Tag Archives: Students

Plagiarism keeps everyone happy, but…

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An editorial in The Hindu today started my day with a question: How do we avoid plagiarism in institutions? The question haunted me for about an year by now. I came to college with long thoughts about this. Especially, that some universities promote “open book  examination” and yet they manage to weed out plagiarism; but how is the question that remained. I conducted an exam today, open book one, to see how my students respond to this. Just like I thought, not wanted, they gave me copied answers, word to word. It felt as if there was no real value addition, but then all that a teacher can do is limited to suggesting and directing–persuasion is an option sometimes. So, I did suggest that plagiarism is in a way limiting their imaginative abilities, and that they can get away from this habit by trying to paraphrase to begin with. I thought I had made a reasonable step forward.

But then some piece of information gives me a hint that plagiarism prevails in the institution even in teaching! Wohoo! I am not talking about information sharing, intellectually stimulating discussions, or teaching methodology, but I am talking about “getting to know what happens in other class through students, and then repeating the same in some other class“. Hmm! Honestly, I appreciate it at some level, because one person works for his class, and the students of some other class also benefit from it. At least, its worth was well recognized because some other teacher copied it; only there is no ownership, and only there is no imagination any further. I sometimes pity the students who become instruments of such teachers as to assisting them information about other teachers/classes (a culture I came running away from). They do not understand that they are hurting the system by doing things that are not their job.

Any explanation I offer now seems to me of little use, because of the happy climate that prevails. I understand, plagiarism is keeping everyone happy, including me though I am copied. But then, the question that started my day still follows… How do we get rid of it? Academics can be lot better without plagiarism, but how do we convince the stakeholders? Any more ideas…

Semester Moments Assorted

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Phew! As I solve the eleventh hour queries of students troubled with what is gobbled up through the course of a semester, I found few challenging ones that observed my attention. Curse or thank the mediocrity of those instant guides that are popularly used every examination season; I have learnt a point or two more within my subject, not because they had better lessons, but they had problems confounded in such manner that they forced me to explore more. So, here we go with the three questions:

Question One: Why do we select the point of intersection that is closest to the horizontal axis when we solve games using graphical method?

Question Two: In a transportation problem, why do we form a circuit when we want to identify how much the allocation should be modified and where?

Question Three: If we talk of Six sigma, is it really about accommodating six standard deviations in the process or should it be about reducing the absolute standard deviation?

Goodness me, there is some talent out there.

That is not all I had this semester. There were a couple of embarrassing moments that is attributed to the efforts to try and over teach (not so desirable) and to the efforts of trying to explain the fundamentals more than required (no so needed, I find now). The first moment, I missed computing the standard deviation and got the problem wrong, and it took me a second after stepping out of the class to identify what mistake I committed. But the twenty minutes I struggled in the class remains an experience. On the second moment, I explained game theory very convincingly through out only spoiling one last procedure. I had forgotten substituting calculated values in the original equations to find out the whole range of values required.

If you think these were silly, I am assuming (actually I shouldn’t hope) the students caught more than what I had known myself committing in lectures.

If I were to mention one significant learning from this semester of teaching, I would say it, but it would not be ground-breaking. I figured out that supplying material to students prior to the class is as effective as supplying no material. The later can at least save me some time and energy.

What would I be doing next semester? I am eagerly planning things.

Maturity, In an appraisal…

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In my first informal appraisal at the new college, I received a few drops of wisdom from my superior. He said:

“A teacher must have maturity. Maturity to not blame students for their failure, maturity to accept that their impressions on teacher could be short-sighted, and maturity to understand that the only way to get an acceptance from student community is to teach better. A teacher’s maturity is reflected in his ability to control the ignorance of the student.” Continue reading →

What students talk…

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I had to delay writing this till now, because I was excited watching India put it in for England as a payoff for what they got in the last series. It feels fantastic to see India winning. So I get into the story of the day now.

Incident One:

I was tying my shoe laces in the playground as I overheard this conversation of a student with her friend over the phone. She was animated as she said,

“That is what he does always. The lab assistant is a moron. When I ask him a doubt, he has only one response, which is to suggest me to consult the senior faculty. What kind of an idiot he must be. When I ask him for clarification in the lab work itself, he comes in and shouts out to read the question again, only a little slowly. And honestly, we don’t understand anything. Just imagine! Why would we ask him a doubt if we could understand what is written in the question? He doesn’t have brain at all. Once when I asked for further clarification on a question, he started scolding me for not paying attention when he explained, but all he did was to actually shout out the question only more slowly. How do people think, talking slowly can clarify doubts, unless they are elaborating on the concept? And then, these people think of themselves as Pundits in their subject.”

