of the fact that any discussion on the Foundation Courses is bound to draw strong responses from opposite quarters and there is a legitimate danger of reasoning and logic getting overpowered by some prejudiced emotions. But let me take a chance and break the ice with a discussion on this integral and all important aspect of our new FYUP course recently introduced in Delhi University.

My Personal Experience

In the last semester, circumstances drove me to take up teaching for the History of Science paper over and above my normal prescribed teaching worload. With the end of the semester however I thanked my fortune to have accepted this additional workload as it provided me an excellent opportunity to interact with a dozen of blind students in the class. In the absence of such an opportunity I would have probably missed out an integrating aspect of my vision on life that I explored while interacting with them. What do they do? How do they live? What are their aspirations? What are their expectations? How do they mix up within themselves and with others? There was much to observe, know and learn from them. The relaxed atmosphere and the open course-content kind of structure of the “Foundation Course” facilitated my interaction with them. I even tried my hand at learning their Braille script. At the end I am sure, for them it would have been just normal to have a teacher like me but to me it was like opening of an undiscovered eye within myself to explore an entirely unexplored world of experience.

I was also asked to teach Information Technology to the students of History discipline. My knowledge of physics and the fact that I am also an M.Tech in computers from IITD did not help me out here as I was expected to interact with them in a different way. In hindsight I have always felt that electronic gadgets require a mindset that people of our generation generally do not possess. We imbibe an attitude that makes us extra-cautious and less adventurous while using an electronic gadget than the modern day students. We try to use a devise in a manner so that it would remain usable for our entire life but now a days students do not bother about the longevity of an electronic gadget. While we are trained to press any key only after learning first about its consequences, new age students first press the keys to know and experience the consequences of the event.

This semester I am teaching Science and Life to the students of physics and geography. While teaching I found that the students of geography look at the subject always with a perspective that differ from those studying physics. For example, 'origin of life' would initiate a thought in a student of geography with humanities background in quite a different manner than it would do it for students of science background. Here, I must admit however that it always gave me a false sense of superiority when I interacted with non-science students in these classes. On a lighter note, for those teachers who invariably fail to impress students while teaching discipline papers, this classroom does give some chance to impress students since the teacher gets to teach students of other streams.

Beyond our Impression/Perception

I would first start with a confession that I took up teaching of Foundation Courses rather unprepared just because I did not know how to prepare myself to teach these papers. As a matter of fact, I realized that we are trained at teaching a subject only when we feel ourselves to be confident enough to teach. The confidence to teach comes up with the knowledge of the subject that we acquire over the time and also with our ever growing ability to handle odd unexpected queries related to the subject. It is only for this reason that I feel that I am now much better equipped to 'meaningfully engage' a class as compared to the time when I joined teaching. However as I have always considered myself to be more as learner than a teacher, I collected the courage to explore handling of Foundation Courses. In search for some meaning into the classroom activity, instead of teaching them, I took this opportunity to utilize the classroom time to interact and observe students more closely. The open-kind of course-content made me realize that I will never be able to prepare myself for these classes and thus decided to learn something worthwhile during these interactions with young minds. Probably due to this attitude I was able to extract more positive result for myself than the students of my class would have realized for themselves. Instead of providing them ready-made answers even for a few occasions when it was possible I always encouraged them to search for answers from internet or books. I wanted them to become learner and explorer instead of being merely a mute student. To my surprise I discovered that unlike many of our teacher colleagues, who still consider internet-computers-laptops and smart-phones as unnecessary and time wasting devices, I found that I could ask all the students to interact through emails and social media. Not only this, but unlike many of us none of the students showed any discomfort or ever objected to my demand for a projector based power-point presentation. They never declined or expressed any discomfort to work with Word or Exel-like applications.

Conclusion - Suggestions and Proposals

Instead of the 'non-teacher like' position taken by the opposite groups may I suggest one of the sides to open their eyes to see some positive features of this kind of interaction with the students for mutual benefit and at the same time would also request the opposite side to move ahead towards the other side as some glaringly disorienting and spirit dampening features of these Foundation Courses surface while observing the following:

1. It is just ridiculous to expect an undergraduate student to come up with around a dozen of meaningful projects in a year. Unable to handle this pressure the students would be eventually compelled to look for short cut methods to.
2. I am also convinced that things that can be best studied outside the classroom are being taught in a classroom environment.
3. Foundation courses that are related to the field of discipline 1 courses fails to draw adequate interest among students.
4. An additional year for the course also finds little justification as the mass production of projects will neither give them the confidence of handling a real project nor they would feel themselves as prepared any better in their own discipline subjects.

