Pedagogy

Over the last decade and a half, ISBF’s faculty members curated a peerless teaching and learning processes to link the theoretical framework of knowledge with the real-world application, thereby enabling students to learn independently and think critically. Being a Recognised Teaching Centre of the University of London (UoL), and one of the five featured institutions of The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), ISBF has been successful in delivering the world-class curriculum set by LSE to students from across the country.

Overview

The academic delivery at ISBF emulates and strives to implement LSE’s motto of rerum cognoscere causas, which means ‘to know the causes of things’. ISBF aims to engender in its students a spirit of enquiry and practical in-depth conceptual understanding. To create the right academic environment, we at ISBF believe to use platforms keeping in mind the dynamic situation of the world, we follow different teaching phases to impart knowledge.

The 3 Pillars of Teaching and Learning at ISBF

We try to follow a three-fold approach, the first is a deliberate effort to encourage students to ask questions, and as a corollary, to participate actively in class. Questions, which drive all serious academic pursuits, represent an attitude and a willingness to dig deeper, to understand better and in turn to apply what one learns.

The second strategy is to make students understand the indispensability of self-study. This is enabled by breaking down reference material and academic tasks into easily readable/achievable segments. It also involves ensuring that one has understood everything that has been taught on a particular day before going home that day. Audio-visual components are used to complement classroom sessions and engage students to become self learners.

The third strategy, integral to achieving the goal of in-depth understanding, is ISBF’s open-door staff room policy. Students are free to approach any lecturer at a mutually suitable time to seek answers/explanations/clarifications to course material on an ongoing basis.

Cutting - Edge Teaching Practices

The courses taught at ISBF are delivered primarily through lectures, which are usually conducted for groups of up to 20 students. Faculty and course leaders use tutorials to build upon the foundation provided by lectures. They also take into account the existence and role of Peer Review Tutoring (PRT) classes, which are scheduled at least once a week to ensure the delivery of lectures is not hampered. Frequent usage of different modes of teaching are adopted by the faculty to break the monotony of lectures, one such method is Flipped Classroom, where students become the teachers. Besides this, ISBF students, in lieu of being UoL students, have access to the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) of the University of London. The VLE is an online repository of study materials developed by the faculty of the London School of Economics that students can access anytime to supplement their learning process. It also contains video lectures, questions from past examinations, examiner commentaries, self-testing exercises and discussion forums where ISBF students can interact with peers across the world who are studying the same course. Some of these best practices assimilate from teachers’ experience at ISBF over the last 15 years.

“Our efforts as teachers must therefore be made keeping in mind a dual set of objectives; we are not only responsible for what they learn, but also for how they learn.” - ISBF Lecturers’ Handbook

ASSESSMENTS

ISBF follows a rigorous scheme of formative assessments, conducted on each course to assess students’ curricular understanding. The formative exams simulate the LSE examination settings, providing detailed feedback to the students in order to help them identify their strengths and weaknesses.

These are followed by the LSE Summative Assessments which are conducted twice in a year. In a sense, the formative assessments conducted by ISBF enable students to take the mid-year and the year-end LSE examinations. This makes assessments key milestones in a student’s academic journey, and it is therefore imperative that they undertake these with the utmost seriousness and sincerity.

At ISBF, there is zero tolerance for plagiarism, if held responsible for using unfair means in examinations and assessments, disciplinary action is taken.

ACADEMIC SUPPORT

Course leaders and faculty use several teaching and learning resources available from LSE as well as ISBF for delivering their respective courses. Along with study material, students have the opportunity to get clarity or explanation on any subject matter out of their classrooms, from their respective lecturers by mutually fixing a time as per convenience. Course Leaders are also available to provide their expertise wherever required by students to help them streamline their academic journey at ISBF.

PRE-SESSIONAL SUPPORT

Before starting their journey with ISBF and pursuing the LSE curriculum, it is necessary to ensure that students have a concrete foundation in concepts as well as the pedagogy, which allows them to pursue the LSE curriculum in a stress-free manner. For this, students are first provided with a Study Pack that helps them prepare for their respective programmes before the commencement of the programme.

Following this, the faculty of ISBF conducts the Power of Why Series which is an initiative to help students in their exploratory journey, as a lead-up to grappling with the LSE curriculum once the academic session begins. Pursuing a cutting-edge education such as LSE's requires, above all, an inquisitive spirit. It includes various forms of learning exercises, to help understand concepts in an application-oriented manner.

Lastly, in the first few weeks of their joining ISBF, students go through the Foundational Course, which helps build a base of knowledge in subjects like mathematics, economics, accountancy and many more, which is done to provide students from different streams a platform to understand the basic concepts that they’ll need over the course of their academic journey here at ISBF.

LEARNING PHASES

At ISBF, we believe in curating the best techniques to help our students transition from school classroom to college classroom and to do so we use different learning phases. The Online Phase refers to the period where teachers and Course Leaders help in facilitating the services such as programme office support, career services, library, student relations and co-curricular activities virtually. ISBF also follows a blended phase, this is the phase between the Online Phase and the return to full-fledged On-campus teaching. Once the teaching and learning goes back fully to taking place on campus and in person, the students are expected to attend the classes only on campus. This is the mode that ISBF champions, and the one that has facilitated its rise to the top echelons of Teaching Institutions in the LSE-UOL ecosystem.

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” -William Arthur Ward

TEACHER TRAINING

In order to adopt the latest advancements in the education sector, ISBF faculty undergoes annual training from LSE academicians in the form of ongoing webinars and debates. To help support the learning of students, a few members of the faculty have also completed the University of London Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education programme to upgrade their skills, understanding of and strategies in teaching, learning and assessment in face to face teaching and digital learning. A faculty who had completed the PG Cert, as it is called, is considered to be in the league of some of the best academicians in the world, let alone the country.