Invigilator-less Exam

Oh! what a thought? Will it really work. It did work in Amrita Institute of Management when I was a student then, way back in 1998 - 2000. But I doubt whether it still works even in Amrita School of Business (AIM re-christened as ASB). I was so proud of myself then, that I never copied in my two years stay at AIM not even the assignments given to do at hostel. Thanks to my Director, then, Dr.Sanjay Banerji for such wonderful concept and implementation of that. I owe this to him. Recently I wanted to try in the institute I teach now. I had pathetic result. Later on, I was told that students mis-took it as opportunity given to copy, officially by the faculty.

Quite disappointing. I think times have changed and we too have to change with times. I really am foolish to believe that my students are the honest lot on earth. I have to live with the fact that I cannot change by conducting one silly invigilator-less exam. They have to feel that they shouldn't take advantage, and that they have to live up to faculty's expectations. But that is too much to ask for, now-a-days. 

Better Late than Never

I thought 'late' is better than 'never'. Though after two years i'm posting in this blog created by me long long ago, it gives immense satisfaction that finally it crossed my mind to post something here. I think i will revive this blog seriously as i'm finding many things in academia insufficient and not-so-really-satisfying. One blog or writer who has done a great job in putting things across many of complicated topics in a most simple way, fit to be a superb teacher, is Kalid and his blog is worth the visit.

www.betterexplained.com

Believe me, things are really better explained here than anywhere in the world, at least for me. I would definitely take a cue from him to make things easily understandable from now on in this blog.

Admission Time Again

Admissions would start soon. Getting a MBA seat has become like getting a chocolate in grocery shop. You pay and you get it, there is no question of you are ready to pay but you wont get it. This is from student's perspective.
Now from college perspective, with easy availability of seats, the candidates they have to choose has become a real nightmare to management and college. Already many colleges might have started executing their strategies to attract the best talent. It has increasingly become difficult to get good students rather most of the MBA colleges have become matrimonial offices.
Few students join just because they dont have any other work sitting at home at their marriage age. So, they find their marriage partner while doing this superb PG course. These students are real difficult to manage. No, I am not against this ritual (sorry to say, but it is the truth) but am definitely against if the student gets totally distracted from his real objective.
Let me hope that this year our college too gets good students. I am not saying earlier we had bad students but that this time too we get similarly or equally good students as the last batch but not like the batch before this.

'Arba Jyon Ka Tyon, Kunba Dooba Kyon'

'Arba Jyon Ka Tyon, Kunba Dooba Kyon' - Actually I was searching for the meaning of this particular Urdu couplet in Google but could not find many hits on this, so I thought of doing that in my blog. I think most of the teachers who teach statistics take this as an example to explain the limitation of average. And I saw that most of them use word 'Hisaab' instead of 'Arba' and I think both actually means same - arithmetic. 'Kunba' means 'family'.

The Urdu couplet actually means "Even though my arithmetic is as good as I have imagined why did my family drown". Now how is this related to 'limitation of average'?

The Arab story goes like this - Once there lived a Statistician who wanted to cross the river with his family - himself, his wife, 2 sons and 3 daughters. Altogether 7 members. He looks at the board displayed besides the river saying that AVERAGE depth of the river is 4 feet. Now he adds the height of all his family members and checks that AVERAGE height of his family members is 4 1/2 feet sufficient to cross the river as the AVERAGE height of his family members is just above the AVERAGE height of the river mentioned in the board displayed. After this arithmetic, he decides to cross the river with his family members and starts crossing. He leads the way and others follow him. But the AVERAGE height actually doesn't mean that the river has the same depth all the way across the river from this end to the other end. It can be as deep as 8', 9', 10' at some places and it can be 1', 2', 3' at some places. Now the lowest height of his family member was 2' who was walking last in the line gets drowned as he finds himself/herself in a pit deeper than 5' and thus finally when the Arab reaches the other end of the river, he finds only he and his wife are present and the balance of the family has drowned.

The moral of the story is that Statisticians should never think 'Average' represents the given frequency distribution, in other words, Average doesn't give the complete picture of the distribution. Along with 'Average' we need to have 'Deviation' data too to take or make certain decision on the data you have with you.

GRASS on the other side is always GREENER!

Few students in all the colleges are of this category. They always feel that their faculty who is teaching them is not worthy enough and they would believe in notes given by a faculty of some other college. Sometimes I wonder and start thinking that maybe even I used to behave in the same manner as my students do. Why I have used this metaphor is that few students always feel that whatever they are being taught by their faculty is inferior to the notes supplied by their friends from someother college.

It so happened that one of my students Bharath of third semester came to me yesterday and said 'Sir, I have few notes on Change Management supplied by my friend who is studying in Kuvempu University, I will mail it to you'. Though I was initially irritated by this approach, I let him to do so. Today morning when I opened my Gmail inbox, there it was - the mail sent by Bharath. I saw many attachments with that mail. And I opened one of the attachment to check what type of notes he has received from his friend that he wants me to refer?. I was really shocked to see such type of stupid attachments. I sometimes dont understand the mentality of students. If that was what he expects from this subject, I can attach more than thousand such articles. Why doesn't he understand such silly things that those articles can easily be downloaded just by using 'Change Management' as Search word in GOOGLE. Why doesn't he understand that it is very difficult to filter whatever material is available in Google to suit our syllabus requirements and situation requirements. And even though I take lot of time and trouble in doing so i.e. in filtering the material, he doesn't care or bother either to listen to me in class or to refer to my slides which I have prepare painstakingly. It hurts me as teacher. And here Bharath is just an example, most of the students behave in the same manner. Had I downloaded the same material which his friends had sent, would he have felt happy? I doubt as whatever internal faculty does, they just don't believe.

Hope this sort of looking the grass on the other side decreases as the time passes......

Teaching Dilemma

For a change, I thought of handling a theory subject 'Change & Knowledge Management' for III Sem Students at Bapuji Institute of Management, Davangere which is affiliated to VTU.
Before starting the subject I had envisioned teaching theory would be no different from teaching some quantitative subject. But as I started teaching I felt highly uncomfortable in handling a theory subject as I had to think before I proceeded saying some concept. For ex. once I started teaching Personality, but found very difficult in carrying forward the discussion as I was struggling to get ideas to explain the attributes affecting personality and many other things related to the concept of Personality.
I even find as if there is sudden famine to examples which happen to come so easily when I am handling subjects related to Operations and Statistics.
Theory of Relativity can be easily explained with this, when I am teaching Quantitative subjects I feel 1 hr class like 1 min but when I started handling theory I have started feeling like 1 hr class equivalent to almost 10 hrs of time. Time just doesn't pass at all. Though I prepare for the class thoroughly, finally at the end of the class I feel short of topics that I have to teach for what I have prepared. I have started feeling as if any amount of preparation for a theory class is not enough. You should have atleast inventory of 4 classes preparation much ahead of time it is needed.
Hope as the time passes by, teaching this subject would become easy or else I will have to quit teaching this subject. And at the same time I am hoping that any new faculty handling this subject might join our college thus relieving me from this hell (tension). I am just praying for our new faculty to arrive, hope she arrives soon....

IIMKozhikode's FPM Program

IIMK has released the ad for its FPM programme for the academic year 2007-08. For more details click here.