Even as science education has, of late, taken a backseat in most institutions of higher education, several colleges in Bihar have been awarding degrees in science subjects to those students who neither performed a single experiment nor visited a laboratory. This is simply because teachers fail to motivate students to carry out lab exercises.
With a view to motivating college science teachers for imparting practical training to students, the Rajbhavan has initiated a scheme of starting a centre of creative learning at Patna Science College. The proposed centre called Aryabhatta Centre for Creative Learning in Science (ACCLS) will be housed in the Newton House building of the college (at present lying vacant following the delinking of intermediate teaching). College principal S N Guha will be the incharge of this centre.
R Krishna Kumar, OSD (universities) to governor, said that ACCLS would organise weekly workshops for science teachers of different colleges in basic science subjects, including physics, chemistry, botany and zoology. Each workshop would be attended by 40 teachers, two from each college. Experienced subject teachers would work as resource persons and impart necessary training to the participants.
Science teachers would be motivated to attract students to laboratories by demonstrating simple and interesting experiments. The first workshop in physics would be held from April 21 to 26 at the physics department. The state government has agreed to provide necessary funds for this scheme.
Besides, the proposed centre will formulate standardised list of experiments to be conducted for BSc (honours) students in different subjects. It would also organise popular science lectures at regular intervals for the benefit of college science students. Experiments in different subjects would also be demonstrated to the students of remote areas through video-conferencing to be organised at district National Informatics Centre.
Source:The Times Of India,01-04-08