All I could do was give her a smile and board my bus back home. :)

Incident Two:

While I was walking back to the department from library, I found a couple of lazy asses having a chat. The sitting lazy ass was requesting (it wouldn’t be nice if I said royal begging!) the standing lazy ass to get him a cool drink. Just as the standing lazy ass moved his butt, he found two girls walking in that direction, perhaps his classmates. Now, the standing lazy ass orders (literally!) to one of those girls to get a drink for him and for the sitting lazy ass. I can’t still figure out why the girls have accepted that piece of crappy job, but just as they moved a feet further, story takes another turn. The sitting lazy ass now gets into a tiff with the standing lazy ass asking why he delegated the job he was supposed to do (he was perhaps trying to save his face by getting on the girls’ side). And now, the standing lazy ass says, “You should use girls, at least like this”. What a moron he must have been to have said that? All that those girls could do was to look at me for a second, turn down their faces, and briskly walk away from that place. I am sure, those lazy asses have not yet figured out what they had done to those girls’ self-respect, as the bystanders and on-movers were watching the scene.

From both incidents, I could observe one feature common: that these students have absolutely no sense of ‘who is where’, ‘who is listening’, and ‘what to talk’.

God. Please spare my senses from witnessing such incidents which make me believe that your creation itself was by mistake.

No expectation. No getting it!

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Induction is a tough process for those who are organizing it. To manage large crowd of parents with their confused kids who took admission into some college–now trying to figure out if their decision was wise–is indeed a challenging task. Challenging as I say, I would guess, means something different from what you may be thinking. You will figure it out by the time you finish reading this post. To start, let me just recollect and phrase down here, the proceedings of today’s induction for the new batch of MBA students at MVGR College of Engineering.

Session started at 10:30 AM with the Vice-Principal, Assistant Principals, and Head of the Department of Management talking about the increasing opportunities for students with professional qualification like an MBA, and how good the college is in providing various things that students might want to have. I am in consensus with what they had to say, not because I work there now, but because I joined there only after knowing fully well that they are the best around this geographical region. Good thing about this session, it ended in exactly forty minutes, as was planned earlier.

Session two was where the course and its curriculum was explained to the audience with a mix of cautionary messages and encouraging words. Each faculty member was allowed to present themselves to the audience and share their opinion about what the course was about, and what makes the students successfully get through it. I went one step ahead in the flow holding that mike–shared my concerns that the younger generation does not exhibit dignity of labour which I think is an essential qualification above all to be successful in life.

Session three. Challenge begins! The Head of the Department invited parents to share their views from what had happened till then, raise queries if any, or give suggestions if they had any. For about ten minutes it happened, and suddenly it started looking as if someone was begging for a response. Each faculty member started jumping in to somehow elicit a movement in the parent community among the audience, but that with least success. The action went on for another fifteen minutes after which I fundamentally decided that these parents surrendered their right to free speech elsewhere, or they must have reserved it for some other occasions. Since no parent turns up, and since it might be offensive to call them up on the stage, we had to ask the students to share their views. It takes another ten minutes of motivational discourse, about six students introduced who they were and said they were happy to have joined this institution.

Do you see what the challenge is!? I am afraid I have to say this.

Parents. If you don’t have any expectation, suggestion, or a view about anything that is happening around you, it leaves me with an impression about the kind of grooming your kid might have got, a continuous dose of ignorance. And now, I am afraid that if you don’t have any expectation, that puts us–teachers–in a position where we do not exactly know what we have to deal with or deliver. I suggest you. Next time you come to our college, please open up and at least have the willingness to ask what is happening, and if you can, go on to express your views about what you are learning or what you want us to learn. Unless you begin talking, please do not expect us to teach your kids to talk. Because, I (and anyone in the world with some social sense) would blame their failures, if any, on poor parenting before I put the blame on bad teaching. Please understand that teaching is no substitute to parenting.

Look at the irony I discover at the end of this post. Even with an expectation and effort, we could not get what we wanted today. Just imagine what could have been the case with an induction that did not even give such a chance, or that induction which has not even thought of such an idea–a platform to exchange views.

Before joining MVGR

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I am relieved from GITAM today. That is definitely good news! No matter how much I tried to keep my feelings to self, it always showed up to people in various things I did over the last couple of weeks. I was not enjoying my stint there. I do not deny reasons for it, but what is more important is I made a decision hoping for something better. I recall a friend and a student asking if I am assured of getting something better, and I had to tell them, ‘anybody in this world makes decisions only because they hope; and the notion of an informed decision does not guarantee a secured future’.

