Today's The Hindu carried, in its weekly educational pages, this article, The power of choice, http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-educationplus/the-power-of-choice/article6581729.ece, which describes the pros & cons of a flexible credit system followed by Vellore Institute of Technology, Tamil Nadu, India, http://www.vit.ac.in/. Please note that it is a private university (a deemed university) which seems to have a philosophy of high quality at free market sort-of fee structure i.e. high fees. [This longish blog post of mine, Private Deemed Universities - A model for excellence in Indian technical education? But what about its high costs to students, and so, social impact?, https://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/2014/05/private-deemed-universities-model-for.html, dated May 2014, has some info. about its fee structure (in May 2014) in the lower half of the post.]
A small extract from The Hindu article mentioned above (about VIT FFCS - Fully Flexible Credit System):
I spoke to educators and other students about the system. In the FFCS, the college puts out a broad framework of academic courses and credit requirements and steps back. Then the students pick their courses, the pace at which they want to complete them and, happily, the teachers as well. An entrant registers for courses that he/she likes and draws his/her own academic plan. The system allows students to alter their choices as they go along — after assessing their ability to complete the courses chosen.
--- end extract ---
The article gives interesting pros & cons of the system. A student is quoted, "The faculty is being assessed, so there is accountability."
I like the choice being given to students related to teachers. In the deemed university that I served, due to, I guess, faculty size limitations and other limitations, very limited choice was given to students related to courses (and so teachers associated with those courses). And when I studied Physics in the early 80s in Mumbai I don't recall any choice at all (within the Physics courses that I had to do).
The choice being extended to timings is quite surprising to me. I wonder how the university and campus administration manage to run the show with all these choices, even if the maximum amount of choice seems to be available at the beginning of this choice being exercised by students (via some software, I presume) with the amount of choice reducing later on.
Another point that strikes me is that VIT may be able to provide such a sophisticated choice system to its students as its high fee structure enables it to maintain requisite numbers of quality faculty that would be needed to fulfill the student choices. Academic institutions that are always low on funds as they charge low fees (or, in few institutions, no fees) may simply not be able to maintain the large numbers of faculty needed to provide choice of this kind to its students.
On browsing the Internet I came across this academic conference paper (4 pages) related to this system in VIT, Effects of FFCS (Fully Flexible Credit System) on Learning Experience and Academic Performance, published in Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 3rd Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research, CY-ICER 2014, 30 January – 1 February 2014, Lefkosa, North Cyprus. Its abstract and pdf are available in the third table entry in this link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18770428/143/supp/C. Please note that the authors of the paper are with VIT, the institute whose FFCS system was studied, and so the study is not by an unbiased third-party.
A small extract from The Hindu article mentioned above (about VIT FFCS - Fully Flexible Credit System):
I spoke to educators and other students about the system. In the FFCS, the college puts out a broad framework of academic courses and credit requirements and steps back. Then the students pick their courses, the pace at which they want to complete them and, happily, the teachers as well. An entrant registers for courses that he/she likes and draws his/her own academic plan. The system allows students to alter their choices as they go along — after assessing their ability to complete the courses chosen.
--- end extract ---
The article gives interesting pros & cons of the system. A student is quoted, "The faculty is being assessed, so there is accountability."
I like the choice being given to students related to teachers. In the deemed university that I served, due to, I guess, faculty size limitations and other limitations, very limited choice was given to students related to courses (and so teachers associated with those courses). And when I studied Physics in the early 80s in Mumbai I don't recall any choice at all (within the Physics courses that I had to do).
The choice being extended to timings is quite surprising to me. I wonder how the university and campus administration manage to run the show with all these choices, even if the maximum amount of choice seems to be available at the beginning of this choice being exercised by students (via some software, I presume) with the amount of choice reducing later on.
Another point that strikes me is that VIT may be able to provide such a sophisticated choice system to its students as its high fee structure enables it to maintain requisite numbers of quality faculty that would be needed to fulfill the student choices. Academic institutions that are always low on funds as they charge low fees (or, in few institutions, no fees) may simply not be able to maintain the large numbers of faculty needed to provide choice of this kind to its students.
On browsing the Internet I came across this academic conference paper (4 pages) related to this system in VIT, Effects of FFCS (Fully Flexible Credit System) on Learning Experience and Academic Performance, published in Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 3rd Cyprus International Conference on Educational Research, CY-ICER 2014, 30 January – 1 February 2014, Lefkosa, North Cyprus. Its abstract and pdf are available in the third table entry in this link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/18770428/143/supp/C. Please note that the authors of the paper are with VIT, the institute whose FFCS system was studied, and so the study is not by an unbiased third-party.
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