Saturday 4 May 2013

this and that

There seems to be a lot  of noise about  the new format for DU's degree courses. If the notification has come just now, it is rather late in the day.
In a college, every year, with new intake, we need to calculate the workload, see if new teachers are required. The HoD then distributes the syllabus among his/her staff.
The college also needs to check if the classes have the required rooms and that all the enrolled students can be fitted in the labs.
Even  in mediocre colleges, all this is finalised in April and new recruitments made for the next academic year during April.
Now that DU has notified this new pattern, the syllabus has to be finalised, the number of classes /week decided. The workload has to be determined and distributed.
If there is a new course - 'Basic Princ. of Math' with say, 3 periods a week,  for all new entrants-say 1000 students- which means 20 sections of 50 students -  60 periods of workload. In the previous regime, the Math dept would have had  2 sections of 50 students in the I yr and be teaching 4 or 5 periods- a workload of about 10 periods and may be another 10-15 tutorials/ labs or whatever they call it... 25 periods workload. This is only considering the first year .
The colleges need to plan for this. It takes time.

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