In India, the education system has mainly relied on rote learning based approach. The source of knowledge is often limited to textbooks provided by the schools, education boards or the universities. However, over the last few years, with faster propagation of information via the internet, these textbooks are playing a game of catch up with the pace of information availability. Thus, those students who tend to memorize, and / or limit their knowledge to these textbooks, might actually be at a disadvantage in the longer run, even though they may perform well in their examinations, which is their short-term goal.
There is a disparity in what educational institutions expect from students and what corporations expect from professionals. This explains the unavailability of employment ready quality students while are a large number of unemployed graduates in the country.
According to a study by Assocham India in 2016, only 7 per cent of MBA graduates from Indian schools, excluding those from the top 20 schools, get a job right after completing their course. Another glaring remark mentioned in the same report states, “Even the quality of IIM/IIT students coming out now compared to the last 15 years has come down due to the quality of school education.”
Source: B and C category B-schools producing un-employable pass-outs: ASSOCHAM
Similar thoughts have been shared by Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, in an interview with Business Insider, in which he talks about the learning culture he intends to bring about at Microsoft. He gained inspiration from Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck’s bestseller Mindset:
“I was reading it not in the context of business or work culture, but in the context of my children’s education. The author describes the simple metaphor of kids at school. One of them is a ‘know-it-all’ and the other is a ‘learn-it-all,’ and the ‘learn-it-all’ always will do better than the other one even if the ‘know-it-all’ kid starts with much more innate capability.”
“Going back to business: If that applies to boys and girls at school, I think it also applies to CEOs like me, and entire organizations, like Microsoft.”
Recently, I was fortunate to have been able to write an open-book, open-laptop exam, for the course of “Entrepreneurship” conducted by Sijo Kuruvilla George, as a part of my PGDM studies at Xavier Institute of Management & Entrepreneurship, Kochi. The only rule that applied was a ban on use of e-mails, instant messengers or any other online communication platforms.
This mode of evaluation put everyone on level pegging, with equal access to information. Then what could possibly be the differentiating factors? (This becomes important, especially when the evaluations are governed by relative grading method.)
- Smart searching
When one needs some information, they usually type in the keywords into various search engines. However, when everyone searches for the same content, what differentiates them is the speed of information retrieval and the quality of the information obtained. This can be achieved by using shortcuts specific to specific search engines. Students also learn to make use of the Appendix, Glossary, Index etc, while referring through books.
- Pre-reading
Some of the questions in the “Entrepreneurship” course examination was to summarize a couple of essays by Paul Graham. These essays had been given earlier as pre-reads. It would take a student about 45 minutes of the 2 hour exam to read through both these essays once, at 300 words per minute, which would then make it difficult for the student to attempt other questions properly due to limited time available and thus result in poor grades. Thus, the student is compelled to complete the pre-reading activities as per specified deadlines, and to have a thorough understanding of core concepts, even though he/she is not able to memorize the entire content.
With respect to books, if the student has read the book before, it will help him/her locate the content faster, as compared to other students, thus giving him/her an edge over the others.
- Presentation
If all of the above fail to provide uniqueness to a student’s answers, it all boils down to the way how he/she chooses to present the information. Thus, students learn to express complex ideas in a very simple manner, rather than writing pages of content, by means of charts, graphs, bulleted list etc.
However, implementing such changes across schools and universities is a mammoth task in itself, and initiative needs to rise from the teachers and administrators in these institutions. Even then, it may take a while to be implemented, as teachers need to be prepared with the new styles of teaching and evaluation as well.
What do I do if my school / university strictly adheres to textbook based learning?
- Follow blogs / social media pages containing related content
- Watch TED Talks / YouTube videos
- Advanced: Write a blog, obtain feedback, write more blogs
