E-Paper
Now, arts students can study botany
St Xavier’s College will be the first college in the city to introduce interdisciplinary or cross-faculty study this academic year.
St Xavier’s College will be the first college in the city to introduce interdisciplinary or cross-faculty study this academic year.
Students in the fourth semester (second half of the second year degree course) will have to take one course from another faculty. For example, an arts student can take up botany or commerce.
This is the second year of autonomy of the 142-year-old institution. As part of autonomy, the college introduced the credit and semester system last year.
This year, they are taking it forward with an interdisciplinary component in a move towards a choice-based credit system.
A choice-based credit system allows students to move across streams as per their choice of subjects. It is a norm followed by universities across the world.
“It is very important for students to be exposed to another discipline. The component will be for three credits and a student can choose any subject from a list of choices. We will put out the list within a month,” said principal, Father Frazer Mascarenhas.
The credit system allows continuous comprehensive assessment and gives weightage to project work and field assignments (40 marks) apart from semester-end exams (60 marks). As of now, the interdisciplinary component will only be part of the fourth semester.
Having reviewed the changes made since autonomy, the college is in the process of fine-tuning them.
“We had taken feedback from students and are implementing their suggestions. For example, students felt that internal assessments for subjects had little gap between them. So, now we are trying to space them out,” added Mascarenhas.
The University of Mumbai is also introducing the credit and semester system this year in all undergraduate programmes in its 655 affiliated colleges.
But this will be a fixed credit system. The choice-based credit system will be introduced in phase 2 after two years.
