Hindi movies in academic curriculum

BHUBANESWAR, Aug 3: Apart from their well-known entertainment and commercial aspects, mainstream Hindi films also have the academic facet.
Keeping the fact in mind, Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar is trying out a fairly new concept, wherein acclaimed films like Swades, Chak De India and Manthan would be included as case studies in ‘Community Mobilisation and Institution Building’ course in XIMB’s second year rural management programme.
The course attempts to relate the film’s characters to the theory. The students are asked to watch the movie before coming to class.
During the class itself, intermediate clippings of important moments in the film are shown. This leads to greater class participation, and boosts the students’ understanding of the subject, as the films have a long-lasting effect on their memories, due to the effective use of the visual medium.
Prof Niraj Kumar, the faculty conducting the course claimed that due to the introduction of such audio-visual measures, there has been a marked improvement in the efficiency of his teaching methodology.
The course has also been well received by the students. XIMB is consistently getting positive feedback from the students about this course, since its introduction in the current form.
Similar use of movies as part of pedagogy has been done in a few courses of the business management course as well.