Disclaimer : Contents in the blog are strictly based on my opinions and are not meant to offend anyone. You are most welcome to agree or disagree on any of the points. Also please ignore the grammar mistakes, if any.
No
No guys, I am not calling someone, but yes this is what you hear the most in
some of the lectures.
Let
me first introduce myself. I am a PGDM student of a new born IIM.
So
as most of you know that in a B-School, marks are segregated into various portions.
There are marks for class participation, quizzes, assignments, project, mid
term, end term, (how you sit, how you sleep, :P) etc etc. This clearly shows
the greatness of faculties. No no, its not that teachers don’t load me with
assignments or like me more than others (which they actually do :P) but we have
the advantage to screw some portions which won’t have much effect on our GPA.
So,
why I mentioned some of the classes. The reason is that lectures of those
faculties who only provide 5-10% weightage to class participation, you won’t
hear a word, except from some bright students (like me :P). But there are faculties
who allocate 30-40% weightage to class participation and sometimes they are
accompanied by some assistant to mark the name of students. Now the show
begins.
So,
let’s see what are the types of participation one can see in such lectures.
Let’s
begin with a positive note. There are some students who actually don’t care
what weightage the faculty has given to class participation. For them, each
class is similar to the other. They will prepare well before attending the
class and will properly listen to the faculty and put forward their arguments
or ask valid and interesting questions. This also enhances the learning of the
whole batch. But some of the bright students are so much obsessed by the grades
that they overparticipate (new term coined by me :P), which means that even if
Professor is writing let’s say 120 X 5, they will quickly spit out the answer
(and Professor is like Thank God, I didn’t know it :P).
Some
students generally need a push to get things done. The increased weightage
plays this role. These students also come prepared and add value to the lecture
by giving valid points. But they do the preparation only for this class not the
others. They have the potential but do not utilize it properly.
Now
here comes a very interesting set of people. These type of students will never
prepare for the class but they want nice grades. In this group, everyone wants
to speak. Yes, I am focusing on the word “SPEAK” because they just want to open
their mouth, no matter whether it is related to the topic or not. Sometimes
they themselves don’t know what they want to say (and in this case even God also doesn’t know :P), but they want to
say something so that they can get some points. These people are not only
annoying but also waste the time of the whole class. The irony is that marking
the student is very much numeric in nature. For e.g., okay that student raised
his hand, mark him irrespective of the fact whether he actually knows something
or not. Some of these students say exactly what other person has just said and
is marked by the assistant.
One
common thing to note about above three types is : “Sir Sir Sir Sir Sir, please
Sir please”. You will feel that as if the whole class is full of Newton and
Edison.
But,
there is one unique category who regularly participate in every class but do
not run for marks. These are people with very high mentality which is nice. But
due to this high mentality, they feel that raising their hands and screaming
“Sir Sir” is against their values and they stop participating. I absolutely
respect their feelings but on the same hand I would also like to say that if
they involve themselves in class participation, the whole batch can learn
something new. So raise points not for marks but for yourself and your batch.
And
now comes the most important point. For faculty, the purpose of giving
weightage to class participation is to involve everyone in the discussion. But
as we have already seen what it leads to, is it really helping. The question is
why the faculty is offering weightage to class participation. I can bet on my
bottom dollar that even if faculty doesn’t allocate any grades for class
participation, there will still be 5 to 10 students who will participate
actively and make the discussion fruitful. Coercing someone by showing them the
stick of grades may make them participate at that time but it actually won’t
help them.
At
the end, I would like to draw an analogy with what I said in the above
paragraph. Similar to this, companies also have their target market and they
completely focus on them. They don’t target the entire market. Many a times, it
has happened that company targeting each and every one failed to do so
(Marketing Gyan :P).
Thank You
Rishabh Bhardwaj
PGDM 2013-15
IIM
