Today I am going to try and analyze what's wrong with the Institute of Technology at Nirma University. I have been complaining about my college for the past 3.75 years without suggesting any steps on how things can be made better. Here are my suggestions on how to fix the college:
1. Stop spending so much money on growing grass in the college and put some to poach good teachers to the institute. The CE/IT dept. has a large number of teachers with no experience. A good prof. is worth tons of infrastructure. I am ready to sit under a tree to study if the prof. is worth it.
2. Once you start getting good profs., make fluent English a compulsory requirement for teachers. Almost half of the staff cannot convey anything when speaking in English. A 15 year old kid would pronounce and spell better than they would. Our textbooks, online references, assignments, answer papers are all in English. How can you let these people, who can hardly understand the language, teach subjects?
But no one in the right mind would come to a college like this leaving DA-IICT, SVNIT, MSU or even an IIT. So things need to be changed with the environment.
3. Do away with compulsory attendance. I know this would meet with a lot of resistance and is very difficult to digest, but would make a hell lot of a difference with the environment. Close to 7 minutes of a lecture is wasted taking attendance. 7(minutes)*4(lectures)*5(days)*16(weeks)=37 hours every semester wasted for attendance.
4. If the above can't be done, make attendance mandatory only for labs. Bring down the attendance requirement for lectures down from 80% to 75%.
5. Do away with the silly attendance reviews 3 times a semester. It serves no purpose and is a waste of everyone's time.
6. Take practical exams in the last lab. of each course. Currently a practical exam is worth only 5 marks (out of 100) but wastes 1 week of semester. Give that week off as a reading vacation, or shift theory exams to that week.
7. Give a day off after every theory exam. With the time saved by shifting the vivas, this can be achieved easily. This would give much more time to understand each subject thoroughly before the exams. If the IITs can do this, so can Nirma.
8. Do away with the assignments. This is another pointless exercise and a lot of forests have been sacrificed to serve this nonsensical task. If you can't do this, then reduce the number of assignments to 4 (one per month). Instead of picking questions directly from the text, make the faculty browse the net and find really challenging tasks. Make a set of 10 questions and give 1 question to a group of 5 students for every assignment.
9. Make the use of projectors in theory classes (this for CE/IT). There is no point in having theory classes in subjects like IWD, C, C++, etc. They are not theoretical subjects and shouldn't be converted to one.
10. Do away with the pointless subjects in the first year. My guess is that this system was first introduced in places where you decide your majors after the first year. It is not so in our system so why continue a pointless tradition. I have gained absolutely nothing with the knowledge of Engineering Drawing, or Chemistry, or Mechanics, or the silly Workshops. Keep 2/3 general and 4 core subjects per semester in the first year and start introducing electives from the 2nd year itself.
11. Do away with the Special Learning Programmes and Career Orientation classes. They are a waste of time and do not look attractive even on paper. In the same vein, do away with the Orientation programme for first years and hand it over to seniors instead.
12. Streamline the semester durations. We've started all odd semesters in different months. Start the odd semester from 1 August and finish in November end. Start the even semester from 2 January and finish in last week of April. Give May, June, July completely off in order to introduce point no. 13
13. Introduce voluntary industrial training after 2nd year and compulsory training after 3rd year. No company would be willing to take students for only 2 months in the summer. Hence a nice 12 week vacation is necessary. No need to assign credits for this. If our students start performing well in this training, the reputation of the college will automatically go up and companies will start coming for placements.
14. Now for non-curricular stuff. Dissolve all department clubs (ECO/MESA/CHESA/ACES...). If you want to keep them, don't allow them to conduct annual tech-fests. Most of the events are repeated and too much money and time is wasted. Let them conduct only talks/workshops/seminars related to their field. Also, either do away with the faculty co-ordinators or give more powers to them. Right now they only add to the red tape as all permissions need to be signed by the Director. If the faculty co-ord signs it, then whats the need for Director to sign it?
15. Once you've done away with the Prevoyances and Chemozales, introduce a techincal festival on the lines of Techfest (IITB) or Synapse (DA-IICT). 4-5 events related to each field of engineering. Some mega events. Allow anyone to sponsor the event. Keep one faculty in-charge of this event so that the entire organizing committee can report/refer to him/her for guidance. Call him the Dean of Student Affairs or something. He would have all powers and accept responsibility for anything related to the event.
16. Remove the ban on mobile phones. This is a place of education, not a jail. The population of students coming from far-away places is increasing everyday, and mobile phones have become a necessity. Of course, this does not mean that anyone can use mobile phones in class. Fine/punish the student who does so. If a student is talking in the canteen, what's the harm? If any student is caught taking pictures then do whatever you want. Finding a good mobile phone without a camera is not possible in today's word.
17. Improve the college website. This is the first thing a person/company would look at. Make all faculty put course material, assignments, solutions, tests, etc. on the intranet. Publish results on the net.
18. Introduce more transparency to the marks system. Make the exam department put a detailed report of all students on the intranet. How much did a student score in each assignment, test, MSE, SEE, Viva? What lead to him/her getting a particular grade?
19. Access to internet must be given in the labs. The internet contains a lot of useful information and is a 100 times better than our library. You can block all sites that you want to. In fact, you can get students to suggest ways to block sites. It isn't hard to block domains. Don't block 99% of the good stuff to keep out 1% of the bad stuff.
20. Make hostels for under-graduates in the campus. No college is complete without hostel. Besides providing a good facility to students, this will make students bond with each other and create a good atmosphere.
I hope someone from the college would read this and try to do something.
