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| EDUCATION TRIBUNE |
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Evaluating teachers
‘Smart Class’ has a digital edge
Campus Notes
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Evaluating teachers
EVALUATION of teachers is a significant imperative of teaching and learning, an area that has provoked animated debates over the last few weeks. Care has to be taken that these debates do not get polarised. A measured, balanced and valid decision has to be arrived at in spite of the inbuilt resistance. Needless to say, we are not looking for unanimity; consensus is all that is needed.
No one can deny that effective evaluation of the teacher’s classroom performance is crucial if the success of his/her teaching is to be measured adequately. Peer review could be one way of judging quality of teaching, but this can bring about conflict and heartburn owing to petty rivalries. On the other hand, test scores of students could be another way, but keeping in view the half-hearted scrutiny of answersheets, how dependable would this method be? And, of course, the student appraisal could be one other significant stimulus to quality teaching. Attending a semester at Cambridge on Modernism, I remember Professor Stephen Collini and Professor Maud Ellman would hand out a feedback sheet to each one of us. We were requested to fill in the questionnaire and slip it into their pigeon-holes. The questions ranged from the knowledge of the teacher to his skills of teaching as well as his attitude towards students who actively keep the teachers on their toes. Understandably, dialogue in the classroom sets the note for a conducive ambience for learning and is a central agency for a humanising impact of pedagogy that finally breaks the culture of silence and initiates the participation of the learner in pushing teaching and learning to a more revolutionary pedagogy. The questionnaire inquired into the teacher’s adherence to evaluation practices and instructional management. It asked us to identify the teacher’s strong points and aspects of the course which needed upgrading. Perceptibly, the use of humour, enthusiasm and anecdotes, so well employed by Professor Terry Eagleton too evoked complete interest in the lectures. The informal and anonymous evaluation by the students was taken as an integral part of the teaching process. Moreover, the assessment exercise brought new buoyancy in both the teacher and the taught, producing a warmer understanding between the two. The debate at the moment has veered towards the validity and the bias of such an evaluation. What kind of a student would be capable of informing the teacher the pedagogical changes required for quality teaching? Can a student, irregular in attending his lectures, write an honest report on his teacher? What if he is rated mediocre and consequently savours only pedestrian lectures, entirely ignoring the rigorous intellectual content of a lecture that has been assembled over days of hard labour? Was the teacher not able to explain something properly or was the student perhaps falling short of concentration? For instance, I know of participants writing a report on the teachers at refresher courses often rating mediocrity higher than teachers delivereling tirelessly-prepared brilliant lectures, which apparently require complete attention for a deeper grasp. We can go on to ask: Is the evaluation of a teacher not subjective? Can there be any common criteria of effective teaching across disciplines of humanities, arts, social sciences and sciences? I remember a professor who, while lecturing on Bacon or Russell, would wander off into Continental Philosophy, read out from Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, tell us about Wittgenstein’s theory of language or Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialism and the tragedy of choices. I wonder if I would have ever pursued my interest in contemporary critical theory or the impact of Nietzsche, Derrida or Lacan on a political evaluation of a text if he had used the run-of-the-mill teaching methodology. And in spite of his wide range of reference, many were unsatisfied and wanted him to limit his lectures only to the text; their narrow focus regrettably was on the examination and the obtaining of off-the-rack answers. But a few of the adventurously gifted were constantly of the opinion that the introduction to the wide framework of his references had a bearing on the essay far more enlivening and provocative in breaking narrow boundaries and widening intellectual involvement. I am so happy when I look back to hours spent listening to him; I am glad he refused to change his method of teaching to cater to students desiring tailor-made ideas. Often it is noticed that a teacher who engages in simplistic and humdrum linear delivery of knowledge is rated as lucid and superior to an intellectual who sparks off controversy and, to an extent, imparts new ideas that inevitably result in after-class debates stimulating endeavour for further research. Indeed, the strengths and weaknesses of a teacher will always depend on what we expect and the rapport we have with them. Judgments will always be relative as well as subjective and no one method of evaluation adequate. What matters is not what teachers/students know, but how they use it. Academicians, therefore, need to give direction, coherence and a rationale to how we teach and what we teach. We have to ask ourselves: are we proud of our strong learning traditions, our ability to move with the times and our energetic student community? Do our concerns flourish inside and outside the classroom? And, do we value a wide range of approaches to learning? Such questions are of deep pedagogical concern to both the teacher and the taught. |
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‘Smart Class’ has a digital edge
“The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing.”— Douglas Engelbart
