Every year during the months of April and May when MBA students leave for their summer internship, it is time for the faculty to face blackboards and enter the learning mode.

What was previously the strength of only the very premier b-schools, a growing number of private and upcoming b-schools too are investing in Faculty Development Programmes (FDPs) in order to upgrade the knowledge, teaching and research skills of an increasingly inexperienced teaching workforce. As a side-benefit, the schools are gaining brand visibility in academic circles and some are also scoring higher in b-school ratings.

Lasting between two to three days at a time, these FDPs are like boot-camps that introduce young management faculty to contemporary teaching methodologies, management research and software packages that are to be taught as part of the MBA curriculum. Usually the deans or directors of a reputed b-schools take these sessions and pass on their experience of teaching to the faculty.

A lot of young people are joining private b-schools as faculty right after they pass out of the PGDM program of a B or C grade institute. These people have no prior experience or exposure to teaching. For them, FDPs are very useful and better than on-the-job training, says Dr Madan Mohan, Dean of the Delhi-based Jagan Institute of Management Studies (JIMS), which conducts FDPs once every three months.

The FDPs are especially helpful to b-schools that are having to hire fresh management graduates from lesser known institutes as faculty, owing to a systemic shortage of experienced management faculty in India.

In New Delhi for example, there is an active ‘FDP circuit’ of sorts among half a dozen well-known private b-schools that trains inexperienced faculty from newer private b-schools.

Delhi’s Fortune Institute of International Business (FIIB) conducts two to three FDPs every year between April and October. Their FDPs last 2-5 days and are attended by 20-30 faculty members from all across Delhi. Similarly, the Apeejay School of Management, Dwarka at Delhi conducts three FDPs every year, one of which is funded by the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE). Well-established private Delhi b-schools such as the International Management Institute (IMI), Management Development Institute, Gurgaon and Fore School of Management also conduct FDPs.

Young faculty, though knowledgeable about the course content, often know little about teaching methods beyond delivering lectures. Says Dr AK Puri, Director of FIIB, The lecture format is basically spoon-feeding and is boring for students. So we suggest methods to bring excitement to the classroom during the FDPs. Some of the teaching methods we talk about are the case-study method, role-plays, simulation games, crosswords and outbound training.

FDPs that teach the case-study method garner the highest participation, with upto 35 participants at a time.

At the Apeejay School of Management, it is FDPs on management subjects that receive the highest participation. Our sessions on quantitative analysis and tools of management receive the best response, says Apeejay’s Director Dr Alok Saklani.

Other FDPs concentrate on specific areas of management such as finance, marketing or the use of statistical packages such as SPSS.

According to Prof S Garimella, Chairman of IMI’s MDP and Consultancy Committee, FDPs translate into a direct benefit for MBA students. Many faculty members need updating and the knowledge of new pedagogical tools so that they can make their classroom sessions more interactive and make content and delivery of courses more interesting for students, Prof Garimella says.

While FDPs help b-schools make the best of the situation in what is clearly a scarcity of experienced faculty, it also brings along many side-benefits for the b-schools.

FDPs help by establishing our brand in the academic circles. It gives an opportunity for bonding among faculty of various colleges. Participants keep in touch with each other and share knowledge even after the FDP ends, says Dr Puri.

Prof Garimella agrees, We are able to build a good network of professors due to FDPs. Sometimes we end up doing joint research programmes with faculty we met at FDPs.

However, there are some hidden benefits too. Some such as Dr Madan Mohan of JIMS openly admit that FDPs help the b-school get a better position in various b-school rankings and that is a major driver for them to conduct these programmes.

Dr Puri however disagrees with this view, In fact, your FDPs will get participation only if you have a good rank. So the FDPs are dependent on rankings and not the other way round.

Schools such as Apeejay have also found it easier to hire faculty as a result of their FDPs, says Dr Saklani. FDPs have helped create goodwill for us in the market and often when people apply to us for faculty positions and we ask them how they came to know about us, they mention that they were attracted to us after they attended our FDP, he says.

There is no institutional effort to help teachers in the management sector grow. We are in a situation where teachers are mostly left to themselves for their upgradation. This is where FDPs help the most, Dr Puri concludes.