Risking even complete rejection, let me propose the following strategies to transform these spirit dampening features into value addition.

1. Let each student be grouped with 6 to 8/10 students to form a heterogeneous assembly as they start their first year in the college. Let a few teacher be assigned with each of these group of students who would also be given a project to be completed in a two-year time. The nature of these projects should be such that it would make them work with the following aspect of learning.

          Collection of data – through internet or with some physical efforts.

               Statistical and graphical analysis of the data.

          Conclusion and interpretation of the results.

               Writing of 20-30 pages by each member of the group involved in the project.

          PPT presentation of at least 10-15 minutes for each students.

               Discussion on the possibility of extension of the project.

2. Wherever we have practicals, students should be taught in a manner so that they are able to handle a new practical on the examination day with the help of all the necessary books at their disposal.

3. Teachers may be compensated with three lectures per week for their guidance on the project to a single group of students.
4. As all the features of the Foundation Courses would get covered with the introduction of these two-year compulsory projects, the foundation courses should get replaced by lighter DC-1 courses where interaction based teaching may be suggested.
5. With this the students would then become eligible for an honours degree in three year-time and an option for a fourth year may be available for those who would like to acquire another honours degree in their DC-II courses.

I have made these suggestions after realizing that the foundation courses in itself can not make anybody 'employable' for any mid-level or high-level entry unless it comes alongwith a discipline based knowledge. As candidates are likely to find themselves with an extremely large number to compete with in the initial stages, one should also be prepared to pass a written test in his/her specific subject for getting shortlisted. At this stage of getting shortlisted, the Foundation Courses would be of little help. However, once a candidate gets shortlisted his training during handling of project would certainly give the edge required to jump the line. And those, who are not good in their discipline subjects would anyway have the confidence of handling a project.

Is there a Devil inside Our Examination System ?

This article is also published at the following link http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2014/04/devil-inside-examination-system-killing-innovative-thinking/ )
 
Do we need our Examination system?

I personally believe that interaction is the best way to assess students' aptitude. You may ask any teacher to tell you about the students of her class and she would confidently single out an extraordinary student among them, would never blink while picking up the few best among them, would easily mark the 'above average' students, and would not think twice before identifying 'below average' students and with this will be leaving out the 'average students' with some surety. But when you ask a teacher to rank the same set of students on individual basis, she would then ask you to conduct an examination for this. It seems, we need examinations primarily to rank the students. If you need to select a fixed number of persons among a pool of probables and you have no freedom to select them category-wise then one would be left with no choice but to “somehow” get their ranking. Knowing very well that how stupid it would be to ask who is ranked 13 above of rank 14, there is no way to avoid this if you are asked to select only 13 among the lot. In a country like India, that is struggling to manage numbers within a category, we tend to completely depend on the ranking of students. Be it entrance-tests of admission seekers or selection from a pool of candidates for a job, we are used to dealing with unmanageable number of applications and in each such cases we depend on the result of a test to rank them. This makes the life of selectors not only very easy but, in India, it most importantly also counters all kinds of possible interference and unwanted influence on the selection process. In my college, on several occasions during the admission days, I have been able to withstand the pressures from influential quarters only by hiding myself behind my inability to defy the ranking decided by marks of the students that they get in the CBSE test.

Marks, Ranks and the real Excellence

But do these ranking reflect their actual standing among the applicants? Many of us can make out that there is always a scope to fool one's own ranking if the candidate is able to 'somehow' perform well in a test. Thus, it appears that, knowledge and understanding takes a back seat and memory becomes the real factor that ultimately decides the rankings. This analysis makes us believe that ranking has nothing to do with the general aptitude and intelligence of a candidate and it merely reflects their ability to memorize things. It gives us an impression that those who top the ranking charts are good for nothing except rote-learning. It is at this point that I beg to differ with this understanding. It is indeed interesting to realize that although within the same category of students rankings can give us many surprises but only occasionally it may throw an odd result challenging their categorization too. So the rankings are mostly expected to observe the sanctity of the categorization that could be done by the teacher who would make the same assessment by interacting with the students! It is indeed intriguing that despite the fact that our examination system is designed to rank the students on the basis of their ability to memorize only, how does the ranks reflect more or less the same categorization that a teacher interacting with them would prepare to reflect their overall intelligence? The devil lies in the realization that these examinations become so important part of our life that the students get encouraged to compete among themselves. In Indian conditions, when all of us know that we would be subjected to pass through some written test or the other at several occasions in our life, students tend to prepare themselves to face these tests. Students who have better understanding, thinking power and are full of ideas and innovations have no option but to indulge in rote-learning only to prove that they are better. It is due to this reason that most often than not the top rankers happen to be the best among the lot only. So, can we relax. No, never. As we must also realize that in this process, the examinations are forcing these exceptional and brilliant minds to read and re-read several times to memorize things that they may have had understood by heart in only a few of those several attempts.

