Platform to tap teachers expertise

Updated on: Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The idea of using the intellectual resources of the teaching community in the State to design curricula and thus ‘expand the curricular space’ for students has found expression in two recent initiatives of the State government.

On September 22, the executive council of the Kerala State Higher Education Council (HEC) is scheduled to debate on the institution of a “Project for Designing Courses”. The scheme, according to Thomas Joseph, the member secretary of the HEC, has two aims—to train teachers in the art and science of designing courses and to set up a corpus of courses designed by teachers from all over the State.

In its report submitted recently to the State government the Ram Takwale Committee on the Kerala Open University has recommended that the KOU’s courses and learning material be generated by the teaching community at large through ‘wiki-processes’.

The importance of proving curricular space—adequate choices of courses in a ‘choice-based’ credit and semester system—for students in the restructured undergraduate programmes has always been stressed by proponents of the new undergraduate system.

For such a space to evolve, the present method of relying on small groups of experts, however well-informed, to draw up courses would prove inadequate.

“There may be teachers in the State who have their own, innovative, ideas about how to conduct a particular course or indeed about how the curriculum for a particular course should look like. We are thinking about setting up a platform where the expertise of such teachers can be utilised. But first we have to train them to channelise their ideas into the broad contours of a course and curriculum,” professor Thomas Joseph explained to The Hindu-EducationPlus.

Once the scheme gets the HEC’s nod, teachers who wish to design courses would be encouraged to submit the title and a brief outline of their intended work to the council. The council would then appoint expert committees—each committee consisting of at least three experts of repute in the subject concerned—to scrutinise these proposals to see whether they conform to the standards set by the Council. The proposals would also be checked vigorously to see whether they meet the higher of ethical norms.

Once the expert committees approve of the course and the accompanying model questions and answers, the HEC would pay the teacher an honorarium for his or her efforts. The council initially proposes to set aside Rs.30 lakh for this purpose. The ratified courses would then be posted on the HEC web site and offered as an intellectual corpus to curriculum designers of public universities. Various Boards of Study of Universities can also consider such teacher-designed courses for inclusion in their curricula.

This initiative could go a long way in ensuring sustained capacity building in the community of teachers. It would also promote a sense of involvement among teachers who may feel more inclined to effectively teach and innovate upon courses designed by themselves or by their peers, Professor Joseph added.
Open university

The institution of the Kerala Open University could also see a shift in the manner in which learning material is designed in Kerala. As per the “Future Now” model for the KOU recommended by the Ram Takwale Committee the services of serving and retired teachers can be utilised for designing courses and curricula.

In his recent interaction with The Hindu-EducationPlus Professor Takwale had pointed out that once teachers retire from service their intellectual acumen is never tapped by the State. The KOU should change this and get retired teachers also involved in all academic processes of the Open University.

In fact he said he even wanted anybody with a body of knowledge to share with society to be made part of designing courses. It is only commonsense that people who have knowledge be not prevented from sharing the same just because they are not officially designated as lecturers or professors, he reasoned. If implemented effectively these two initiatives would be catalysts for democratising the structures and processes of higher education in the public sphere in Kerala.

Platform to tap teachers expertise

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