Gyalpozhing College of Information Technology in Monggar has introduced two new programmes to its list of courses from this year.
The college now offers Bachelor of Science (BSc.) in Computer Science and Bachelor of Science in Information Technology along with the bachelor of computer application which was started when the college opened in 2017. While the BSc. IT is an entirely new programme, the BSc. Computer Science course has been moved from Sherubtse College in Trashigang.
The duration of the BSc. Computer Science programme at Gyalposhing College will now be four years instead of three as in the past. Currently, there are forty-one students pursuing this undergraduate programme. Meanwhile the BSc. IT is an entirely new programme started this year. The college admitted sixty-six students under this programme.
“BSc. IT, the graduates are being targeted to become a programmer and they will be more into gearing towards programming skills. And then when it comes to BSc. Computer Science programme, they will be a little bit into theory basis courses. They will be able to contribute towards the computer system analyst; software project manager and they will be able to do computer system designs,” said Tshering, Dean of Academic Affairs, Gyalposhing College of Information Technology, Monggar.
The management says the college has also been well equipped with all the needed resources to start the new programmes. Although Gyalpozhing College has a different teaching method from other institutes called learning by doing, the college couldn’t apply this method to the two new programmes. This teaching approach is a nonconventional method, which requires more effort from students to develop their own skills and knowledge.
“Unfortunately for this first cohort, the first semester was not able to start with this pedagogy because the University quality control division has given few more time to improve the materials because since this is new to the university system. So the material that we have proposed has been not up to the mark of university quality control division,” He added.
He further added that the college will present the materials on learning by doing by December this year. And if the university approves it, the college is expected to adopt the learning by doing teaching approach with BSc. IT from February next year. Meanwhile, the BSc. Computer Science programme will be taught in the conventional way as instructed by the Royal University of Bhutan. The college currently has more than two hundred fifty students and twelve teaching staff.