I must warn at the outset that what follows herein are my own personal ramblings and must not be taken to represent any form of the collective. There are two reasons why I think what I write below may be useful to me.
a. Writing always tends to help me resolve some of the knots that are invariably formed when I try to reflect with multiple constituencies and scenarios in mind and I hope that this effort will serve a similar purpose.
b. In the process I would have put in place my coordinates on issues that are most relevant to us, with the hope that this might be a starting point in the evolution of the collective.
Ever since I have been fortunate enough to be assigned this role of institutional development in our higher education foray, I have been reading and discussing a lot. I feel truly blessed because this short period has served as a great awakener for me. I am far more aware of the major issues in higher education and the multitude of views and tensions that exist in this field than I ever was before. I feel that this awareness is the right starting point for me and in a way I am glad that there are no set theories or truisms.
On reflection, I realize that this is only appropriate in the field of education, and more so of higher education, because learning can never have an end goal, nor can it have one defined best path; its purpose has to move and evolve with the tensions of the world and our larger societal needs. Thus, to say that learning has been achieved is to make a mockery of education itself. And who is best suited to understand this and incorporate it in its functioning but the education sector itself? If one decides to do some research one will uncover a whole lot of conflicts and debates on the subject of relevance, purpose and achievement of this education or that. Such debates are nothing new. They have been there since the beginning of the last century when we started to give shape and structure to formal learning and education.
What we need to appreciate is that the purpose of such debates is not to achieve a definitive answer agreed upon by everyone, but to be continuously aware of the limitations of our endeavors in reflecting the real complexities of the world that we live in. Which means two things: one that we are aware of our limitations and are striving to make amends, two, that this state of affairs will continue as long as there are enough number of thinking and well meaning individuals in this world. And I am glad that this number has shown no signs of diminishing yet.
Let me come to the more specific point of trying to set the long-term agenda for IWSB, and more generally for IWU. For my own clarity, I will try to describe the state of IWU/IWSB, say, seven to ten years from now. What will we be known for?
a. Thought leadership: our members of the faculty will be known for their relentless pushing of the boundaries of possibilities. They will be involved in pursuing new knowledge and applications for the betterment of mankind and society – be it in the area of nanotechnology, or information sciences, or medicine, or management, or international relations, or economics or any other area that we take up. There is an obvious reason for my saying so. I believe that what moves the world forward are individuals and organizations that have defined their purpose as making positive contribution to society in bettering its standard of living, and it would be meaningless for institutions of higher learning and their members if they don’t espouse this purpose. While it might sound impossible at this time, I don’t see any reason why in the longer run our researchers and teachers cannot get nominated for the Nobel.
b. Continuously evolving and challenging its own standards: there are two aspects to this point – first, is it at all desirable to achieve this state? And second, if it is then how do we do it? An affirmative answer to the first question seems to be reflective of our very nature, beliefs and values. I think being entrepreneurial is one thing that we do not even think of questioning at Career Launcher. It is the way we are and it is the way we always will be. Status quo is an anathema for us. Status quo is going against nature itself. And what better way to break the status quo than continuously challenging our own beliefs, perceptions, meanings, and practices? Of course it makes much more sense to do so for an institution of higher learning especially when we live by the purpose that we have outlined above.
Having said that, our culture at IWU must be reflective of this state. We must encourage plurality and diversity. We must encourage open confrontations with the spirit of evolving something totally new that never existed before. We must encourage churning and be comfortable living in a nebulous state for extended periods even if that means inconclusiveness. We must accept that at any point in time there can scarcely be a single truth. In fact, chances are that there will be multiple truths and we must consider ourselves moving in the right direction if such is the case.
c. Very strong in research applied to the society and the industry: world over, ever since one cares to consider, there has been unending debate about the relevance of academic research, especially in the non-technical areas. It is a fact that in many areas, including management education, academic research has suffered from the absence of linkages with the real world. The reason is that the agenda for research in such cases, largely set by academics themselves, has been divorced from the concerns of the real world. As a result, such research has often been touted as being esoteric and such endeavours have been amply rewarded with promotions and tenureship. At IWU while research will be a major activity, all efforts will be made to draw up the agenda and themes from what is perceived to be acutely needed by the society and the world for coming up with insights and solutions that will find happy takers amongst all stakeholders. This is not to say that IWU will not engage in fundamental research. Fundamental research is necessary for breakthroughs. But there must be a healthy balance between fundamental and applied research.
d. A haven for social sciences and liberal arts: Over the years I have come to realize that there are elements that are so critical for the richness, happiness and prosperity of our society that we have not given due importance to. The concern for quantitative and material utility of higher education has given way to a majority of our higher education institutions disregarding the all-important value of arts, literature, history, sports, theatre, cinema, and many other disciplines of social sciences. India is one of the richest nations so far as scope for pursuing such areas is concerned. We are truly blessed because of the richness and diversity of our cultures, regional traditions, music, cinema, dance forms, theatre forms, art and so on. We also inherit a history that goes back to the earliest civilization and is also so rich in its content. I feel that it’s a crime to disregard this aspect of our roots and no education can be complete without our understanding of this richness and diversity of our nation and building it into our curricula and research.
e. Undergraduate programmes that allow one to grow in multiple directions and discover oneself: not long ago, and to a large extent even today, young Indians are overly attracted to certain professional disciplines such as engineering and medicine. There are so many of such people who have at a later stage discovered the disconnect with their bachelor education and have changed courses later. Fortunately, things are changing now. But even now we seem to be in a hurry to get into a “career” that is “paying.” While this may be rewarding to the individuals in the shorter run, as a country we lose out on a great opportunity to produce great sportspersons, journalists, designers, film makers, teachers, scientists and such people who can add so much value to society. IWU undergraduate programmes must be designed so that young minds are exposed to a multitude of subjects to build a broad base. We must allow them sufficient time to understand these subjects and their relation to the world and therefore are able to make informed choices about how they would like to contribute to the society. All this translates to a wide bouquet of courses on offer and the freedom to design one’s programme by choosing from amongst these courses. This also means multi-disciplinary approach to structuring our programmes and curricula.
f. Centre for instructional design, pedagogical evolution and technology: It is quite surprising that Indian educationists and institutions have done practically nothing in the area of pedagogy, learning effectiveness and adopting technology in learning. It’s ironical that none of our universities or institutions of higher learning have invested any resources in this area whereas we are in the business of instruction and learning. Many of our teachers couldn’t care less, and a few who are considered great teachers seem to revel in overawing their students with their lecturing style and depth of knowledge. Departments of education are practically defunct. We must rectify this mistake in IWU. I foresee every campus of IWU and its associated institutions to house a centre that works exclusively on instructional methodologies and improving learning effectiveness. In fact, my fond hope is that these centres will be able to device new methods of learning that are effective and are a first anywhere in the world.
A case in point is management education. World over b-schools are struggling with the issue of instructional effectiveness and pedagogy. They have tried various methods – lecturing, discussions, case studies, action learning and so on. Their objective are twofold – how to simulate the real business world in their academic programmes, and how to help students make meaning and internalize such meanings that are so much contextual. I personally feel that we have not thought about this in any fresh way and there is huge scope of creating new methodologies that can give better results than the existing ones.
Another case in point is the issue of distance education. Unfortunately, most distance education programmes are content dependent. We seem to think that if students go through certain readings and are able to pass examinations that are directly based on those readings, they have learned. Nothing could be farther from the truth, though. I don’t think we have spent enough time and resources to research how to make distance education really effective in achieving the learning goals of different programmes.
Written by Somonnoy Ghosh – Director, IWSB
