Delhi University (DU) has notified norms increasing the size of classes, tutorials and lab batches, leaving faculty members worried about the quality of learning. A notification issued by DU registrar Vikash Gupta on November 11 raises the number of students to be accommodated in an undergraduate class to 60 from 40. A tutorial at the undergraduate level will have 30 students.
At present, a tutorial for honours students has 8 to 10 students and that for non-honours courses has 12 to 15 students. The size of each lab class for honours and non-honours students at the undergraduate level has been increased from 15 to 25 students.
At the postgraduate level, the class size will be 50 students while a tutorial will have 25 students and a lab class 15 to 20 students. There is no specific norm for postgraduate classes at present. The university has also issued a notification about work hours that says every faculty member at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels is expected to work a minimum of 40 hours a week.
This includes 16 hours of direct teaching-learning for assistant professors and associate professors and 14 hours for professors. The DU Teachers Association (DUTA), the official teachers’ body, said academic matters could not be unilaterally decided by the university administration. “The two notifications must be withdrawn immediately as they were not passed by the Academic Council and the Executive Council of the University of Delhi,” DUTA said in a statement.
The notifications will drastically affect the academic environment as well as the teaching-learning process, it said. The increased teachers:taught ratio will have a negative fallout, the statement added. Prof. Vijaya Venkatraman, a faculty member associated with the Democratic Teachers’ Front, said the workload norms were being implemented in colleges but extending these to the postgraduate level would dilute the quality of learning.
“At the PG level, there are a lot of specialisations. Within the same subject, there are specialists in different areas. For example, in the language department, some have specialisation in linguistics, some may be specialists in translation and so on,” Venkatraman said.
At this level, class hours should be fixed by need, and not set at 14 or 16 hours, Venkatraman said, adding that such stipulations would lead to generalisation and loss of precision in teaching. Abha Dev Habib, a faculty member of Miranda House College, said the learning outcome-based curriculum framework (LoCF) of the UGC had earlier allowed smaller tutorial sizes.
“Tutorial is a small group teaching and all documents of the LoCF specially mentioned that tutorials should be for a group of 8-10 students. LoCF coursework also mentioned that for honours courses, the practical group size should be of 12 students. Setting aside all these and not waiting to discuss such an important issue in the Academic Council, the registrar issues a notice,” she wrote on Facebook.