Liberal arts programmes have teachers ‘re-learning’ how to teach

NEW DELHI: The liberal arts universities are not just about flexible structures and a plethora of subject choices, the method of teaching and learning is also different. The pedagogy adopted is in the form of workshops, co-teaching and collaboration with smaller class sizes than traditional ones. Teachers say it involves “rigorous preparation” and learning to be a “facilitator” rather than a teacher.

For teachers who move from traditional universities, teaching a class of students with diverse academic backgrounds is a novel experience. Plus, they get to develop their own courses.

“When I have students from varied disciplinary backgrounds in my classroom, the learning space evolves into an interactive and interdisciplinary educational setting. It is not a didactic space, as the learning is based not just on what an educator brings to class, but also on conversations with peers. As an educator in a liberal arts learning space, one has to be extremely open to being questioned and critiqued on the perspective and possibly information being shared in a classroom. At SSLA, we believe that we are facilitators and not just teachers,” explained Shweta Sinha Deshpande, Director and Associate Professor at Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts (SSLA) , Symbiosis International University.

Teachers’ preparation, openness

Deshpande has a PhD in Archaeology. Before joining SSLA in 2011, she taught history at Deccan College, Pune, and had graduated from Miranda House, Delhi University – both traditional, highly-regarded institutions.

She added, “As an educator, one needs to be on their toes. One needs to be well aware. You should be able to see not just your own discipline as the most important part of an education programme, but also be able to see how one’s own discipline and other disciplines connect, to be able to help students see the interconnected reality that we live in to be able to truly find solutions and problem-solve .”

Venugopal Maddipatti, dean in-charge at the School of Design at Dr. BR Ambedkar University, Delhi (AUD), said that teaching a diverse set of students means extensive preparation. Prior to joining AUD, Maddipatti was teaching housing at University School of Architecture and Planning (USAP) at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi.

“Teaching at AUD requires very rigorous preparation. You can’t wing it. In a class when we are talking about social artefacts, you can’t be mystical. It actually involves reading a lot and learning the social sciences with colleagues,” said Madipatti who teaches mostly master’s students enrolled in MDes Social Design course at the university. His academic background is also diverse. He completed his bachelors at the School of Architecture and Planning (SPA). His masters and PhD degree are in art history, earned at the University of Minnesota.

Some describe the experience of teaching in a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary environment as donning the hat of a “mentor”.

Suchismita Chattopadhyay, assistant professor at the School of Liberal Studies, BML Munjal University, said: “Teaching at a multidisciplinary university with flexible academic pathways requires a dynamic and adaptive approach. Faculty must be prepared to support a diverse student body with varied interests, encouraging interdisciplinary exploration and providing personalised guidance. In this kind of university, multiple options exist for students; however, oftentimes, we observe young students find it difficult to make decisions, and faculty here also actively mentor students so that they can avoid a choice paralysis. This mentorship is particularly important for students to become self-learners and decision-makers for their future.”

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Liberal Arts: New pedagogy

Movies, documentaries, literary works as teaching aids for inciting discussions, adopting a workshop mode of learning and field trips among others are all part of the educational space at most liberal arts universities.

“If we talk of the access our young students have in terms of information, today there is an information overload. The idea of education therefore is not just providing information but to cull that information and see what it is trying to tell you, factually be able to delineate a fact from an opinion, and understand the perspectives. For this, faculty members sometimes need to be trained and nurtured to adapt to a Liberal Arts classroom,” said Deshpande.

So, at SSLA teachers have something called a “pedagogical round-table”. They meet twice a month where faculty members meet to discuss and learn from each other.

“The Pedagogical Round-table focuses on sharing classroom experiences, pedagogical tools, assignments, practices, and challenges as a mechanism for peer interaction and learning from one another. The other is called ‘research colloquium’. While teaching is important, research is equally important for a higher education institution, and the colloquium therefore focuses on the dissemination of research being undertaken by faculty members. This helps discuss ongoing work, receive feedback, and serve as a space to practise talking about nascent research. This is a space open for our full-time faculty, visiting members and international collaborators. Our teachers are encouraged to undertake research and bring it into their teachings where possible and applicable,” added Deshpande.

While at BML Munjal University the different pedagogies adopted include co-teaching, teaching inquiry-based learning, flipped classrooms, and immersive learning along with lecture and seminar-oriented pedagogies.

“We also follow a continuous evaluation system. Students from conventional school systems in their first year find this transition challenging. In courses like India and Environment, we have adopted a flipped classroom approach, where students take charge of a particular class to introduce new topics through their research. However, we have found that students are thinking of this exercise like a project and presenting it just like any other presentation instead of taking charge of the class.

“To encourage students and make them comfortable, the faculty takes the back seat and restrains any kind of intervention during the session. Slowly, the focus of the class shifts toward the ‘teacher of the day’ instead of the course instructor,” said Kalpita Bhar Paul, assistant professor and assistant dean of School of Liberal Studies, BML Munjal University.

For some foundation courses Munjal University teachers have adopted a workshop mode of course. In one of the classes Paul and Chattopadhyay even adopted co-teaching, following which students developed podcasts, wrote a series of short assignments and worked on a long assignment on a topic of their choice.

“In some of the foundation courses like academic writing, learning happens through writing and peer review of assignments and so on. For instance, in one of our classes, we got the students themselves to design a conceptual question for an assignment combining two disparate readings, which would not elicit a mere summary of either readings. Such pedagogical methods also enable the students to see how we as instructors also think and assign questions,” said Chattopadhyay.

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Liberal Arts: Developing courses

Liberal arts universities also typically allow teachers to develop their own courses that are changed and upgraded frequently, rather than thrust a fixed syllabus upon students.

Santosh Singh, dean school of liberal studies, AUD said: “I did my master’s and PhD at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and even taught at Panjab University before joining AUD. It was a totally different experience and it was an entire process of re-learning for me also. Addressing a diverse set of students made the teaching journey exciting and to engage them well and cater to each student, I even developed my own courses”.

Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi, dean at Krea University’s School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences (SIAS) concurred. “As opposed to 99% of other institutions in India, we always get the autonomy as faculty members to design their own process to conduct examinations, come up with new courses, which will be incorporated into the catalogue, quickly.” Krea launched its undergraduate liberal arts programmes in 2019.