The first three semesters contain a number of modules, each comprising theory and practical/field components. Each month will have about 20 working days, each day with three forenoon lecture hours. Each module would consist of class room lectures, practicals, assignments, and guest lectures.
Class room lectures: Each module would have 10 to 30 hours of class room lectures. One or a few textbooks provide the basic framework for each module. However, instructors are free to use additional reference books and papers that cover these topics, or expand on them. Audio-visuals aids would also be used.
Practicals: All modules are expected to have some amount of practicals. Three situations are foreseen:
| a) |
Class room practicals (e.g. statistics, GIS and remote sensing) |
| b) |
Short visits to local institutions (e.g. museums) and field sites (e.g. Bannerghatta National Park and wetlands) |
| c) |
Extended field visits to forests and other habitats. |
Assignments: Substantial time is made available for these, especially in the afternoon hours, besides additional time at the end of each semester. These assignments could be anything that the students should do on their own as part of the course. One to three assignments are planned for each module, with 3-5 students working on one assignment either individually (e.g. seminars and review papers) or as a team (e.g. field assignments). It is not necessary that a module should contain seminars, assignments and review papers.
Guest lectures :Additional guest lectures of 1 to 5 hours (roughly 1 hour per 10 lecture hours) are suggested on specialised topics in the module subject that the students can benefit from. These would be in addition to the lecture hours allotted to the module now. Guest lectures need not coincide with the module.
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