The first exams at IIML start today. By practice, exams, no matter how good or bad you are going to do in them, do not arise much of anxiety now. The simple proof is that I am sitting here making this posting, while much remains to be mugged up in the course called "Legal Aspects of Management" :-)

But that is the reason why I was compelled to write this post expressing my disappointment in the teaching and evaluation process. There were all these tall claims of the education here being "different" from what we are accustomed to till now. More of case studies, no cramming up before exams and getting good marks blah blah. My last hope of getting anything like this were crushed when our BIO (Behaviour In Organizations) instructor declared that the exam would not be open book and that if a definition is asked you must give the standard definition that is given in the book. This is to ensure that you have read the text!! What a way to ensure that one has read the text. If the classes were little more discussion oriented, where you can not survive without having read the text, there would have been some motivation for reading. If in the classes there have to be the lectures blurting out whatever is there in the textbook, who would feel motivated to read. A person who has not read the textbook is as sleepy in the class as one who has read it.

For me, I regret having read the textbook whenever I did, because the most effective way to recall the definitions "in their standard form" is to cram them up before exams...

Only faint hope is that possibly its just the case with first term, but as much as I have seen the place, I will not bet high on it.

Categories: IIML, Cribbings