Akash
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Farewell
Dear Arthur C. Clarke, I hope you are able to read this wherever you, just like Bowman could. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your books and wish you the best for the future.
I first came across Clarke in May 2001. I had gone to visit my Mama in UK after the 2001 Gujarat Earthquake. I visited the local library and saw 2001: A Space Odyssey lying in a shelf. I had always heard about the book, but never thought of reading it. I was just coming out of my Hardy Boys days and had started reading a few Robin Cook books. But 2001 was something special. I can't describe what I felt after reading the book, but I went back to the library immediately to get the next book in the series. Sadly, I couldn't find 2010 in the library. Instead I got a book called Richter 10. The book is never counted as his great works, but it remains the best Clarke book for me. The book, as the title suggests, is about earthquakes and 2 people trying to predict them. It was an amazing book. But I felt as if I was meant to come to UK and read the book after the terrible earthquake I had witnessed.
I came back to Ahmedabad a few days later and immediately bought all 4 books in the Odyssey series. I've asked the local bookstore at least a hundred times for Richter 10, but no one seems to have heard about the book here. After that I stopped buying science fiction. I think the Odyssey series was so awesome that I never felt the need to read anything else. Last December, I was in another bookstore in Ahmedabad when I saw The Collected Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke lying there. I couldn't resist the temptation and bought it right away. The book contains all the short stories (and some not-so-short stories) written by Clarke and is a breathtaking book. Anyone who calls himself (or herself, in rare cases) a science fiction fan must read this book. It took me almost a month to finish all the stories for even a 2 page short story had as much power as a 1000 page novel. I couldn't read more that 2-3 stories a day due to the sheer brilliance of the work. Each story sent me to wikipedia reading about Saturn's rings or Jupiter's moons or geosynchronous satellites and many things more.
This book made me want to read more science fiction and fantasy. So another trip to the store to buy Heinlein, Asimov, Pullman and yet another fruitless search for Richter 10.
I don't know why Clarke's death came as such a blow for me but it did. Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I would add a corollary to that - any sufficiently good book is indistinguishable from magic. And most of Clarke's works fall into that category. So long Mr. Clarke, and thanks for all the fiction.
I first came across Clarke in May 2001. I had gone to visit my Mama in UK after the 2001 Gujarat Earthquake. I visited the local library and saw 2001: A Space Odyssey lying in a shelf. I had always heard about the book, but never thought of reading it. I was just coming out of my Hardy Boys days and had started reading a few Robin Cook books. But 2001 was something special. I can't describe what I felt after reading the book, but I went back to the library immediately to get the next book in the series. Sadly, I couldn't find 2010 in the library. Instead I got a book called Richter 10. The book is never counted as his great works, but it remains the best Clarke book for me. The book, as the title suggests, is about earthquakes and 2 people trying to predict them. It was an amazing book. But I felt as if I was meant to come to UK and read the book after the terrible earthquake I had witnessed.
I came back to Ahmedabad a few days later and immediately bought all 4 books in the Odyssey series. I've asked the local bookstore at least a hundred times for Richter 10, but no one seems to have heard about the book here. After that I stopped buying science fiction. I think the Odyssey series was so awesome that I never felt the need to read anything else. Last December, I was in another bookstore in Ahmedabad when I saw The Collected Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke lying there. I couldn't resist the temptation and bought it right away. The book contains all the short stories (and some not-so-short stories) written by Clarke and is a breathtaking book. Anyone who calls himself (or herself, in rare cases) a science fiction fan must read this book. It took me almost a month to finish all the stories for even a 2 page short story had as much power as a 1000 page novel. I couldn't read more that 2-3 stories a day due to the sheer brilliance of the work. Each story sent me to wikipedia reading about Saturn's rings or Jupiter's moons or geosynchronous satellites and many things more.
This book made me want to read more science fiction and fantasy. So another trip to the store to buy Heinlein, Asimov, Pullman and yet another fruitless search for Richter 10.
I don't know why Clarke's death came as such a blow for me but it did. Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I would add a corollary to that - any sufficiently good book is indistinguishable from magic. And most of Clarke's works fall into that category. So long Mr. Clarke, and thanks for all the fiction.
The Unfinished Tales - 1 (previously titled 'The Last Stretch')
I want to write something but feel too lazy, so am digging up an incomplete post from the drafts folder. I wrote this a long time back (sometime in October, 2007). Feels strange to read this now.
-------------------------
Only 19 days to go - 4 vivas and 6 theory papers and I can bid adieu to Nirma.
It's strange. I've been waiting for this since 3.5 years and yet I am quite sad when I should be happy. The last few days have been good for me. Getting placed in Motorola with a package I could only dream about when I joined Nirma.
I think I am sad as it is finally time for me to take control of my life. I've been lazy too long. In a few months I'll be leaving home, family and friends and try and build a new life in a new city.
-------------------------
That's all I managed to write at the time. Nothing much has changed since then - I'm still anxious about the future and I am still lazy.
-------------------------
Only 19 days to go - 4 vivas and 6 theory papers and I can bid adieu to Nirma.
It's strange. I've been waiting for this since 3.5 years and yet I am quite sad when I should be happy. The last few days have been good for me. Getting placed in Motorola with a package I could only dream about when I joined Nirma.
I think I am sad as it is finally time for me to take control of my life. I've been lazy too long. In a few months I'll be leaving home, family and friends and try and build a new life in a new city.
-------------------------
That's all I managed to write at the time. Nothing much has changed since then - I'm still anxious about the future and I am still lazy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
