The Change Thread

We’d asked you what you would want from your dream IITB. A wide, wild variety of suggestions sprung up. Here they are, categorized, and uncensored. Comments and additions are welcome 🙂

ACADEMICS

MISCELLANEOUS

1. TAship open to all the BTech final sem students. This would help the freshers and second year students a lot… (final sem highlighted, as it will eliminate people working for resumes and hence, only genuinely interested people will come forward… Pratyush Rathore
2. Reduce weightage of endsem….. 1 paper of 60% means nothing else matters…you mess up that paper you r gone
3. From my side i really feel and wanted that the department electives should be offered also in the 2nd year and 3rd year too. This will really enhance the interest of a participant in the department as one would get a chance to have a knowledge of the course of his/her interest -Saurabh Gupta
4. The students should have a right to choose courses from the 1st semester itself and all the exams held should be open book ones

GSAA – PG

• The Research Scholars are getting much less stipend as compared to what a graduate can earn in a month (even the Arts grad.). Because of this, RS may not be focusing that much on research instead they are searching part time jobs. Most of the PhD students are married, so this is a very crucial problem. If the govt. will provide the stipend upto 35k p.m. then students may work in a better environment. Their family members may also give high moral support. Change is not good, but the only solution.

• As an MTech student , here is what i hope for :

1. Courses being taught in proper order /sequence, for e.g. Gas Dynamics first and then C F D.
2. Teachers being little more student friendly for e.g. i mean lectures being a little more energetically delivered.
3. Some teachers think that MTechs are not that good to be sitting alongside BTechs (which is wrong, of course), their attitude needs to change.

Sandeep Bhat
2nd Yr. Mtech

• I wish if the research students could be more empowered in making academic decisions instead of professors controlling the power. Also, during the APS the researcher students should get feed-backs that can be substantially implemented in written form from the panel embers. Additionally,

1. Professors not at all use students for personal work
2. Attending conferences and international summer programs/workshops should be encouraged with financial support
3. Institute must release annual contingency grants to the research scholars

• Is there no mentorship programme for postgraduates? If not, why?

COMMON:

• Why does the library not contain the relevant books?
• I mean there should be enough books for the UGs per course which the prof. usually suggests but all we find are random books!!!
• Endsem papers should be shown.
• Could you stop having classes/quizzes/tutorials/exams in the night time? In fact attending classes after 6 pm is difficult and leaves no time for extra-curricular activities. Please try to fill up slots in the morning and evening (which I believe are sufficient if used properly) instead of having them in the evenings.
• Problem: MSc (Physics) Course structure is poor. Delink Btech from Msc
• Inequality is bad. We, UGs who have done only 2 courses in organic chemistry are made to do the course with JAM qualified BSc junta, who have done only organic chemistry in their lives. These guys do not know any mathematics, physical chemistry, humanities etc… They do not do electives in each and every department of the insti… All they do is organic…And so the class gets divided into two. They get all grades above BB and we get all grades below BC. Since organic chem is a subject where practice is the only thing which makes a difference, this is definitely unfair.
• Less number of quizzes. They should be limited to 2 or 3 per subject. Taking many quizzes and then scaling them down is torture.
• I would like to have class timing changed to 9 o’clock instead of 8:30am
• I think class size for a lecture should be reduced (in terms of no. of students), especially in first year.
• There should be a center for research assistance in the institute such as if someone wants to develop a software for research it should be done through institute support

GRADING

1. Firstly, the grading structure needs to be fixed. The difference in the kind of grading that happens in various departments is a major concern for the students.
2. Grading method is poor. Students search easy graders, not good teachers.

Solution: Introduce central grading (as opposed to prof grading). Remove relative grading as it does not show how good a batch is

TEACHING

• Some Prof’s in the first year (not department) are good at subject but are unable to make the class interesting making the students to sleep in the class or bunk the classes..
• Some measure of control on the powers and freedom available to Professors. At present if a Prof decides to act maliciously against students (Profs aren’t Saints, please), there are no means to check their actions. Eg.- An assistant Prof fails a student for unsatisfactory reasons, and ignores intervention from the Dean himself. If there are fears of students’ unions spoiling the atmosphere in the institute, let there be some kind of body headed by Profs which can bring another Prof’s under scrutiny.

• I am M.tech student (microelectronics in electrical department). I have found the professors narrow minded here. The professors have to change their mind set about evaluation of answer sheets, otherwise students will be harmed. They are not thinking in other direction.

1. Given assignments are not intuitive, materialistic and lengthy problems are given, this is causing mass copying, boring.
2. The TAs for the courses are lazy; they are not correctly evaluated assignments as well as external answer sheets; depending on attempts they are simply giving marks.
3. Knowing is one thing but a faculty garners respect and admiration only through his/her teaching. Sadly enough, nowadays, even in traditional and old departments, teaching quality has declined. With students having so many distractions, the last thing we want is bad teaching being an excuse to shun classes!
4. Better teaching quality, good profs n a more flexible n transparent system. It’s sad currently with autocratic profs.
5. Needless to say the Professors should be trained to make their subjects interesting.
6. Teaching with slides/presentation etc. is creating hindrance for good learning. Use of chalk and backboard is much convenient for students to grasp the ideas, as it forces the prof. also to come prepared and be able to bring out the material live on stage. With slides and presentations it happens that profs. may have made them once sometime back and cannot follow them themselves and even not derive some equations mentioned there. This creates lot of confusion for students and then they also learn to gloss over the important details. So use of slides should be made minimum, and judiciously used only when absolutely required.

Gopal
PhD EE

CSE PROFS

1. Why do we (CSE DEPT) have labs that span more than 20 hours and have only 3 credits.
2. How can the teachers expect us to learn Java or C in a single day after they take a rubbish course of C++ in the 1st semester.
3. At least ask them to declare the rules of the “game” before they start with the sem
4. They happily declare that copying will not be tolerated but do they ever pay attention to the fact that giving random assignments that have nothing to do with the class promote copying
5. This year the course of CS101 was assigned to a prof. who hasn’t taught the course in 25 years and the most he worries about is how to prevent copying
6. The profs consider the courses they get as a random job which is very irrelevant to what they should be doing here i.e. research
7. If they were so much into research then why did they came here?

WE WANT TEACHERS NOT RESEARCHERS!!!

• Pls ask this following question to CSE profs. How many profs in CSE think that the students already know programming and that they need to just throw some slides in there faces and consider their job done?

CURRICULUM

1. Lectures should be more interactive, with an aim to make us learn something. Not just force things upon us.
2. Lab system should be made less stubborn. Aim of the labs should be to develop the spirit for experimentation and not just to take readings and finish calculations within 3 hrs.
3. Curriculum should be interesting, there should be practical associated with the theory courses as well.
4. More of practical/ project oriented curriculum
5. If only the Profs would actually teach us a little practical knowledge.

• When we look at the various courses here in iit we see that the ones who do good in them are mostly the people who just keep studying on and on, people who have very little practical experience/application oriented thought….COURSES SHOULD BE DESIGNED IN SUCH A WAY THAT THEY SHOULD INSPIRE CREATIVITY AND EXPLORATION NOT MUGGING AND MORE MUGGING.