The new School of Liberal Arts and Basic Sciences (SLABS) at SRM University, Andhra Pradesh, launched a 4-day pedagogy workshop (May 7th-10th) on best teaching practices followed in similar programs at Columbia University, NY and the University of California, Berkeley. The workshop was led by Professor Janaki Bakhle at UC. Berkeley, Professor Valentine Daniel at Columbia University, and Mr. Nalin Bakhle from Toronto. Professor Ani Adhikari will end the 4-day workshop with a webinar on “Big Data and Data Sciences”.
The focal point of the workshop was to discuss how the “foundation” courses in the SLABS program have been taught in the past. The cornerstone of the teaching style was to essentially allow the students plenty of time for in-class open discussion and debates on several topics including nuclear energy, the essence of Plato’s classic book “Republic”, the written styles of old Tamil Sangam poetry, the precision and the brilliance required to convert a written screen play into a popular movie. Faculty from SRM participated actively in the workshop-a few of them discussed their teaching styles in scientific topics such as the Manhattan project and the human Circadian clock- the existence of a fundamental relationship between the external clock (night and day, for example) and the internal clock present in living species. Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of the workshop was to see faculty engaged with both the workshop leaders and their fellow-colleagues in ways that had hitherto not been witnessed on campus.
About:
- Prof. Janaki Bakhle – http://history.berkeley.
edu/people/janaki-bakhle - Prof. Valentine Daniel – https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Valentine_Daniel / https://www.linkedin.com/in/ valentine-daniel-279b39a/ - Prof. Ani Adhikari – https://www.stat.berkeley.
edu/~ani/
