Why bridge courses are important

A bridge course is a preparatory one just before the start of a new academic year to help students transition smoothly from school to the university. The twin objectives are to fill knowledge gaps and help students acclimatise themselves to a new environment.

For many students, bridge courses often revolve around transitions: to a higher knowledge ecosystem, to another medium of instruction (often from regional language to English) and from rural to urban or semi-urban settings. But, for all, the most crucial is the passage to young adulthood.

Problems

In many institutions, bridge courses do not yield the desired results. This is because some teachers, fuelled by the notion that they have to give the students a head start, try to package the curricula of the first semester into this time.

Another issue is that most adopt the same pedagogy of a regular class: the lecture method. Whereas an interactive method would be more suitable for the needs of these students. Also, a bridge course classroom is heterogeneous in nature. Teachers need to vary their teaching styles and strategies to cater to the differential abilities of the students.

Many institutions do not have a proper curriculum or textbooks for such courses. Even the schedule is tentative. So the faculty have to improvise and, often, do it badly.

Bridge courses are meant as much for academics as for socialisation and peer teaching and learning. However, the latter aspect is ignored. Bridge schools should not be confused with summer schools, which are rigorous and intensive programmes and are meant to boost students’ domain knowledge.

Strategies

All these problems can be overcome by adopting certain efficient strategies. First, the faculty must understand that the objectives of a bridge course and a regular undergraduate programme are different and deploy appropriate pedagogies in the classroom. There should be less teacher-talk and more student-talk, making the classroom student-centric and interactive.

Second, the focus must be on academics and social integration. To facilitate this, peer teaching and mentoring, especially by senior students, should be encouraged.

Third is the inclusion of fun-filled activities that will effectively help in social integration and, as Krashen argued, make learning meaningful and faster when the affective filter is low.

Finally, a bridge course is a short-term programme. What could not be taught over 12 years of study in terms of domain knowledge and proficiency cannot be achieved in a couple of weeks. So, neither the student nor the faculty should expect miracles.

Bridge courses must focus on enhancing the participants’ communication skills in English and deepen basic knowledge of the discipline’s concepts to wean them away from rote memorisation and acquire knowledge in a systematic manner. This will provide a foundation for their undergraduate programme.

When conducted efficiently, bridge courses help students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to move to a different medium of instruction and also cope with the change to a college environment. They are meant to acclimatise students to different intellectual and physical environments and fill knowledge gaps to some extent. In any rite of passage, the liminal space leading to aggregation is a crucial step and, therefore, bridge course participants should be helped to cross the threshold of liminality and enter the university system.

The writer is an Emeritus Professor at Gandhigram Rural Institute Deemed-to-be University. Email: josephdorairaj@gmail.com