A lot has been discussed about the way higher education curriculum needed an upgrade. Most of the universities across the world have been upgrading their curricula for graduate and post-graduate programs. A lot of choice and flexibility has been built into these programs so that the students can pick and choose what they wish to study. However, the issue remains with the way individual courses are taught in terms of content, coverage, and pedagogy. This article suggests an alternative approach to the traditional way any subject is taught.
As suggested by Tom Peters in his book “In Search of Excellence”, every organization should have a trinity of managers: Chief Creativity Officer, Chief Sustenance Officer, and Chief Destruction Officer. It is as important for an organization to do new things, as it is important to sustain some of the old things, and most importantly, stop doing some of the redundant things. This applies to educational institutions as well. Every teacher must keep asking himself what he should stop, continue, and start doing in his class.
The origin of this discussion is the changed role of a teacher, from sage on the stage to guide on the side. Teacher is no longer the only source of knowledge but should become a facilitator of learning. Hence there is no point in wasting time in sharing mere facts with students in the class. The class time should be focused on discussing the cause-and-effect relationships among the various concepts. This is known as a theoretical model that depicts the relationship between two or more concepts. This focuses on the question WHY; Why did a certain phenomenon happen or has happened? The other questions that help to understand this model are WHAT, WHO, WHEN, and WHERE. These are the factors that influence and contextualize this relationship. Asking HOW these factors influence the relationship helps us to understand the ways and means to manipulate the effect by changing the factors and associated variables or attributes.
The task of the teacher is to present the concepts and their relationship to the class. Then the discussion can start about the factors influencing the relationship and how they do that. This can further be extended to identifying the variables that would help understand the relevant factors. The whole discussion focuses on exploring, identifying, and understanding the whole relationship as a system, building the systems thinking skills among the students, an important skill for the future.
This means that the teacher should always start the class with the WHY question. Rather than sharing mere information about the Time and motion study done by Frank and Lilian Gilbert in 1974, the students should be asked why it was necessary. The students should be allowed to do the research or related reading by themselves. Then the discussion would focus on What, Who, When, and Where to contextualize the understanding. This can further be extended to our homes, the way kitchens are set up, how work desks are set up, etc. The next question would be the relevance of the concept today in multiple industries.
Some of the faculty may already be doing this. However, how much of the information sharing can be eliminated from the classroom? This is the primary question. While many teachers have been experimenting with the flipped classroom asking students to read the facts and concepts before coming to the class, it has met with partial success. As suggested by some senior faculty, mechanisms and measures like spot polls, instant responses captured on Google Forms and other such methods can be used and the results linked to an assessment component like class participation, to ensure that students come prepared. Such a discussion can completely change the engagement levels and learning outcomes of the class. This approach also frees up time so that additional/ new things can be added to the curriculum as well as pedagogy.
The following process is suggested for implementing this approach. The first step is to review the content and coverage and decide what should be left as pre-reading. The concepts and their relationship to be studied are identified next. Why they are related, along with the influencing factors can also be part of pre-reading as these can be easily found by the students either from the textbooks or on the internet. Once the students do this research and come to the class, the teacher can start the discussion with the relationship and explore it further using the influencing factors. Multiple contexts could be explored. The discussion is then extended to Rules, Roles, Processes, and Resources, exploring their impact on the relationship.
The advantages of this approach are as follows. Class time is spent in engaging discussions and understanding the concepts in a systemic and holistic manner. Students are encouraged to identify multiple industries, contexts, rules, roles, processes, and resources, exploring their impact, and widely expanding their knowledge canvas. The relative influence and relevance of these factors can also be explored, substantiating with case examples and evidence.
This would challenge the teachers to move out of their comfort zone of dealing with mere facts and explore a larger systemic view. The most important question is, are they ready for it?
About the Author
Flt. Lt. Sridhar is a Startup Ecosystem Builder, Keynote Speaker, Author, Researcher, and Entrepreneur. Sridhar’s mission is to help Entrepreneurs and startups achieve incredible success through exponential growth. He brings insights and lessons from three decades of hands-on startup and business leadership experience in various verticals. Sridhar uses six different thinking processes, including systems thinking and design thinking, and helps entrepreneurs create breakthrough solutions through his unique coaching process. Sridhar launched and ran four businesses. He is a certified Startup Mentor from the Confederation of Indian Industries.