Courses & Course Structures

I see that more and more people are wanting to design semester long or year long "courses" to teach architectural subjects. Courses can be meticulously drafted with a lecture-wise and topic-wise schedule with reading lists and tasks or loosely structured giving a broad idea of what would the faculty want to cover. In designing a course, the tutor assumes an "ideal" student in mind. This ideal student would read all the essays for the course on time, prepare for all lectures and work out all assignments in time. The course would keep on reeling throughout the term where the faculty would keep imparting data/knowledge to the entire class at a time. There is a certain generalization of the intellect of the entire class. This generalized body is the ideal student, not necessarily the average student. It could vary depending on the ego of the faculty.

Courses help build faculties a good amount of research material and stray questions that could build up papers for argument. Generally, such is the agenda in the graduate courses designed abroad. The making of courses is quite a graduate study idea. I am not sure if the same works in the undergraduate field where students are still grappling with basic ways of working and thinking. In preparing a course, the reading list is imposed on all those who might not be inclined towards such study. These students would least contribute to the discourse. Courses ideally are product oriented, unless the faculty is aware enough to understand it as a process. 

While choosing post graduate courses, students are aware what they would possibly want to invest more of their time with. Hence, the idea of a course makes a lot of sense then. Courses in graduate studies not only help the researcher faculty, but also the student the privilege to access the researcher. However, at the undergraduate level, all of this could be so vague for the student that although the faculty might be able to put any kind of information generated in the studio in some perspective, the student has large chances of being on the flip side. 

But courses help structuring knowledge. They must be used to open up fields of inquiries. Courses could be broad enough to suit each one's interests. Ofcourse, it largely depends on the tutor how he/she conducts the course. Passive interactions never help, unless you have a great set of students. But why am i writing all this? Because I want to get out a lot of garbage out of my head. I have been somehow strongly thinking that course modules are being "tested" on students here, improvised and applied to "better" places thereof. I may be horribly wrong here, but as I said, this is just to remove all the junky debate that I have been having in my head since some time now. There is so much ambiguity in the course structures itself that I have been seeing (since one could interpret all of it in so many ways and do it in so many different types) that I have come to believe that the focus is not that the student gains, but the focus is pointed inward to the faculty.

Why do I think all this? I have become quite suspicious of things around me...May be it's all because of the political games that intelligent people keep on playing all the time. It's better to be aware than feel bad later! Atleast the impact of shock is lesser...