Pune means a drive from Mumbai, and especially when the venue is not near a railway or a bus station. The College of Ayurveda is located very close to where the Mumbai Pune Expressway ends, so that makes it a bit more convenient – avoiding the city traffic. I reached the college a little ahead of the day’s lunch hour and as it happens in many such events, I got to hear an earlier faculty member – in this case Dr Prasad Pore from BVDUMC, Pune delivering his lecture. I enjoy having my knowledge getting strengthened. I also like to observe how different people present the same topic.
It also turned out that Dr Pore happened to have attended our (QMed’s) one day workshop on searching and reference management, at the BVDUMC earlier this year. He was all smiles when he saw me and we had a good recap and more discussion during the lunch hour. Couple more of his lectures post lunch and mine was the last lecture of the day. The 40 strong audience was all attentive, nodding their heads vigorously, but at the end, when it came to question time, they got restless – as it was time to leave for home. (I did take care to finish ten minutes early, but still…). I am pretty sure they were keen to learn more, but saturation does set in at the end of the day.
It sets me thinking. Almost every medical (and related) college has these workshops running for two or sometimes three days. When 30-40 students are listening to lectures for an entire day, it can be saturating. Every talk obviously covers the tip of the iceberg for that topic, and does not get them adequately prepared, when they actually do their research. In the end, there has to be adequately trained cum experienced faculty to guide them when they are working on a dissertation / thesis / article. How and when are we going to achieve this? Lots of food for thought for the system!
Vasumathi Sriganesh
