To enable the realisation of the Royal Decree on education reform and enhance the quality of education in the country, the Gyalpozhing College of Information Technology launched a new teaching approach, ‘learning by doing’ for the Bachelor of Science in Information Technology programme in July last year. Over a span of nine months, the new pedagogy, which is a shift from teaching to the learning paradigm, has proven effective for both the students and tutors.
The new teaching pedagogy of ‘learning by doing’ emphasises the ‘teach less learn more’ model which is about teaching better, to engage learners and prepare them for life, rather than teaching more, for tests and examinations. “In conventional method student has a choice whether they want to attend and concentrate or not but in this learning by doing pedagogy student has to attend and do it by themselves individually. There is no room for them to skip or make a choice of not attending the learning session. So this is like an individual-centric with the learner. Therefore, the tutor plays a secondary role in learning and does the evaluation,” said Tshering, the college’s dean of academic affairs.
He also said that the new approach allows students to learn more as they have to focus on only one module in a month. “In this pedagogy, we are also experimenting that the students need to learn only one module or a subject in a month and then we do all the activities related to this subject. For example, if the students are learning database, they will study database for the whole month- seminar, teaching-learning, assessments and guest lectures will be conducted and they will focus on one module for the entire month. This leaves no room for disturbance by other modules.”
“In the traditional model of learning, we have to focus on more than one module in a month which is stressful for both the students and tutors. But having to focus on one module each month is better for the students- we can concentrate better on it. By the end of the month, we are fully prepared for the semester-end examination,” added Nima, a student.
When it was first launched, the students even appealed to the college management to switch to the conventional teaching approach as they were not able to cope with the new method. However, it has gradually proven effective. Today, the college management has also divided the students of Bachelor of Science in Information Technology into four sections to allow effective learning under the new teaching approach.
“Since we were used to the traditional pedagogy from pre-primary till class twelve, we found it quite hard to cope with ‘learning by doing’ pedagogy. We don’t get much free time like other students since most of the activities in the new approach take all our time. So we had a problem coping with the daily lectures since we had to learn a new topic every day for a certain period of time for a certain module. So we had a few problems during the initial stage but then slowly we began to cope with it,” said Kuenley Tshewang Dendup, a student.
“We have our own computer assigned on our own. So we work through a virtual learning platform. In that, we get the daily assignment, we need to do that assignment and submit it by midnight. So basically the teacher comes to the class but doesn’t teach. The teacher just sits there and monitor us. If we have any difficulties we need to ask the teacher or our friends,” added Pema Chophel.
Currently, there are 59 students studying for Bachelor of Science in Information Technology.
Established in 2017, Gyalpozhing College of Information Technology offers three different programmes- Bachelor of Computer Application, Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Bachelor of Science in Information Technology.
Sonam Tshering, Monggar
