How Many Students Can I Teach?
What is the right number of students a teacher can teach?
Student-Teacher Ratio (STR, also called pupil-teacher ratio) has been an important criterion to determine the quality of teaching. Rightly so because the students need a certain amount of personalized attention. Accreditation and ranking frameworks in India and abroad have treated this as a significant quality standard in institutions.
But in the last decade, with the advent of MOOCs and now with COVID-19, the concept of STR should be rethought.
When a teacher is teaching online, it doesn't matter whether there are 10 or 10 thousand students on the other side. The content remains the same for each recipient. The issue however is how much of mentorship can the learner find.
A better framework may be a 'mentor-student ratio', where we have to consciously differentiate between someone who is delivering content and someone who is mentoring (they could be the same persons too). In the age of technology, mentorship is more scarce than content. A student can find excellent content from anywhere in the world but institutions should provide mentorship so that students can make sense of that content in their own context. And these mentors need to be full-time employees of an institution. At Rishihood University, we are bringing mentors from all across the world to spend time with students based on customized needs. You are building a start-up in digital art? Here is mentorship for you. Many other good institutions also do this. This is the premise of accelerators and incubators - giving the right guidance and resources for a student to unlock her potential.
Thus, in institutional quality standards, we should move towards a system of a mentor-student ratio. We can estimate how many 'mentor hours' are available to a student.
Further, given the dynamic and differential nature of students' needs, not everyone will require the same amount of mentorship. An even better standard than the mentor-student ratio could be the 'probability of mentorship'. If I request mentorship, how likely am I to receive mentorship?
The right set of guidance goes a long way in shaping a student. Let us rethink our institutional design to get them ready for the future rather than conform to the past.
Designer | Thinker | Maker
4 年It completely depends on what is to be taught and what is the desired/required outcome for each student. 'Teaching' is a very broad term, isn't it? My experience says, for online teaching/mentoring, number of students actually needs to be lower, at least for my domain 'Industrial Design'. Who will want to hire an easily replacebale average designer? :)
MBA -Tourism & Hospitality, HMCTAN, Bachelor of Tourism, B.Com (CU). NLP
4 年Most valuable consideration to think upon. Obviously, synchronised and nonsynchronised both has its merits and demerits. But, that is not the topic here, I guess. STR is a obvious factor in synchronised methods. And in my opinion 10:1 is a limit. While in nonsynchronised systems , STR is not considered a factor. But, results in poor or no mentorship! A balanced and effective mix can be fruitful. Achieving such is challenging in some scenario. I personally trying to set up such a system, and faceing a lot of hurdles. As a part of my endeavour, i have recently set a poll, too, seeking feedback only from hospitality faculties. So far very less people has expressed. Need more to further dig down. Hope together we can make a better idea for our aspirants.
Independent Education Consultant UK /India
4 年It depends on the mentor and the delivery. Some can communicate with 100, some with 10 and sadly some can’t communicate at all, even though they think they can. That’s why I’ve developed an online workshop on communicating skills , Story Telling as Harvard Business Review calls it, for the teams I work with. Just let me know if you would like to join in.
Accounting Researcher | Analytics| Chartered Accountant| Ex-IIM Prof.| IIT and SRCC alum
4 年Very well said!!! I believe content is akin to having a fishing rod, net and may be tutorial on how to operate the rod; but its through mentorship (imparting strategies based on depth of water, weather, season) that the person can truly learn how to catch the fish!
Industrial/ Organisational Psychologist
4 年Thats a quite impact-oriented approach. love it!