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DUHS switches to semesters for MBBS students
Karachi, Feb 25, 2008: The academic council of the
Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) has decided to switch over to the
semester system from the yearly one. This means that the year will be split in
half.
This was decided at the academic council's tenth meeting held
Saturday with DUHS Vice Chancellor Prof. Masood Hameed Khan in chair. The new
system will be for 1,500 students at Dow Medical College (DMC), 1,500 at Sindh
Medical College (SMC), and 50 at the Dr Ishratul Ebad Institute of Oral Health
Sciences amongst others.
"Medicine is like a sea," explained an
associate professor who attended the meeting. "What was happening was that the
students were cramming at the end of one year."
So, instead of having
exams for say, eight topics, during November and December, the students will be
breaking them up into about say, three topics with examines in the summer and
winter. "The students are extremely happy," she said, adding that in fact this
increased the load on the 400-strong faculty but they were considering hiring
new staff. "Instead of going through the process of exams once a year, the
faculty will have to do it twice a year," the associate professor said. "But it
means that the students will be studying their topics in more depth rather than
running to tuition centres and downloading [cliff] notes off the internet." She
said that many people at the meeting felt that this affected the quality of
doctors produced as well in the long run.
The experiment with the
semester system, one that is followed abroad in universities, began with the
500-student strong Dow Institute of Medical Technology two years ago when it was
formed. The council decided to implement the semester system at the start and,
as the associate professor put it, foreign visitors have been impressed with the
outcomes.
Recommendations for proper implementation of the new system
and additional faculty, staff and logistic facilities were also discussed in the
meeting. Prof. Masood said that the DUHS is the first public-sector medical
university that has been allowed to switch over to a semester system by the
Pakistan Medical and Dental Council. Daily Times
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