In
the recent years, there has been a substantial improvement in the standards of science
education in school both at primary and secondary levels across the country,
even though much remains to be done for schools in rural India. However, the
scenario in the context of college science education is in a limbo. Science
education involves, understanding the theoretical principles which are
developed based on experimental observations. Without hands on experience,
science education is incomplete. Due to resource constraint, laboratory
infrastructure in colleges has not kept up with the times. Not much has changed
in Indian colleges and laboratories of natural sciences since our undergraduate
days..
Large
demand from millions of students all over India to study science is met with
very little enthusiasm at college level. So what should we do? The large
capital investment required to modernize all the colleges with state-of-the-art
infrastructure and equipment is nearly impossible. Therefore India needs to
innovate an alternate model of teaching science in colleges in order to retain
the enthusiasm and excitement of students, which they develop during their high
school studies and which often die with their entry into college and eventually
the universities. As a result of going through very limited training in
experimental science at college level, it is no wonder that students, lack the
ability to ask interesting questions and the desire to solve them.
Having
the experience of interviewing several thousand students over last decades,
both at the Indian Institute of Science
as well as CSIR-Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology, it is
quite clear that basic understanding of many of the fundamental concepts are
very weak among majority of the students. However, I have always been lucky to
find exceptions to this and to have extraordinarily good students to work in my
laboratory. What can we do to enhance the percentage of students having high
enthusiasm towards pursuing science as a career and how do we direct them
towards newer opportunities of science in the future?
In
order to achieve this, we need to change our style from textbook based teaching
to teaching through exploratory activities. For instance,. instead of teaching classical Botany in a classroom
alone, one can take the students out into the field and teach them the ability
to observe, analyze and deduce which I mentioned in my last blog. Today’s
teaching methods have to be discreetly different with more opportunity to use
low cost devices along with 3D visualizations for better learning and
understanding of the basic principles of physics, chemistry and biology. There
is a need to introduce students to computers at a very early age. It is also
required that instead of classroom teaching, student’s participation in
research activities however limited, is initiated at the college level.
To
achieve this, we should be able to create clusters of colleges and students
should have the mobility to interact with students from other institutions to complete
their assignments. One college in the cluster can develop a laboratory with
state-of- the-art facilities.
The
second approach involves identifying students interested in pursuing higher
studies in science and connect them with scientific leaders of the country (may
be Fellows of the National Academies) so as to mentor these students and give
them an opportunity to work in the science laboratories of the country. Some of
the academies have already taken up initiatives in this regard.
Therefore
it is required that the entire pedagogy of college teaching shifts from text
book based education to practical education which involves significant
interaction with research community on one side and needs of the society on the
other. Engineering and Science students must be encouraged to work with MSME
clusters to get hands on experience. They should be encouraged to undertake projects
to make MSME cluster energy efficient, reduce waste and use less material i.e.
more from less for more people without loss of quality.
One
needs to be in constant touch with nature to explore new questions in the realm
of science and technology. It is important to note that an early exposure to exploratory
learning kindles scientific inquisitiveness that helps an individual to develop
into a mature scientist in the future.
Learning from Life’s Experience
One
hands-on-experiment and one explorative venture into nature is far superior to
hundred lessons from the text book in kindling the scientific temper of college
students.
SKBlog-08
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