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October 3, 2010
India's Company Classrooms Challenge 'Chalk and Talk'
Colleges
By Jeffrey R. Young
Mysore, India
The most high-tech classrooms in India are not at a university but at
a technology company's training facility.
The center's librarian and de facto tour guide, Biligiri Ranga, let me
wander onto the roof of the newest classroom building here to get a
sense of the campus's scale. The architecture is grand and
futuristic—one undulated building is designed to resemble origami,
another is a spherical geodesic dome like the one at Disney's Epcot
center, and another sports a four-story climbing wall on the outside.
The 94 buildings here include a department store, a beauty salon,
and a multiplex (in the dome).
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'Chalk and Talk' Colleges Are Challenged by India's Company ... http://chronicle.com/article/ChalkTalk-Colleges-Are/124777/?s...
The trainees, called "freshers" because they are fresh out of college,
frequently interrupted to ask questions, and most everyone dutifully
took notes and looked attentive. I sat in the back but did not see a
single screen open to Facebook or another diversion.
Later in the day I sat down with a group of freshers and found out
one reason they stay so alert. Every three to five days, they must
take an online test on the "module" of material they have just
learned. If they fail enough modules, they're fired. If they rack up
enough A's by the end of the 23-week training program, their salary
goes up (not a system colleges can easily mimic).
"We thought what we had was actually appropriate, but now that
we've come here and we've been trained and we see how technology
has been used, now we realized actually what we missed there," said
Parul Shlikla, one trainee. "More technology would have meant a lot
more knowledge."
Power Chalk
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"I have great eye contact, and I prove that I know my topic well" by
lecturing at the chalkboard, he said. He would switch to PowerPoint
if it added value, he said, but he was not going to use technology for
its own sake. (He did note that the department now administers
examinations online using the Moodle course-management system,
to prove the place isn't antitechnology.)
And though most of the students owned laptops, none had their
computers with them. Computers aren't banned, and the classrooms
have wifi, but taking notes about physics equations and quickly
writing down facts is easier with a paper notebook than a machine,
they said.
After all, the students are good at the current system too, which
Father Mathew said sometimes involves asking them to memorize a
host of facts to be tested on. (Then he added that just using
PowerPoint does not necessarily lead to better teaching.) "What I'm
saying is, it takes a little time," he concluded.
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And the classrooms were not as wired as they were a year ago.
Because some students were chatting online or goofing off, the
center now shuts off Internet access to the buildings during class, er,
working hours.
"We would very much like for the education system to fill in the
gaps," he said.
It turns out, how wired the classrooms are is not the point—the style
of teaching is much slower to change than the gear in the rooms.
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