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Electronic Systems Thinking (and Circuits)

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  Electronic Systems Thinking (and Circuits) IIT Madras decided to launch the Bachelor of Science in Electronic Systems(BS-ES), in 2023, following a fairly successful launch of BS in Data Science (DS) in 2020. This is a Web-Enabled programme where students access lecture material remotely but appear for exams and evaluations in person at exam centers across the country, which helps control the quality of the degree. I am excited to be part of such ambitious thoughts and giant leaps that an educational institute looks to make every now and then. The BS-DS programme had enough evidence to suggest that students can learn theory quite well. What about the labs? Can labs be conducted remotely but evaluated in person? Can electronics be taught in such a mode? While there are numerous such challenges to surmount for an ambitious idea like this to succeed, they also present opportunities to try things out differently. A chance to experiment.  The Curriculum: The first opportunity was ...
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Learning Jigsaws

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    Learning Jigsaws "Onus of making lectures more interesting is on the teacher. What about the onus of learning?" I am an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Madras. I joined in 2016 and have taught multiple courses to different class strengths varying from a low 20, all the way to 150+. I am very passionate about teaching and that should do for now. I decided to embark on writing this article to share my thoughts on teaching and learning. After all, of what use is teaching if learning cannot happen at the other end? Teaching: The end goal of teaching is to ensure that students learn and that is precisely why pedagogy experts  emphasize on the the role of "learning" objectives and not "teaching" objectives. Standing and simply delivering an hour long lecture will not ensure that students learn the material. Feedback plays an important role in this process and hence teachers are advised to partition their material into s...
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