IIT to set up more flexible curriculum
US Consul general Philip Min, Suresh Garimella, Purdue Executive Vice President, Mitch Daniels, Purdue University President and director of IIT-M, Bhaskar Ramamurthi at the signing of research scholar exchange programme here on Friday. (Photo: DC )
Chennai: To provide academic flexibility to students, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras has decided to allow students to select 50 per cent of their courses as core courses and the rest as electives. With the new initiative, an electronics and communication engineering students can now take elective papers in mechanical or civil engineering too.
In an interview to Deccan Chronicle, IIT-M director, Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi, said the IIT system had a lot of academic flexibility to help students. The institute wants to set up more flexible curriculum, letting students decide what they wanted to do and how they wanted to shape their knowledge.
“We have a core curriculum and a notion of professional major elective, minor stream and humanities elective. We want to enable students to take some core courses in the field they get the degree in, some electives from their field and a lot more multi-disciplinary electives. Now an electrical engineering student may take electives in robotics or physics, which involves measurements,” he said.
Prof Ramamurthi pointed out that by providing flexibility to students, after two years, they might be in a better position to select the field they are interested in. Citing an example of how an electrical engineering student does circuit and systems, networks, electromagnetic fields, machines, semiconductor devices as core courses and electives like communications, VLSI, power electronics and instrumentation within their subject, the director said now students could select electives from other fields. “A student has to study 45 courses in four years, 20 to 25 as core and the rest as electives,” he added.
The director’s vision has a lot of takers among students in the institute with several of them welcoming the move. “Several universities abroad provide students with the opportunity to pursue courses in inter-disciplinary fields, which helps them when they do research in other areas.
A student may join B.Tech (electronics and communication engineering) but after two years, he may want to migrate to mechanical, which in the current context is difficult. But after the new system is implemented, the student can at least select electives from mechanical,” said Deepak, a B.Tech student.
( Source : dc )
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