Curriculum Redesign, contd.

If you haven't read my previous post, do that first. I was speculating on the possibility of revamping the course structure of an Indian science / engineering university. It seems reasonable to measure the efficacy of a curriculum by how well it meets the goals of its designers. I believe that the goal of a university's undergraduate curriculum should be to ensure that its graduating students:
a) have a working knowledge of various fields of study, are able to meaningfully apply this knowledge, and can increase their knowledge without assistance should they choose to do so.
b) possess the confidence and ability to begin learning any subject they find interesting.
c) are sufficiently qualified to begin either their professional lives or more rigorous graduate study in their area of interest.

To be successful, any proposed curriculum would have to require a broad set of foundation courses to fulfil the first two requirements and permit sufficient specialisation to fulfil the third. Unfortunately, Indian universities seem to focus only on the last requirement. At the few colleges where a broad range of subjects are taught, students are often 'spoon-fed', leaving them unable to go further on their own and thus leaving the first requirement unfulfilled. Sadly, as I said earlier, any college that decides to focus on providing a strong general education is usually criticised for not teaching students enough about their own discipline.

BITS is a case in point. It attempts to teach a common core of subjects to all students during the first two years, but still fails to provide a good general education. Students acquire random bits of knowledge about several fields, but little or no epistemology. (A couple of Timothy Burke's Methods courses would do well here.) All the discipline-specific subjects are compressed into the third year, which is plainly insufficient to do justice to them all. Many students have criticised BITS for not spending enough time on these important courses, but increasing the number of discipline-specific courses (hereafter CDCs) seems to require a decrease in the common 'core' of the first two years. Given that the core already seems to do its job badly, decreasing the number of courses further is hardly likely to help. At first glance, then, there seems to be no solution to this problem.

Perhaps, though, we're approaching it in the wrong way. Why assume that this is a zero-sum game? Can we strengthen one aspect of the curriculum without weakening the others? Can we simultaneously satisfy all the requirements of an effective curriculum? One (naive) workaround is to substantially increase the total number of courses. Students are not machines, so that seems unlikely to work, though a slight increase might be acceptable.

I spent a large part of last semester wrestling with these problems and produced several curricula. Before I present the latest iteration, I'd like some comments. First, are my goals for a curriculum meaningful? Can you think of better ones? Even if they seem reasonable, are they practically achievable? Am I being too ambitious? Second, do you have any ideas for a science/engineering curriculum? While this is a hypothetical exercise, the faculty at BITS has expressed some interest, so I'd like to keep it practical. That means that we would preserve sections of the current BITS curriculum wherever possible. Don't let that chain you down, though. If you have some radically new ideas, go ahead and post them. Quoting Dr. L. K. Maheshwari on a possible curriculum change, "Sometimes you have to destroy a structure before you can begin rebuilding."

I'll post my ideas on Monday; I'm going to Chennai for the weekend. I'll look forward to reading all the suggestions when I get back.

One last note: I've been saying science/engineering throughout these posts for a reason. Any engineering college will have to offer science courses as prerequsites for several subjects, and as electives for interested students. It is technically possible to have science departments that don't offer degrees, but such departments are unlikely to attract good faculty. A 'service' model, where faculty are retained only to teach introductory courses will almost always be unsuccessful. An integrated science/engineering university (like BITS) seems like a far better idea than a 'pure engineering' college.