The Real Devil

The devil actually lies here: in our examination system, exceptional students and innovators are forced to engage themselves in proving that they are better than those who can only memorize without understanding concepts. Their invaluable time that they could have otherwise invested into innovative thinking is thus wasted only to equip them to prove that they are better than those who are potentially proficient rote-learners. It is for this that only in India, the exceptional student look for solutions and not problems. This compels Indian authors too to provide solutions in their textbooks. Students are never evaluated for how well he/she understands a problem but only by their capability to vomit a clear and unambiguous solution on the answer sheets. Their ability to think, visualize and analyze a problem gets completely overshadowed by their urge to look for ready-made solutions. To the disadvantage of our country the real and invaluable traits of our exceptional students remain disappointingly unexplored. A student who has a clear idea of how to proceed to solve a problem in a logical way would get zero for not having able to solve the problem whereas the one who would just paste the solution on the answer sheet would get full marks.

It is not for no reasons that teachers are often asked to give their evaluation and assessment of a student who apply for admissions outside India. Ignoring the marks that a student scores, these institutes depend heavily on teacher's assessment of the student on a few aspects such as their ability to think innovative, to communicate clearly, to do hardwork, to be able to work in a group and finally by asking the teacher to bracket them into a category out of all students that he had interacted with. Myself a teacher, I have seen many students, who did not have rankings on their side, to have proved their excellence in the long run once they got admission into a career of their choice.

Conclusion

I would like to conclude this discussion with a remark wherein I just wonder what would those students do who are really exceptional and if they are eventually relieved from going through the useless exercise of proving that their rankings indeed reflect their abilities. Then they would utilize their time by involving themselves in innovations and innovative thinking and ending up in throwing up ideas. But this would happen only when an era will come when students would be able to opt for a career of their choice and when opportunities will eventually outnumber the students. But till that time, examinations are only a necessary evil and we can not afford to abandon this as this helps us all in developing a faith in the system that provides a scope to withstand the interference of influence and powerful. As only in this system ward of a 'rickshaw-puller' and daughter of a 'pan-wallah' can dream to top an UPSC or the coveted IIT-JEE examination.

Biopsy of FYUP

(This article was also published in Governance Now at http://governancenow.com/news/blogs/biopsy-fyup )

Justification for Change

I am fortunate to have witnessed Dr. Dinesh Singh twice justifying the FYUP course, especially defending the introduction of Foundation Course papers and on that I would honestly submit one observation that out of the whole army of defenders that he has, only he could score some positive points on this account. I saw him not only offering reasons for having such a course and papers but also unlike the other marshals of his army, I witnessed him owning an honest desire to introduce these courses. He clearly exhibited a firm belief and confidence in the positive result of this experiment that is currently being undertaken in Delhi University.

I have maintained from the beginning that this time the changes are not merely cosmetic in nature as it was done during the semesterisation when it was only a shift from annual to a bi-annual examination system. I was pleasantly surprised to notice that even Prof. Dinesh Singh shows no inhibitions in admitting this and on both the occasions expressed his no nonsense intent to change the way the college education is looked upon in India. My primary worry that the new course would shift the focus of the students away from research and academics met with equally candid admission from him that it was indeed the aim with which the course was primarily designed for. Further, on both the occasions when I listened to the Vice-chancellor I never noticed him feeling even slightly apologetic about the shift of focus that this vision threatens to bring about in the Indian college education system. Now I am clear that the purpose of the FYUP is indeed not to make the students oriented 'only' towards research or academics. Initially I felt as one can make him see reasons for going back to our earlier approach till he offered a winning argument in favour of this shift by pointing out that only on an average a maximum of 5-10 % of the undergraduate students happen to choose academics or research as their career whereas our traditional education focuses completely on them only. Our education system, that probably serves the interests of this minority successfully, fails miserably in carrying the expectations of rest 90% of the students. Honestly, I see a level of transparency in his arguments that is often missing in the reasoning offered by the other defenders of FYUP.

