Facing emerging crisis in state universities through common Learning Platform

by Saroj Jayasinghe
Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Consultant Physician

Sri Lanka has recently embarked on an ambitious programme to widen the scope of opportunities in higher education. Several new state universities that have opened new faculties and private universities have also begun to get established in the country. Furthermore, there are overseas universities that have established branches or partner institutions in Sri Lanka, thus enabling a large number of young aspirants to enter higher education. Coupled with this increase in demand is the recent phenomenon of an exodus of teachers and lecturers from the universities in Sri Lanka. Not only has it affected state universities, but it has had an effect on private institutions, undergraduate courses and human resource development in several sectors.

The increase in demand and a decrease in number of teachers or lecturers will soon have a destabilising effect on the system of higher education. In other words, we will face a crisis in our university system whether private or public. In such an instance what could be the solution? There are many solutions that have been offered, and in this short article I propose yet another method or strategy to soften this crisis.

The proposal I make may be more relevant to the state universities which are facing a serious shortage of funding for research and having an exodus of teachers and seeing the best of their graduates who may be future academics of the system also leaving Sri Lanka. It is to take advantage of the emerging fields of information technology and the familiarity with the use of such devices by the emerging new generation.

The proposal, therefore, is for the University Grants Commission to examine the commonalities in courses across the faculties, identify the key topics common to different universities, and record these lectures for availability on a platform. This approach is referred to as ‘platform-based teaching.’ The best teachers and researchers could be recruited to deliver these lectures. University students would have access to this platform to listen to the available lectures, which would complement other teaching activities within the faculty. This accessibility to the platform should be prioritized for university students. However, there could also be a provision to allow other interested individuals to watch them, creating a sort of ‘open knowledge repository’.

Let me provide an example from the medical faculties. It is a fact that the medical faculties in Sri Lanka cover almost the same subject matter. To achieve this purpose, the majority of faculties have at least 14 departments categorized as pre-clinical, paraclinical, and clinical departments. Teachers (or lecturers) are recruited by these departments to teach the corresponding theoretical and practical aspects. The knowledge related to these disciplines is transmitted mainly through lectures to large groups of students, discussions in smaller groups, tutorials that address questions, and a series of practical sessions.

If we examine this situation in more detail, we observe that there is a component of teaching that is primarily based on lectures. This component comprises the core knowledge that we want our students to learn, understand, and apply. For example, an expert in the field could deliver a lecture on hepatitis (instead of my delivering it!), and it could be made available to all medical students. Instead of ten different lecturers delivering the same topic at various times in ten medical faculties, one lecture suffices. There is no need to replicate this lecture in all universities. This way, we can identify the core knowledge that is common to all students and make it available on a platform managed by the UGC. If necessary, the platform could be centralised but distributed to other faculties. For instance, each faculty could have its platform with national-level lectures and local ones.

What would be the advantage of this? As I see it, the advantages would be threefold. One is that we can use the best lecturers to present their lectures, and they will be available uniformly to all the students in Sri Lanka. Since they are going to sit for a common exam that will rank them, having common lectures should not be a problem. The second advantage is that this will make it more efficient because now you do not need the same number of lecturing hours to run a course since some of the course material is available on the platform. The third advantage is that this will free up time for students to study on their own and for lecturers to develop interactive sessions. For example, the lecture on hepatitis would be available on the platform, and the focus of the interactive session would be on how to treat a patient having the illness. In other words, the lecturer would interact with the students and demonstrate to them how knowledge can be applied to a real-life situation.

In conclusion, the crisis we are going to face should be used as an opportunity to innovate. The innovation, I believe, is through the use of information technology and newer technologies available to us. In this era of artificial intelligence, it is important that we keep up with the times and allow our students to tap into the best resources available with the least amount of cost and effort.