In my previous post I had requested a few, whom I was fortunate to interact with earlier, to compare their US experience with Indian education system. I had asked them some specific questions, and their feedback.
In this post I will compile and analyse their answers to three questions in the questionnaire.
1) did you take any courses that were similar to those in India? if so, can you compare what changed for better (and worse, of course).
[This was to compare two institutions directly, wherever possible]
My summary : In a US university, depth is valued more than breadth, so focus on a few fundamentals. Fundamentals are valued over ability to remember and calculate. There is a lot more rigor and students are given a lot of homework, which they take seriously unlike in India. There are also programming (MatLab etc.) exercises; laboratory projects; research papers to read/ work out; and research-related lab work to complement class-room learning.
2) were there any other courses (Logic or Astronomy) which you wish you had encountered before? perhaps, then you would remove some other courses from Indian curriculum, which ones?
[This is to understand what students desire in terms of background/ basic courses]
My summary : Rather than specific courses, what is (rightly, in my opinion) demanded is flexibility to choose from courses at an early stage. Also, the choice should be from a wider pool of courses, which allows for all branches to interconnect. Let the student decide which courses s/he wants to do. Fundamental courses in Math give a solid background, but only when taught with real-life examples, perhaps we should make teachers collaborate in a classroom. Plus, there should be arts courses, which would make it all-round development, of course given capable teachers (not making the director teach literature course, zilch of a background in that).
3) did you find any course very much enjoyable in your stay? which ones, and why? of course you will like some topics more than others, but it is the "learning experience" from a course that counts for me.
[This is to understand what does a course contain to make it students' favorite]
My summary : In US, a teacher would make students work with real-life examples: learning something, construct it yourself (learning 'amplifiers', make one). This means quality teaching, only a skilled teacher knows what to add to the course, and what activities to be carried out in what measure. Also, such a teacher would have to be active researcher to get the feel of the latest, esp. given the quick changes in "state of the art" of engineering and sciences.
Here are students' responses for you to read directly.
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1) did you take any courses that were similar to those in India? if so, can you compare what changed for better (and worse, of course).
[This was to compare two institutions directly, wherever possible]
My summary : In a US university, depth is valued more than breadth, so focus on a few fundamentals. Fundamentals are valued over ability to remember and calculate. There is a lot more rigor and students are given a lot of homework, which they take seriously unlike in India. There are also programming (MatLab etc.) exercises; laboratory projects; research papers to read/ work out; and research-related lab work to complement class-room learning.
My summary : In a US university, depth is valued more than breadth, so focus on a few fundamentals. Fundamentals are valued over ability to remember and calculate. There is a lot more rigor and students are given a lot of homework, which they take seriously unlike in India. There are also programming (MatLab etc.) exercises; laboratory projects; research papers to read/ work out; and research-related lab work to complement class-room learning.
----AN----
I took Introduction to Probability Theory (which is a 500 level course), which was similar to the Probability and Statistics Course that I took in India. The major difference was breadth v/s depth. I'd say (in India) we covered a wider range of material in the course, but mainly without mathematical proofs. On the other hand, in the course here, relatively less material was covered topic-wise, but whatever was covered, was covered completely, with proofs for each relevant theorem
---NI---
in the first sem, I was a bit bull-headed, and I did not take courses which I though I had covered. However, now I realize that a course here is probably twice as much worth as one in India. from the point of view of using softwares.
There is a lot more emphasis on assignments which need a significant amount of work/effort/thinking. There is also probably a lot more industry relevance. I think syllabi here are updated more frequently here, and that makes a lot of difference. This semester I am taking a undergrad course which will teach me formally the things that I tried out in my projects in India. Formal knowledge makes a significant difference to the effort required to reach project goals, I believe.
--- NC ---
Some of the courses that I took in DSP and Communications involved some matter that had been taught in India too. The major difference that I observed was the stress on mathematical rigor, which was also reflected in the difficulty level of the problems assigned for HW. Further, the focus was on gaining a clear understanding of the fundamentals, and learning was facilitated through simulation examples via MATLAB, which made the subject more interesting.
--- AD ---
I have taken a number of courses here that are similar to India. I found that here the professors give more importance to strongly nailing in the fundamental concepts. This method is complemented by a good amount of homework and laboratory work that is meant to help us understand the concepts better. I feel that I have learned a lot more from the courses here than I did in India.
