Shailesh J Mehta School of Management (SJMSoM), Indian Institute of Technology; Bombay has revamped its course structure after a gap of seven years. Prime reasons for the revamp include responding to the changing business environment and increasing importance of sustainable business practices. Increase in permanent faculty strength (to over 20) is another factor which motivated the school for restructuring of its course structure.
Not to forget that the new course structure also in allignment with the IIT ‘slot system’ which is important since the slot system helps students from different disciplines (such as engineering and science) to opt for elective courses in each others’ disciplines. While new courses have been added, none of the older courses have been done away with, only the number of lectures hours devoted to them have undergone a change.
Speaking to PaGaLGuY.com, Prof Ashish Pandey, working as assistant professor at SJMSoM and also the coordinator of the Course Restructuring Committee said that the course was last reviewed and revised in 2005. “Knowledge and knowledge creation always provide competitive advantage to business organization. Going beyond management functional boundaries and providing a integrated perspective is another reason to rework many of ours courses,” he said.
He added that no course has been eliminated in the new course curriculum, and a balance amongst perspective-based courses, functional knowledge-based courses and skill building courses was the primary aim of this exercise. Earlier, all the courses were of 4 credits or 6 credits. In the new structure, all the core management courses are of 3 or 6 credits. New courses like Business and Sustainable Development and International Business are also included in core in the first year. In the second year, two core courses are added, viz. Business ethics and Leadership and vision.’ Business Ethics is a newly introduced core course. Another feature of this new structure is introduction of work shop courses on Self Awareness and Interpersonal Skills, Communication Skills, Quantitative skills and Business Research Methods.’
Earlier, Communication Skills was offered as 4 credit course which is now offered as workshop course, wherein weekly 3- hour sessions are allocated for this course. Professor Pandey also explained that the workshop course on Communication Skills is aimed at helping students to update their ‘hand on skills’ required in most corporate environment. “Communication skills, be it in writing a report, or an email or Self-awareness and Interpersonal Skills is to make the student aware of their abilities and strengths/weaknesses. Body languages, verbal communication, proper usage of grammar are all part of such exercise,” Prof Pandey added.
Credit weightage has been reduced in several courses from 4 to 3, which effectively means 21 hours of lectures in half semester, instead of 28 hours. In some situation, this process has allowed better structuring and appropriate instruction design and pedagogy. For example, credits of HRM and OB has decreased from 4 to 3. However, some of the topics of OB are included in Self Awareness and Interpersonal skills workshop in the experiential learning based pedagogy.
Number of electives to be taken by the students has also reduced in the second year. In its place a compulsory 21-credit programme called Collaborative Practicum is introduced as an industry-based study programme.
Prof Pandey highlighted that the changes was based on work of the committee members for about an year, based on a systematic study and debates on what are the most important inputs necessary for management graduates. “Even after the new structure was proposed by the committee, it went to and fro at various levels, including the institute’s senate to boil down to what we want our students to be equipped with and study,” Prof Pandey added. The committee also looked at the course structures of many other renowned b-schools, such as Harvard, the Insian Institutes of Management in India, and NUS, Singapore.The new course curriculum is adopted from the batch admitted in 2012.