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.Students will be encouraged to use smartphone-based physics experiments such as measuring Earth’s magnetic field, the acceleration due to gravity and light intensity. AI-based software also is likely to be used for botany and zoology experiments.The syllabus and curriculum for academic labs remained unchanged for several decades, making the academic labs irrelevant. 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. 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.To create the model curriculum framework, TANSCHE conducted brainstorming sessions with faculty members from physics, chemistry, zoology and botany subjects recently.For the first time, the state govt has allotted funds separately for lab consumables in the budget. “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.In the previous budget, the state govt allocated ₹61 crore to buy equipment for more than 250 govt arts and science colleges, govt engineering colleges and polytechnic colleges.