I was TA of an undergraduate course which was the equivalent of Digital Design and Computer Architecture in India. From what I know
a) The computer architecture part was not given any focus / importance in India. It is taught very thoroughly here, the examinations even had questions involving the redesign of the micro architecture of a basic pipeline as per a new instruction set specified by the professor and other involving choosing cache sizes for a specific application. In India, we only vaguely touched upon pipelines and caches as mere concepts.
b) In India, the practicals for the course ( basic VHDL programming, hooking up simple logic circuits on bread boards etc) was a part of the coursework. At this university, there are no lab sessions or programming assignments for the course at all. All of the practical aspects have been bundled into a separate course which may or may not be taken in another sem.
--- IM ---
I have taken a similar networking class to what we had in India. There we had mostly theoretical questions based on it. But in US we had a couple of projects where we could practically implement what we are learning. This is one of the major things that is lacking in our education. We read a book, ace the exam and get an A and an year later we dont really remember the basics if we do not go into that field anymore.
--- KA---
I took two courses very similar to India. PHY123 (commonly called the Art of Electronics, taught by Paul Horowitz and Tom Hayes) similar to MT1, ES1 and Advanced VLSI Design, similar to Analog and Digital VLSI Design (ADVD). Here are some thoughts:
PHY123: The course was simply outstanding! The first hour of the course was spent in discussing a chapter from Paul's book (Art of Electronics) and the rest 4-5 hours (yes!) working in the lab. The course did not require students to write lab reports (which was simply great, because according to me lab reports don't serve much purpose except for learning how to copy) but the HWs given at the end of each class covered all that was done in the lab. Hence one HAD to do the labs to get the HW questions right. Of course, the HW questions were novel and were generated over years (the course has been running for more than 30 years.) The course is immensely popular at MIT and the class was divided half and half between MIT and Harvard. The main point about the course which cannot be stressed more is the fact that it was FUN. I believe this is what we lack when we do courses in India; they are rote. You get a book, see what has to be done in the lab and do it. While here, you play with circuits, there are demonstrations (like how to send sound using just an LED and decode and play it on a speaker, etc) already prepared by the Professors before the students enter the classroom. The handouts/quizzes are handed on a mini-train which travels on the table and reaches every student, and so on. These might sound naive, but I've SEEN these things work. After every 20mins in the first hour, students were given a 5 min break since the attention span of a human averages over there, and so on. I could go on writing about the course in fact! :)
Advanced VLSI Design: The course was an eyeopener. Topics were taught from scratch, and students were not assumed to know anything. Very intensive classes too, with HWs from book, but otherwise information (updated!) was given. VLSI is an ever changing field, and instead of sticking to a book, students were made to read papers, comment on them etc. Each week an assignment was given which started from scratch design and culminated in students learning extensive use of Cadence softwares (which is EXTREMELY necessary for EE grads and not taught in India.)
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2) were there any other courses (Logic or Astronomy) which you wish you had encountered before? perhaps, then you would remove some other courses from India curriculum, which ones?
My summary : Rather than specific courses, what is (rightly, in my opinion) demanded is flexibility to choose from courses at an early stage. Also, the choice should be from a wider pool of courses, which allows for all branches to interconnect. Let the student decide which courses s/he wants to do. Fundamental courses in Math give a solid background, but only when taught with real-life examples, perhaps we should make teachers collaborate in a classroom. Plus, there should be arts courses, which would make it all-round development, of course given capable teachers (not making the director teach literature course, zilch of a background in that).
--- AN---
If I were given the choice, I might consider removing Mechanics of Solids for Electrical Engineers, and perhaps replace it with a course teaching Object Oriented Programming, perhaps through Python. One thing you find here is that you're almost expected to know OOP (or rather, it isn't a minus point if you don't, but a big plus if you do...you can get started on projects etc. much more quickly if you know C++ or Java)
--- NI---
One thing I would encourage in India is the flexibilities offered here. It is not important whether the degree name is EnI or EEE, I should be allowed to do more courses of my interest rather than all the CDCs. Maybe there can be different 'tracks' like Control Systems, Systems, Signal Processing etc. You get the idea.. The Maths courses that India has - and it has a lot - are really helpful in providing background [Asgekar: "And I always found Math classrooms empty"]
--- NC ---
Further, I also wish that I had done a more rigorous course on random signals/random processes. It was covered in 1 chapter in the Communication Systems course in India. but the material was covered very quickly, I believe it has enough content to merit a separate course.
