Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology - Madras (IIT-M) is all set to lay more emphasis on teaching skills of its faculty in order to set benchmark in teaching. It is now focusing its attention on research in faculty development as well. Professor Ajit K Kolar, chairman, Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) has said that the institute will open a Centre for Teaching Excellence' in a few months, which is scheduled to expand into a centre for research focusing especially on trends in higher education.
As per sources, during the second edition of a faculty development programme organized for 35 faculty members from IIT-Madras, Professor Kolar said that faculty members at all IITs have not had any training in teaching. They have simply told them what they wanted them to learn and never gave any thought to the efficiency of our communication or whether students are really learning. But a lot of research has been done all over the world, especially in the United States, on the teaching-learning process.
Further he also mentioned that they have three experts, Dr Jeffrey Froud and Dr Chandrika Rajagopal from Texas A&M University, and Dr Prudence Merton from Dartmouth University, who will acquaint their faculty members with some of this research. Professor Kolar added that concepts like Active and Cooperative Learning' wherein students are given the scope to discuss and learn from each other during a class or minute papers', which require students to write down what they understood from a particular class within a minute, would be discussed.
According to a statement issued by Professor Kolar, when we talk about learning, it does not necessarily pertain to students alone. As teachers, we learn everyday. He also added that the student strength is about 450, but now it has doubled to 800 because of the reservation policy. So, they are left to handle large classes with students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds with different levels of learning ability. They need to learn how to deal with that effectively.