Foundation of foundation courses

Even while I am feeling agitated on being left out on not being given an opportunity to express myself on the decision of affecting this change in attitude towards the very purpose of our undergraduate studies earlier but at the same time I am also ready to accept any excuse because of the limitation that we also are likely to face while attempting to consult each stakeholder for opinion. For this reason, let me postpone the discussion on the need for this change for the moment and try to investigate whether the course has been designed properly or not for what it has now been aimed at in the first place. Even if I completely agree with his entire contention, the agreement turns into apprehension as I try to analyze and understand how the new FYUP is going to serve the interest of those who do not choose research or academics as their career. His claim that the Foundation Courses would make these students 'employable' is what needs cautious analysis. In both of his addresses he mentioned that a company had came to DU looking to employ the undergraduate students, interviewed around 1100 students but found only three as employable. Now this is a thoroughly incomplete data for me to make out any meaningful inference out of this unless it is shared with us that what all quality/skills were they looking for in the students. Although there is a high probability that the employers were not looking for academicians or researchers in the case in question but just to proceed logically I will assume that the employers who interviewed the students were looking to employ the undergraduates in areas including academics/research.

Even in the absence of the accurate data we can begin the discussion as follows:

In any interview of a general nature, who all can be considered as employable?

Of course the one who is likely to leave an impression in the interaction?

Now how can a candidate impress a selection committee? I would place the following (almost exhaustive) qualities that normally impresses an interviewer.

1. Communication skills (oral and written)

2. General awareness quotient

3. How comfortable is the candidate while using modern electronic tools (handling different kinds of computers/printers, PPT, email, SMS, social networking etc)

4. Ability to think out of box (innovative thinking)

5. Ability to work in a group

6. Ability to lead a group

7. Inclination to do hardwork

8. Knows the importance of observing deadlines

9. Ready to learn new skills as and when required

10. Specific knowledge of the area in which a particular company deals in.

If we look at the points listed above it would be clear that our traditional approach of undergraduate teaching indeed aims at improving mostly only last of these skills. Communication skills that can impress almost anybody on earth is ironically never given the adequate attention in our studies. Here I must state that modern day private schools do give attention to this aspect of personality development and it is true that they stand a fair chance to impress any interviewer. Even if one ignores the last quality listed above, the other qualities make a student smart enough to impress anyone who would interact with them to consider an entry-level employment. Those who have access to modern equipments such as computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, internet usages and vehicle driving would find to have developed a confidence that can help in impressing any interviewer. In today's world if a candidate admits that he does not have an email account then he is most likely to score negatively in any interaction irrespective at the qualities that were being looked at. A candidate who knows how to handle bank affairs, how to deal with government departments, has a fair idea of our legal system and has a basic knowledge of government rules and regulations regarding our tax and civil liabilities and and is aware of our environmental concerns and policies is bound to impress any prospective employer. One who has some basic knowledge of Indian and world history, national and international politics would also stand a fair chance of impressing anyone. Basic understanding of data analysis and interpretation of graphs is also a must for leaving a noticeable impression on the interviewers.

It must also be understood that if last of the above points is ignored then all the other qualities that are listed above and are probably the target of foundation courses can make students employable only for an entry-level employments. On the other hand, even for those who wish to continue in the area of academics and research must also have all the attributes besides the last two to excel in their fields. Further, anyone seeking a mid-level or a high-level entry employment will have to supplement the qualities listed as point numbers 1 to 8 necessarily with the last two qualities listed above.

I believe that all these qualities including some aspect of character building can be best taken up during their school days itself but even at that stage we would be able to cover the above-mentioned aspects of personality development only by offering courses such as those listed below.

1. Basic laws of our land: Dealing with driving and accidents, marriage acts, civil rights and behaviour, women rights and environmental concerns etc.
2. Disaster management concerns.
3. Basic financial awareness: Working of banks, Share markets, investment and insurance products.
4. Basic economy: Indian and international economy, share market and investment strategies, inflation and interest rates.
5. Geography: Basic understanding of Indian and international geographical maps.
6. Political Science: Basic knowledge of Indian constitution and international politics.
7. History : Basic knowledge of Indian history and international awareness.
8. Travel and tourism ideas: Booking and managing individual and group travels for adventure, fun and pilgrim

Foundation Courses seems to me as attempting to cover some of these aspects. Some essential aspects that are listed above have been left out whereas some aspects are given undue attention according to my personal assessment.