Also, I know it is difficult to increase the flexibility, but I think it would help if the Compulsory Discipline Courses in India had a wider scope and students could choose from a pool of courses, as against the compulsory 8 courses that we had to do in our 3rd year. In my case, I would have rather done a course on Random Signals than, say, Power Electronics or VLSI Design.
--- AD ---
Actually, I think the Indian curriculum was very good and I wouldn't drop any courses from it. The method of tackling the courses is what needs to be changed a little bit. I did feel it would have been useful to include Operating Systems course in the ECE required course work.
--- OP---
There are many interesting courses to choose from at universities in U.S.A. Though I wondered sometimes why Indian Univ had a limited choice of courses, I felt that the idea may not be practical considering both the smaller number of students and the fewer degrees offered. We only had Engineering and Sciences as the programs offered. On the other hand, universities here offer hundreds of degrees ranging from Archeology to Creative Writing to Law. Hence any course would find a good number of students wanting to take it, this may not be the case in India.
--- IM ---
I am extremely unhappy about the number of electives that are offered in India. Undergrad is a time for people to know what they are interested in and shape their career in. How can they just restrict us to a couple of electives? I would have loved to take foreign languages, give a shot at photography. There is not much importance given to art in India, may be it is not related to our college alone, but Art and psychology and public affairs are all extremely important to the universities here.
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3) did you find any course very much enjoyable in your stay? which ones, and why? of course you will like some topics more than others, but it is the "learning experience" from a course that counts for me.
My summary : In US, a teacher would make students work with real-life examples: learning something, construct it yourself (learning 'amplifiers', make one). This means quality teaching, only a skilled teacher knows what to add to the course, and what activities to be carried out in what measure. Also, such a teacher would have to be active researcher to get the feel of the latest, esp. given the quick changes in "state of the art" of engineering and sciences.
--- AN---
Well, I liked a course on Coding Theory that I took. The professor in charge of the course explained the theory very lucidly and with real-world examples of codes. In general, he always tried to adhere to the "how do we construct an *actual* code with these principles, and model real-world error probabilities into it, etc" approach.
--- NC ---
1) Digital Communication (basic M-ary communication system design and performance analysis in AWGN channels)
2) Digital Processing of Speech Signals (speech production models, analysis techniques and applications such as coding, recognition)
3) Harmonic Analysis and Signal Processing (wavelets and time-frequency representations, approximation theory, best basis and sparse approximation, statistical estimation, compression, inverse problems)
I learned a lot through these courses, due to a combination of skilled teaching, well-planned coursework and insightful assignments/projects. Again, I believe that learning was greatly enhanced by incorporating extensive MATLAB simulations into the coursework.
--- AD ---
The best course that I have done here is VLSI Principles. The course content, homeworks and lab work were designed to give a thorough understanding of digital chip design. The highlight of the course was that it is superbly oriented with the current semiconductor industry, giving us hands-on experience with state-of-the-art tools and designs through lab assignments.
--- OP---
I loved the course Digital VLSI Circuits Design. The course project involved doing the physical layout of an entire micro controller. It was extremely challenging, but also very very useful. The classes were also very impressive because of the professor's teaching style, he often used his incredible knowledge of "how its done in the industry" in lectures and shared the simple intuitions he had about various concepts.
--- IM ---
The course I liked the most is Operating Systems and Image Processing. I liked Operating Systems because we have gained indepth knowledge of how things work, very low-level. We were introduced to working with shell scripts though it was not included in the course curriculum( which by the way has to drastically improve to include more practical coding and programming, which a normal college in India has but unfortunately we dont). Image Processing was interesting because I could apply whatever I have learnt by working on a project extensively. The charm of a topic is only reliased when we work on it and see what it is all about. I think our course curriculum gives more importance to include theory of as many topics as possible but that does not help in any way if we cant use it. They should try testing the students on projects more than on tests.--- KA---
