Thoughts on revisiting priorities in master level education

As I teach students in the
master’s programme year after year, I observe how the youth prefer to spend
their time on curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular activities.  This is contextual for classroom discussions,
engagement with batchmates for group activities, and overall group dynamics. I
present my observations on how students knowingly or unknowingly make choices
in spending their time and effort. Alongside this, I also provide some
suggestions to improve the learning experiences through proactive and
additional efforts that may require an investment of time and effort beyond
classroom learning.

Tasks and experiences

Following the school and
undergraduate teaching processes, the students tend to prioritize tasks at the
master level too. The primary task remains sitting through the lectures,
working on assignments for assessment through individual or group tasks, and
preparing for examinations.  Such passive
involvement for marks is neither exciting nor adequate for master-level
education. I suggest that master-level students must prioritise experiences
over tasks.  The students must make the
assignments more productive, meaningful, and joyful by undertaking hands-on experiences.  They must apply classroom learning to real-life
scenarios by going out to the field – on their own if required. They can move
away from textbooks and internet-based information to engage with space, place,
and people to convert information into insights through inquiry.

Information and insights

In the world of the internet and
now Artificial Intelligence (AI), access to information is aplenty and thus,
plain information is increasingly becoming boring. The new-age students must
strive to rise beyond generalized information to connect the information
meaningfully to various contexts. Students must learn to ask questions about
the information that is easily available. Such inquiry is useful to dig deeper
to convert information into context-specific insights about a range of things.
The inquiry is a new weapon in the armour for students to engage with professors
rather than just comply with their instructions.

Compliance and Inquiries

The traditional approach to
education emphasises discipline disguised as compliance with norms. The
informal arrangement of the classroom pushes students to remain passive actors
and resist them from asking questions. This needs a big change for better
performance of both students and professors. The professors must not only allow
but also help students to create spaces where they inquire about the context,
relevance, and importance of what is being taught. Beyond the utility of skills
and knowledge in the job market, such inquiry should be for a larger worldview.
 Such space of inquiry and discussions
would enable both to rise from their respective orbits and become better
teachers, learners and doers in their respective roles. Such inquiries would
also enable the students to process their thoughts better and express them
through spoken and unspoken words.

Words – silence, speaking and
listening

Being passive actors, most
students choose to remain silent in the classroom space. Most of them only
speak to present their assignments, in which the other students do not engage
because scoring in assignments is considered a private effort for private
gains.  When some of them choose to
speak, they murmur with friends and clarify their doubts. Only a few would
speak to the facilitators/professors for clarifications, and very few would
engage with inputs to generate larger discourse and debate.  The students only hear their professors to be
able to make their notes to be used for examination. Ultimately, the beauty and
art of listening remain a missing piece in the conventional teaching-learning
experience.  This needs an overhaul.
Students must be taught and encouraged to speak their minds, which includes sharing
questions, confusion, suggestions, appreciation, and comments. They must also
be taught to listen passionately and compassionately to their fellow batchmates
to learn from their inputs, which is not necessarily about assignments and examinations.  This requires practising productive silence
that enables active listening and opening up to speak for collective learning.
Such interactions among students and with professors may entail avenues of
being critical or being nice. But, that is little a price to pay for an improved
learning environment.

Being nice and being critical

The interactive space of learning
is shrinking in the era of intolerance of disagreements. The professors expect
students to be nice to them and not critical of their ideas. In turn, students
learn to avoid being critical of their peers. Ultimately, the interactive space
of learning that strives for debate and discourse and critical reviews of
shared ideas gets shrunk. Although everyone gets affected by such an outcome,
no one finds it valuable to address it; the classic case of the tragedy of
commons. However, the students can choose to prioritize the long-term gain of
learning over the short-term agenda of being nice to peers. Interpersonal engagements
through asking questions, sharing disagreements, making comments, and giving
suggestions can go a long way in generating a conducive and long-lasting space
of learning beyond classrooms.

Marks and Learning

The true purpose of education is
learning for survival and societal upliftment. However, the manifestation of classroom
and curriculum-based schools and colleges reduced the whole efforts to the pursuit
of marks.  The influence of scoring is so
high that students lose patience to understand concepts and focus only on how
would the assessments be evaluated and what would be asked in the examination.
When marks overpower studies, learning gets off the burner. While marks have their
importance for competitive examination and admissions to higher education
options, their value diminishes in master-level programmes. The students in
master programmes must focus on improving one’s ability to think, ask, explore,
and do. They must revisit the purpose of studying to rise above the ruts of the
education system that focuses on studying for scoring.

Revisiting the priorities

The master level students must learn
to prioritize experiences over tasks, insights over information, inquiries over
compliance, listing over speaking over silence, being critical over being nice
and lastly, learning over marks to make the most of their last experience of
formal education. The learning from such experiments will make the foundation
for how they would value education in their next generation when they would be guiding
young children, in a decade from now.