Why bridge courses are important

A bridge course is a preparatory one simply earlier than the beginning of a brand new tutorial 12 months to assist college students transition easily from college to the college. The twin aims are to fill data gaps and assist college students acclimatise themselves to a brand new surroundings.

For many college students, bridge courses usually revolve round transitions: to a better data ecosystem, to a different medium of instruction (usually from regional language to English) and from rural to city or semi-urban settings. But, for all, essentially the most essential is the passage to younger maturity.

Problems

In many establishments, bridge courses don’t yield the specified outcomes. This is as a result of some academics, fuelled by the notion that they’ve to present the scholars a head begin, attempt to bundle the curricula of the primary semester into this time.

Another problem is that almost all undertake the identical pedagogy of an everyday class: the lecture methodology. Whereas an interactive methodology could be extra appropriate for the wants of those college students. Also, a bridge course classroom is heterogeneous in nature. Teachers have to differ their educating kinds and methods to cater to the differential talents of the scholars.

Many establishments don’t have a correct curriculum or textbooks for such courses. Even the schedule is tentative. So the college need to improvise and, usually, do it badly.

Bridge courses are meant as a lot for lecturers as for socialisation and peer educating and studying. However, the latter facet is ignored. Bridge faculties shouldn’t be confused with summer time faculties, which are rigorous and intensive programmes and are meant to spice up college students’ area data.

Strategies

All these issues might be overcome by adopting sure environment friendly methods. First, the college should perceive that the aims of a bridge course and an everyday undergraduate programme are completely different and deploy applicable pedagogies within the classroom. There must be much less teacher-talk and extra student-talk, making the classroom student-centric and interactive.

Second, the main focus should be on lecturers and social integration. To facilitate this, peer educating and mentoring, particularly by senior college students, must be inspired.

Third is the inclusion of fun-filled actions that can successfully assist in social integration and, as Krashen argued, make studying significant and quicker when the affective filter is low.

Finally, a bridge course is a short-term programme. What couldn’t be taught over 12 years of research by way of area data and proficiency can’t be achieved in a few weeks. So, neither the coed nor the college ought to anticipate miracles.

Bridge courses should give attention to enhancing the members’ communication expertise in English and deepen primary data of the self-discipline’s ideas to wean them away from rote memorisation and purchase data in a scientific method. This will present a basis for his or her undergraduate programme.

When carried out effectively, bridge courses assist college students, particularly these from deprived backgrounds, to maneuver to a unique medium of instruction and likewise deal with the change to a school surroundings. They are meant to acclimatise college students to completely different mental and bodily environments and fill data gaps to some extent. In any ceremony of passage, the liminal area resulting in aggregation is a vital step and, due to this fact, bridge course members must be helped to cross the edge of liminality and enter the college system.

The author is an Emeritus Professor at Gandhigram Rural Institute Deemed-to-be University. Email: josephdorairaj@gmail.com