Chennai: Students of UG and PG science courses, including physics, chemistry, botany and zoology, in arts and science colleges in the state will soon receive a new laboratory curriculum framework that will allow universities to include new experiments and give freedom to students to design their own experiments.
“The govt allocated ₹8 crore for lab consumables. Each govt college will get about ₹3 lakh to buy chemicals, test tubes and other items, and for maintenance,” higher education secretary Dheeraj Kumar said. To generate interest among students in studying basic science courses, Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education (TANSCHE) conducted an audit of these labs and found that most of the college labs were in need of new equipment, and experiments were not updated as per latest developments.
“The new curriculum framework will suggest how the existing experiments can be conducted efficiently and promote experimental thinking,” an official from TANSCHE said. The syllabus and curriculum for academic labs remained unchanged for several decades, making the academic labs irrelevant. This will be a suggestive, model curriculum framework. “Each state university can customise and prepare its own syllabus based on this framework. Students will be encouraged to observe their surroundings and come up with innovative experiments,” the official added. For the first time, the state govt has allotted funds separately for lab consumables in the budget.