TODAY, our education system demands changes to meet the local and global needs. From individuals to nations, innovations in information technology influence almost every sphere of life. Therefore, classrooms can no longer afford to be left behind. There is great need for a new approach, new methods and new tools in teaching. Mere the chalk-and-talk method of teaching does not add any spice in the teaching-learning process. Worldwide there has been a strong push to get educational technology into the hands of teachers and students. However, it remains a reality that most teachers across the country continue to struggle with their day-to-day challenges in classrooms and remain completely aloof from technology even today. With technological changes many traditional methods of teaching have become obsolete. Bringing technology to the classroom has given vent to the ‘Smart Class’ programme, a digital initiative which is rapidly transforming the way teachers teach and students learn in schools with innovative and meaningful use of technology. It provides tools and contents for interactive self-paced learning by students, as well as rich-media presentations for teacher-led classroom learning. Whatever the teacher teaches would be in an animated form, so that the student could easily relate themselves to the visuals and it would be easier for them to understand and remember the concept. Smart Class is actually a high-end educational technology in which the traditional class becomes all the more interactive with loads of streaming videos, animations, graphics and other digital contents. Each classroom is set up by fixing an interactive touch screen board, and through an LCD projection, the content is displayed on the screen. The content available consists of pedagogically sound- and visually-rich curriculum resources mapped and customised as per the school’s scheme of work. The content repository consists of highly animated, lesson specific, 3D and 2D multimedia modules. This content can be streamed into the classroom and shown by teachers in the classroom to make abstract concepts real. Students learn difficult and abstract curriculum concepts watching highly engaging visuals and animations. This makes learning an enjoyable experience for students while improving their overall academic performance in school. Smart Class has a unique delivery model for schools. A knowledge center is created inside the school equipped with the entire library of Smart Class digital content. The knowledge center is connected to the classrooms through the Intranet. Teachers get the relevant digital resources such as animations and videos, interactive virtual labs tools, etc., and use them as part of their lesson plans in every class. The classrooms are equipped with custom-designed electronic interactive white boards, projection systems, PCs and UPS. Teachers use the digital resources while teaching inside the classrooms enabling students to acquire a faster and a better understanding of the concepts taught. Towards the end of the class, the teacher displays a set of questions on a large screen and the students get ready to answer the questions with their personal answering device— a smart assessment system. Students click the answers instantly, while the teacher is able to get a score sheet for every student. At the end of the class, the teacher repeats those parts of the lesson which were not understood well by the students. This results in faster and accurate understanding of the concept and helps improve the overall academic performance of students. Teachers are able to keep students engaged in the learning process and also get an instant and accurate assessment of learning outcomes achieved at the end of the class. In fact, Smart Class has been conceived and developed around the ideology that for technology to become an integral part of day-to-day teaching and learning practices in schools, it needs to be taken to the classrooms where students and teachers spend over 80 per cent of their teaching-learning time. With the blend of new technology, traditional classrooms can become interactive and more interesting. No doubt, the Smart Class programme is a comprehensive solution designed to assist teachers in meeting with classroom challenges and enhancing students’ academic performance with simple, practical and meaningful use of technology. I hope that sooner or later, this new-age technology movement will make its presence felt in every class and every progressive school in India. |
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Campus Notes
THE University of Mumbai completed a hat-trick of victories by bagging the overall championship trophy in the 25th All-India Inter-University National Youth Festival RAJAT-UTSAV, which concluded here recently. Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU) and Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, bagged the first runners-up position, while Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, won the second runners-up position.
While Mumbai clinched the trophy in music, the trophy for dance events went to BHU. Guru Nanak Dev University got the trophy for theatre events while the trophy for literary events was bagged by BHU. Rabindra Bharti University, Kolkata, clinched the trophy in the fine arts category. The Education Minister of Haryana, Geeta Bhukkal, gave away prizes to the winners. A total of 877 students from 61 universities took part in the youth festival.
Workshop on experiential training
The education process should be learner-centric rather than knowledge-centric, and also there is need to encourage participatory learning to increase teaching efficiency and efficacy. This was stated by Prof. Anand Prakash, a noted psychologist and Head, Department of Psychology, University of Delhi, at a workshop on 'Experiential Training & Development' organised in the Department of Psychology, MDU, recently. Prof. Anand Prakash, along with co-resource person Dr R.K. Singh (SRCC, New Delhi), discussed various aspects of experiential teaching and learning, while Prof. Girishwar Mishra of the University of Delhi laid emphasis on greater participation of learners in classroom situations. He said effort should be made to guide the students towards knowledge-discovery mode. Prof. Rajbir Singh spoke on 'Teacher as Facilitator', while Prof. Nov Rattan Sharma threw light on the background of the workshop. Prof. Sunita Malhotra, Head, Department of Psychology, welcomed the guest speakers and participants. Faculty members, research scholars and teachers from affiliated colleges took part in the workshop.
Admission notice
The Directorate of Distance Education (DDE) of MDU has issued the admission notification for computer & IT, management and psychology course(s) for the 2010-11 session. According to the DDE Director, Prof. Narender Kumar, details of the courses and application form are available on the university website www.mdudde.net. Normal admission (without any late fee) for these DDE courses can be sought up to March 31, 2010. Thereafter, admission with late fee of Rs 500 can be sought from April 1 to April 30 and with late fee of Rs 1,000 from May 1 to May 31, 2010. — Contributed by Bijendra Ahlawat |
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