Suggestions for Professors based on my first year IITB experience

Hi, I am a freshman CS undergraduate and study in IIT Bombay. To those who don't know about our academic calendar, I am just giving a brief summary which should more or less match with most of the running universities.

"We have our annual academic calendar divided into two semesters and in each semester we have to earn a certain number of credits. Credits are awarded upon clearing a course may it be a compulsory course or an optional course. Clearing the course is generally based on four examinations, two of them being Midsem and Endsem examinations (the bigger ones) and the other two are quizzes one before and the other after the midsems. There may be some course projects also but it is not mandatory. It solely depends on the professors how they design the course but what I have described is more or less followed in most of the courses." 

So I wanted to handout some suggestions that I feel will reinstall the enthusiasm and build a better learning environment.

1) Every course should have a mandatory course project that should promote creativity and the course project can be handed out after the first half of the semester, after which a student would have considerably learned somewhat. The project can be theoretical or practical, catering to the course's needs.

2)Every lecture should devote a particular time at the beginning for real-world problems,(solved and unsolved) or their simulations related to the learned concept. Students must be encouraged to participate in discussions. This might be done in a way that at the end of the class professor should pass out one such problem and when the class resumes on the next lecture day, they discuss the ideas. They can act more-likely food for thought questions.

3)Forming mandatory small study peer groups among students. In tutorials instead of conducting impromptu mini-quizzes, you can evaluate homework or you can give reports and essays about the topic. Each group can submit one homework and the whole group is evaluated accordingly. That will definitely instill a learning environment.

4) Currently, some courses lack creativity in giving assignments. Assignments that force a student to get out into the real world and have some involvement can be promoted.For example, you want to give a CS project you can convert it into such a scenario that a student has to get his own input test cases scrapped from somewhere or by doing a survey or by any other methods that are innovative and make the students learn some skills on the way.

5)Better software for the professors to design their slides. Some professors use slides that have more information then rather being more interactive. Although information are necessary they can be placed in a creative and animated way.

6)In the way we have a structural organization of TAs(Teaching Assistants) we can have a structure within students that would help to have better feedback from the students. So we can appoint a leader over every 10-15 students who would give feedback to the prof on a fortnightly basis. The leaders can be appointed in a rotation manner such that every student gets to be a leader. This can help to boost the confidence of the students and improve teacher-student interaction.

7)Some extra sessions in each course where the professor describes his/her experiences in the subject and the research he or she has pursued or is pursuing.This will promote research interests which definitely lacks a bit.

8)Moodle discussions seldom happens. Moodle is our online portal for course-related stuff. Why it happens?  Moodle discussion forum's interface is too formal and layout is not simplified or catchy. Small things but surely matter. A discussion forum app can be created with a good and simple layout where students can discuss with profs and tas in a more informal way. The discussion database can be saved by the institute in order to have better statistics of students' problems which can help to redesign any course if needed in the future.

9)It must be made sure that before the lecture starts the slides should be released. It can act as a reference material for students and can help them efficiently follow lectures.

10)Vague point but still relevant, so I will mention it. The lectures get a lot boring,  some of the professors don't make their class interactive or interesting enough and do not have proper voice modulation. Professors should pay attention to that.

Sibasis Nayak