Impact assessment and suggestions

I have a first hand experience of teaching Foundation Course papers. I have taught History of Science (formulated for blind students), Information Technology and the Science and Life papers partially. What I can say for sure is that within the limitation of classroom teaching these papers do have certain features to encourage certain essential qualities in the students. But as teachers like us are not trained for these interactions there is a fair chance that teachers would become hurdles in their effort since we are always tempted to teach them the way we know the best and are eventually trained at. I have often found during the interaction with students for Foundation Courses that the students were contributing more in enhancing my own vision on several issues many a times while I could contribute only occasionally and always felt that I could have been better replaced by an internet search engine. On the other hand, the aspects that one intends to cover in a classroom of Foundation Courses can well be embedded into the teaching methods that we adopt even for discipline courses.

As it must be understood that the idea behind introduction of these courses is not to make the learners as experts in these fields but is only intended to make them aware on these issues. It is for this reason because of which I am pretty convinced that it is late to introduce all these subjects at the time of under-graduation. We should have a national policy to include these aspects of studies in the schooldays and if at the undergraduate level students are to be encouraged to learn these aspects then they can best learn these outside their classroom hours. It can be easily found out that a private school pass outs generally would score very heavily on many of these aspects and only students from conservative/semi-rural/rural background poses a real challenge before us. Fortunately key to these kind of personality development techniques lie in the method that should be adopted for teaching these papers. I agree completely with Prof. Dinesh Singh who has repeated himself so many times while submitting that classroom teaching that is mostly unidirectional will never serve the purpose that is required for Foundation Courses. Hence the students must be given liberty of developing these qualities themselves by engaging themselves in some or the other group activities. The college can at best facilitate the process of providing them a suitable environment and leave them on their own to develop these qualities. I would prefer that they are asked to choose four such papers as listed above (one in each of the initial four semesters) excluding the papers that is related to their own area of specialization (honours) but they should be encouraged to consult internet to study these papers. Supplementary materials can be provided on our University website. Students should be encouraged to acquire knowledge on their own for these papers. Online multiple-choice tests can be made available during semester and students should be asked to attempt these wherein they can be assigned the best score out of their two to three allowed attempts.

In addition to this, each student can be asked to choose a single project for the entire duration of two years with a chosen group of 8-10 students preferably from different backgrounds and a teacher (or teachers) should be made available to them for consultation who would ensure that their single project helps them in improving the following skills for sure:

1. Writing skills.
2. Collection of some data from field or from the internet sources.
3. Analysis (tabular and graphical representation and comparison)
4. Conclusion and further ideas for improvement in the approach/analysis.
5. Creation of a working model, wherever possible.
6. PPT presentation before an audience (students and teachers).

This way all the aspects of 'employability' would get covered with a single project without compromising on the development of their specific (honours) skill. Some of these aspects of their personality development can be taken care of during their regular teaching of discipline papers itself. One can think of embedding these aspects into the discipline courses by encouraging the students to give presentation and by involving them in group discussions.

Conclusion

I must admit that unlike during semesterisation this time I tried to engage myself during the syllabus writing but I found that with reduced number of papers and periods for discipline courses we were just helpless in giving adequate attention to different aspect of physics teaching. Just to point out our helplessness I can state here that the computer programming and numerical analysis for which around 11 periods per week for two semesters were being devoted earlier we could now provide only three periods per week for two semesters wherein we have added even micro-controllers into the curriculum. According to the modern requirements we are justified in introducing the micro-controllers but we were helpless in providing the adequate periods for the same.

I would conclude my discussion with a reverse analysis of the data that was cited by our Vice Chancellor. If despite all the attention that we give to the academics and research we are able to motivate only a miniscule component (a maximum of 5-10%) of students towards these areas then what would happen if these aspects are compromised beyond a threshold. Unfortunately, the present FYUP structure is biased heavily in favour of the Foundation Courses. This posses a real danger of disorienting students away from academics and research and a developing country like India can never afford to do this. We must include aspects that were missing in our education but we can not afford to do this by compromising on our strong points. We should never let those students down who join the college to take up academics and research as their career of choice. There is a clear case to look for a wide scale review of this course. I would end this with my last remark that Foundation Courses can at best serve as supplementary courses at the undergraduate level and any effort to make it as the backbone of the course (that is how I will sum up the entire FYUP exercise) will produce students who would find themselves as not ready for any mid-level or high-level employment.