It would be extremely wrong on my part to say I have never enjoyed anything at my last workplace. Because there were a few precious moments I carry into my life forward. My guide takes the top of the list among them. I feel lucky to have been assigned to her–things would have been drastically different otherwise as I came to understand them eventually. I have learnt a few lessons, and produced my first few scholarly publications from this institution–all credit to few who encouraged me. And more importantly, students of this institution have been kind and tolerant to my experimenting ways of living, styling, and dealing with lots of things in the class. I guess I could say experimenting for I have learnt lessons from them, and have evolved after, however little that may be.

My classes on the last working day, today, were nothing special, and definitely not noteworthy. Perhaps, I attribute the failure of not making them memorable to me and me only. But then, I would love to feel that I have done justice to what was expected of me without expecting much from anybody, for over a while now–about nineteen months to be precise. Not expecting was difficult, but it has produced some fascinating experiences and interactions in the course of my time at the institution. Some of them were from students, and I am unable to resist sharing a few names here and what I have learnt from them, and may be go on to say what I could not tell them so far:

Gampa Shravanth Rao: He was the one who asked me “When everybody in the organization works one way, and there comes another one who works differently; may it be for better, don’t you think expecting a change is unreasonable?”. I may not have the wordings right, but close to that was his question. I did not have an answer then, but that ceased my expectation for change. If I were to answer the question now, I think I have a little one, may not be entirely unconvincing. The point is not about expecting change in the system, but expecting cooperation from someone who can change it. It took me time to realize students have the potential to change the way system works, but then not so much time to understand that very few students are actually interested in doing it.

Poonam Kahnoria: This girl is one among those very few with whom I could drop off the information loads I carried in my mind. And she was one who almost always took it with a smile. I think she enjoyed whatever pieces of information I used to share. Not that they were useful, but they have definitely built an interaction between us that made me feel lighter always. Getting a patient hearing always boosts morale; whether, she recognized that or not, talking to her made me feel much better. I wish I could ask her to focus on what is more important, but that might be asking her to stop listening to me too! After all, what I say is not part of syllabus, and after all, I am not the one to give easy marks.

Santosh: I do not recall his full name, but he is from IMBA, Fourth Trimester. Our interactions were limited. But it was a strange feeling for me whenever I found this guy loitering in the campus. The feeling was something close to ‘I wish I could have had a student life like that’. I am reminded of how much I missed being a student like that–curse my overambitious academic and sporting career, I now know I missed what matters most. I find it interesting that he is not just a bundle of energy, but that he controls it. Fortunately, he was the first student who wished me good luck after I received my relieving orders.

Santoshi Manjusha: She just has no clue how many times she must have made me feel embarrassed. Good and bad aside, this girl knows ways of making me smile. I do not recall any other student who has interacted with me in such a tone that makes me feel shy. I wish I could tell her, smiling is not my hobby, but a part of my job. But then thanks for saying it was good. Here is one more.. :) And you keep smiling too.

Tanay Reddy: This chap is a cool photographer. I think he is yet to discover the value of his ability. Studies is a critical part, but definitely that is not all. This student has already shown me what he is capable of with the camera. If you don’t believe me, just look up for his blog in my blogroll here. I just hope he gets into the line that he likes most. Good luck, Tanay.

Komal Aditya: This student is special to me. We share lots of things in common, for example, our understanding of life, our liking for agriculture, our frustration towards an allegedly urban community and so on. And apparently, he keeps making note of my style change trials, and makes references to which one was used when and how effective that was. Jokes and fun apart, he is one student who I believe has a true understanding of effort and pain. I wish he focused on education a little more, leaving aside all other frustrations.

These are students I can immediately think of from the current brigade, apart from a few impressive others including Linakar (fascinated by automobiles), Sravan (allegedly, a cricketer), Anish (would-be pilot), Pawan Kanuri (a gentle friend of mine I suppose), Divya from MHRM (only student who scored almost full marks in a subject I taught), Aditya Putta (swimmer and reader), Nihar (tattoo designer-cum-smart in lots of others), Divya Jain (an innocent trier), Adrian (a much wanted speaker), Chrysolite (only student who can dare to ask irrelevant questions), Sandeep (quizzer in history), Alka, Kanaya, Prashant, Saurabh (the gang) and lots more… I can think of many students from the brigade gone by, but then most of them are in contact with me on a friendly tone. So I guess, it is not fair for me to make them my students again and write my feelings as a teacher.

All in all, my stint at GITAM was eventful but not sufficient, interesting but common, and made me introspect but largely in its bureaucratic foundations. I am moving ahead, in hope, to MVGR College of Engineering.

Wish me all the best, Friends. And stay in touch!