10 days to new session,books for Foundation courses not ready yet

“For the foundation courses,the students will have access to three kinds of reading material. One group will comprise different articles and books suggested in the syllabus — these will be available in the libraries. Another will be in the form of e-content,which will be constantly updated. The third will be low priced books for each foundation course,” a senior university official said.

The university has floated tenders for publishing these books and hopes to provide them to students in another 10-15 days. “The content for the books is almost ready and talks are being held with the publishers. These books will have a lot of visual material — data,illustrations,graphs — to cater to students from diverse academic background,” the official said.

Under the new four-year undergraduate format,students will be required to take 11 foundation papers over the first two years. In the first year,they will have to study seven papers,which will include Building Mathematical Ability,Information Technology,Business,Entrepreneurship and Management,besides two language papers.

The first round of publications would involve publishing books for these seven courses.

Affirming this,Dean of Academics Malashri Lal said the study material is being developed with the aim to encourage creative thinking and hands-on learning.

R K Singh,convenor for the foundation paper in Business,Entrepreneurship and Management,said,“The basic philosophy behind developing these books is to combine the elements of theory and activity. It will be a book-cum-workbook. Instead of rote learning,students will understand definitions and principles through through cases or situations.”