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.