I really like all of the points you made.

I am not much familier with IIT……. I complete B-Tech in electronics from CUSAT university….. In our syllabus nearly 50 papers are there…….. for 4 years ……………… and assignments …. series tests…. all makes student a machine….

I think same think happens in IIT…………
PROCESS OF LEARNING DO NOT TAKES PLACE AFTER JEE…………
” STOP STUDYING START LEARNING”…………..

I THINK ELECTRONICS & COMM. BRANCH NEED ONLY 6 THEORY PAPERS
1 BASIC ELECTRONICS , ELECTRONICS CIRCUITS
2 NETWORK THEORY
3 DIGITAL ELECTRONICS+ CONCEPT OF MICROPROCESSOR
4 SIGNAL AND SYSTEMS
5 COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS AND……….
6 ENGINEERING MATHEMATICS….

ASSIGNMENT , SERIES EXAMS…….APPLIED THEORY PAPERS CAN ADD AS
BONUS PAPERS…………NO….PASS MARK …….THEN STUDENTS CAN CONCENTRATE ON LEARNING……….

PUTTING MORE TIME IN LABORATORY IS IMPORTANT

In first year studying about all branches of engineering do not help………………………………………

INSTEAD OF THAT……….
2 PAPERS …..

1 HISTORY OF SCIENCE & ENGINEERING(OVERVIEW OF EVERY BRANCH)
2TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION

WE can add BASIC ELECTRONICS & NETWORK THEORY IN FIRST YEAR………..
……….WORK SHOP IS COMPLETE WASTE…………… INSTEAD OF THAT STUDENT FAMILIER WITH MAIN PARTS OF ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENTS LIKE T.V. ,RADIO , ………….. for electronics student………………………

change the syllabus STOP STUDYING START LEARNING…………

And then, two further points: (i) IITs (like MIT, and now-a-days also COEP—my UG college) use relative grading (ii) Students are smart enough to have already downloaded solution manuals for any book (LOL)

However, on the more serious side, the reason my tone was critical is also the following.

Firstly, I have found, over three decades, that IITians (i.e. students, esp. UG ones) almost always as a rule exaggerate the quality of their educational/environmental inputs. Secondly, I also have found that IIT professors themselves often (though not always) seem to carry this idea that the tougher a material they can throw at students, the better the pedagogy. This trait is also found with professors in many US universities, even at the UG level, but most prominently, at the PG level.

It is a trait I hated as a student, and continue to hate even today. I have done so even at the risk of putting my professional teaching career in jeopardy. I mean it. Recently, when I was asked what book I would use to teach FEM to UG students, I flatly replied: primarily Logan, to be supplemented with Cook. The expected answer was: Zienkiewicz. I could see the interviewer’s face betray a mild form of rebuke (which he did not express). (He came from an IIT.) Since you are not likely to know about FEM, let me give you an approximate parallel—and I emphasize it’s approximate. What I said I would use was: Resnick & Halliday. The expected answer was: Feynman, plus portions from Landau and Lipfshitz (not as a reference, but as a direct text-book).

None of what I say is meant to invalidate the point that, as far UG studies goes, IIT education could, possibly, be better than that at MIT. But it’s a different point from what book to have as texts. Indeed, I could argue that some of my UG education at COEP was better than that at IIT. (I did argue thus, fairly successfully, with someone decades ago—with a topper at an IIT who now teaches there.)

Since I find myself a bit in the “recollection” mode, let me share a bit more. (You won’t have the context in which to put my comment here, but please bear with me.) I have never seen any UG course in Metallurgy directly prescribe the ASM Metals Handbook as the primary text. (Even back then, it came in 10+ volumes, with each volume being thousands of pages long). But then, the expectations kept of the student were different. And so was the preceding sequence. Our sequence began gradually, with standard texts in II and III year. Then, in the IV year, we were directly thrown at the Handbooks. The expectation was not that the student could digest all of that material—which was a condensation of the practical art of engineering. The expectation was: the student should know how to read through that voluminous material, understand and absorb certain basic threads of reasoning, and then exhibit similar reasoning process to a new case study at the time of examination. (There also were questions on principles, about 50% weightage.) Even if the student’s final answer turned out to be incorrect, but the reasoning was good, he would be given good marks. (We had absolute marks, not directly relative grades. (You could make a case that absolute marks also have a component of relativization, but the point is it is indirect.)) The reason for giving good marks in such a case was this: In methods engineering, we were told, you can expect to have a budget of lakhs of rupees and at least a few months before you finalize your design. That’s ample time for you to correct your not-so-good design decisions—provided you have what it takes to analyze a complex situation, on your own.

In the final analysis, it is not really the material that you refer to that matters, not the prescribed text, but what you get out of it—and how.

And, for the student to get maximum possible out of his limited time at the college/institute/university, the teacher has to ensure, that there is a proper hierarchical development of the subject matter, supplying the appropriate context, explanations, implications, entailments, applications at each step. At this last count, I find that most of the revered texts have left me unsatisfied to some or great degree. For learning for the first time, it is better, I have found, to rely on the more common-sense based books like Resnick & Halliday rather than on the much revered Feynman—no matter what the IIT/MIT professors pick out. On that line, the choice of Griffiths is intermediate, but Jackson would have been despicable (for a freshman course).

Just one more, and final point! (The light you have finally begun to see is emphatically not an oncoming train.)

I happen to have to learn a lot of new material that never was a part of my formal education. So, I sense this shortcoming of the modern text very acutely. Namely, that they are too long. An average modern American text is at least 500 pages long, and 800 pages long texts is increasingly becoming the norm. Yet, most texts invariably fall short on all of these counts: proper hierarchical development (e.g. covering work and energy before momentum conservation), explanation (esp. supplying a brief historical context) and completeness count. You have to consult at least 2–3 books before you get the logically complete picture anyway. If so, I wonder, why write at such a length? Why can’t we have texts that are just 200 pages long, at the most 300 pages? Such texts have been written, but infrequently.

Let me leave it at that. You have to get out of the tunnel too! I guess the most important point I wanted to make was that prescribing tougher or more advanced texts for a course does not imply anything whatsoever towards the state of the student’s knowledge at the end of the course. On the other hand, the choice almost always generates poor pedagogy all in all. Though I didn’t touch on it, given the lack of hierarchically well-ordered texts, a much better methodology seems to be that of the (n+1)th course: You get to *really* know the n-th course only when you do the (n+1)th course. Given the popularity of this observation (which implies the spiral view of knowledge), to try to subject students at an unrealistic height right at the n-th course seems bad pedagogy.