Pluggable Subjects for Schools and Universities

#education #school #university

Note: The article appears on authors other social media account as well.

Things are moving at high speeds with newer technology, new subjects, new topics, and new inventions. Subjects such as Quantum Computing, AI, Data Science, Machine Learning, AR, VR, digital arts, video editing and even Robotics to name a few are souring high in publicity as well as in the job market. Why not keep at least one course per semester as a plugin subject wherein students can add the plugin to the course along with its pre-requisites? Modules can be added from above list and more to this plugin course. And credit bases performance can be noted.

There are many benefits for at least one plugin subject, this is a student can add modules and prerequisites of the modules to the course and continue the studies in online mode, or regular mode if teachers for the modules are available. All this to say, that books have been written for school children and university students on Quantum Computing, AI, Robotics, and so on. So why not let students choose what they want to study in this pluggable course?

Grading can be performed in online mode as well, or schools and universities can perform the result computation. Right now, online courses come in modules format, but all modules are connected to the subject. This can be made to be graded by modules. The syllabus shall be plugged in and approved by the coordinator.

Interesting thing is a student can gain knowledge of AI and Quantum Computing and required maths all in one pluggable subject that too at high school level or in early university classroom. Some can learn to edit videos in high school as well while others can do industry internship where the industry writes about the course and grade the student. Let’s change with changing times.

Prerequisites such as maths for AI can be added to the course and some modules of Quantum Computing can be added to the syllabus to introduce the subject to a curious student. In the same way, another student can add in course modules to be prerequisites for Quantum Computing, and some AI modules after reading its introduction. Some other students from nontechnical streams can add some latest history lessons with sales with technology or CRM modules. These are just examples of what a plugin subject may look like.

The key thing is so many trained teachers are not available and hence the subjects need to run in online mode, with help of some online course provider. The course provider can help in integration of picking modules from their course after doing some changes in its software.

As new technologies and developments come in young students want to gain more information in their area of interest such as some students may like to know more about digital arts, editing, or advances in photography to mention a few. All this can be packaged into one course that can be floated along with a regular course. All this with minimal cost to current infrastructure. This was the introduction to pluggable courses.

The key importance of this is students will gain knowledge in the area of interest, as well as gain insight into what they want to choose in the future as a specialization. This gives insight into many higher education subjects and streams and makes students aware. Let’s hope for better ways to for plugging subjects.