In a first, IIM-B professor launches courseflow for new B-school faculty

The courseflow can be accessed by web browsers on any device. Faculty members can modify their courseflow view privately to their own teaching style and institutional grading requirements

In a first-of-its-kind move to enable new business school (B-school) faculty to teach, the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore's professor of strategy, Ganesh Prabhu has published a unique courseflow on the Nodes platform (app.ednodes.com).

Prabhu, who specialises in designing and teaching courses on product innovation, strategic management, and entrepreneurship, has launched a course on New Product Development, a course that he has been teaching for the last 25 years at IIM Bangalore.

"New faculty typically sit through a senior faculty’s classes before offering a course themselves, but this option is not easily accessible when no one is teaching that elective course in your own business school. The courseflow application helps distill the experienced faculty’s long years of experience and provides a good jump start to new faculty. It marks a new and innovative beginning in efforts to develop business school faculty in India, at a time when demand for faculty is increasing and faculty training has lagged," said Prabhu.

According to Prabhu, B-schools like IIMs have Faculty Development Programs (FDPs) where faculty from other institutions come and take classes on teaching. "But such programs mostly share the course outline and then the new faculty have to go and figure it out on their own. But by publishing such courseflow in a more structured manner, they have a better sense of how the course can be taught even before they start teaching it."

The courseflow application has complete information on every aspect of teaching the new course such as the course outline, overview of teaching objectives, session wise topics with preparatory notes, multiple case options for every topic, classroom slides, video lectures, video case links as well as typical examination questions and project grading methods.

The courseflow can be accessed by web browsers on any type of device. Faculty members can modify their courseflow view privately to their own teaching style and institutional grading requirements. A discussion forum within the application enables faculty members to share their course experience and faculty can guide those who are teaching the course elsewhere.

The course flow can be accessed by universities and faculty alike for either a lumpsum fee or on a subscription basis.

Pune-based Nodes Pvt. Ltd., a social impact startup incubated by CIIE.co IIM Ahmedabad, has built this innovative technology platform to enable universities to access effective teaching courseflows.

According to Nodes' founder Prajakta Kulkarni, the startup had been working in the area of teacher training and faculty development for the past two years.

"By meeting teachers and walking in their shoes, we have seen the shortfalls of generic training sessions and workshops. It is now time to progress into a community-built repository of exemplary teaching processes so that faculty can offer new-age skill and professional courses to teach their students without any hesitation."