Some issues

Dear All

There are more than one hundred students in my class. They do not even get seats to sit comfortably. The latecomers have to either stand up or share the seat with other friends. There are many issues in such a condition. First, there is no discussion in the classroom. Second, students do not ask question to the teacher i.e. teaching becomes lecture-dominated. Third, students are not motivated to explore more resources rather they solely rely on teachers. These are the general issues for the whole class I teach. Moreover, they do not have access to technology.

As I have mentioned in the week 2, there are 20 students (but some of them are not regular) who are starting their research work for their thesis from this month under my guidance (This is the group for which I am thinking to use new technology).

I have to teach them how to carry out a research starting from finding out an area of research to preparing a bibliography. There are some fundamental issues for these students. First, they always ask me to provide them a research topic. They say, "Sir, give us a topic for my research work." In response, I suggest them to go through literature and find the research problems. Again, they say, "Sir, please provide us books." This indicates that students lack recourses to begin their research.

Likewise, they are not able to find out the relevant literature to their topic. And they also lack the knowledge of reviewing the literature.

Another important issue is they do not know how to put the literature consulted in the list of the reference. Moreover, most of them do not have access to technology. Some of them have e-mails and I have already encouraged others to create an e-mail for the better learning during their research work.

Sincerely yours
Prem