Students as Participants in Learning Process
Students as Participants in Learning Process
Bijay Kumar Sharma
Electronics and Communication
National Institute of Technology, Patna – 800005, India
ABSTRACT In technical colleges the biggest challenge before the faculty is to involve the Students in learning process. There has to be a two prong attack on this problem. First is to get the students interested in the subject and second is to develop a good understanding of the basics through practical exercises. In regard to the student’s interest, the subject matter in form of text book, references and class notes should be readily available as well as accessible. In this context Rice University Online Publication Program has proved to be particularly useful. One core course Analog Electronics is taught to Electronics, El ectrical, Computer Science and Information Technology Students in 5 th and 6 th Semester under the Course Code EC1X05. It has three hours lecture and three hour practical with 5 Credit hours. The Class notes and Tutorials have been uploaded on http://cnx.org as Analog Electronics Lectures. In addition all the related experiments are a part of laboratory schedule in form of training kits as well as self-designed experiments on breadboard. This two layer learning process helps complement one another and in the process a good understanding of the subject should develop but there is a big IF. All this is effective only IF the students are actual participants in the tutorial works and experiments in the lab. But more often it has been found that most of the students are mute spectators and bystanders and they reproduce the works of the few who do the actual work. To break this nonchalance and despondency of the students, online quiz tests on our Management Information System Intranet have been conducted as well as the students have been closely quizzed on their lab reports . These two processes, it is hoped , will go a long way in getting the students more involved in the learning process. A way has to be devised to measure the impact of these innovative methods on the students’ learning process.