Present day students like to make decisions on their own and plan their future by themselves. Employers expect students to have multi-disciplinary competency plus leadership skills. Both student aspirations and demands of the workplace have become highly diverse. Realising the changing sceanrio and in its endeavour to provide quality education, VIT University offers the Fully Flexible Credit System (FFCS)™ in its academic curriculum.
Fully Flexible Credit System
As part of continuous improvement in providing quality education, VIT University introduced the Fully Flexible Credit System (FFCS TM) into its academic curriculum. By this, the students can register for courses of their choice and alter the pace of learning within the broad framework of academic course and credit requirements. FFCSTM allows students to decide their academic plan and permits students to alter it as they progress through their course. The slot-based timetable, coupled with internet based Course Registration in each semester, helps individual students to choose the course they want to study, time of attending a class and even the teacher. Thus, students can make their own timetable and each student in a class may have a different timetable of his / her own.
Under FFCSTM, students choose courses from a ‘basket of courses’ classified under University Core, University Elective, Programme Core and Programme Elective. Students are encouraged to choose interdisciplinary courses from other engineering schools which will help them develop additional skills.Important courses will also be made available in both semesters for students who require it.
How It Works?
FFCS is Fully Flexible Credit System. All courses in VIT employs this FFCS system.
As soon as you get enrolled in the college, you will be given a course flowchart which specifies which course is prerequisite to which course. For example, if a student wishes to enroll himself for course ‘English for Engineers 2’ the he or she can do so only after having registered for course ‘English for engineers 1’ and likewise.
Subsequently, every semester the school offers courses in different slots. If you have engineering geology it is offered in may be A1,A2,B2,G1 and even in these slots they may offer more than one faculty.
Before the beginning of each semester, the students are offered a two-hour window to select courses for their upcoming semester, they have the liberty to choose among the faculties and select the time slots for the opted courses.
As mentioned earlier a student can select which ever course he or she likes based on the credit rating of the subjects, a student can select credits from anywhere between 16 to 27 credits. A credit is 50 min per week for a theory course and 2*50 min for lab course.
University electives are 6 credits which you are allowed to pick from any department you like may be electronics, electrical, computers even from your own program electives.
At the end of the Programme, each B.Tech student is expected to have the following credit distribution in various disciplines: Engineering (64%), Science (20%), Humanities (8%), and Management (8%). Ample options are give under the University Electives to choose interdisciplinary courses from other Engineering Schools, which will help the student to develop additional skills.
*****But for the first semester you don’t have to worry about it as your proctors will set your timetable.*******
The slot-based timetable, coupled with a campus-wide Course Registration in each semester, helps individual students to choose the course they want to study, time of attending a theory / lab class and even the teacher. Thus, students can make their own timetable and each student in a class may have a different timetable of his / her own. Depending on the interest developed by students in their own discipline or another during their study for a degree, they can choose either an ‘Honors’ or ‘Minor’ credential. University Electives will definitely be an attraction to students to extend their knowledge beyond their areas of specialisation. Students having high grades will also get a chance to complete the credit requirements earlier and take up Teaching / Research Assistantships in their final year of studies. They can pursue student / research projects in parallel too. Other features of FFCS include: Add or Drop registered courses to balance workload, Course Withdrawal to maximize grades, Course Auditing to gain additional knowledge, Registering for M.Tech level courses for in-depth experience, Course Substitution option, Grade Improvement, Credit Transfer for course migration, etc.
Let’s hear what the students of VIT have to say about the Fully Flexible Credit System
The name fully flexible credit system might mislead you to think that the credits can be arranged by you on your own (within a subject). But, that’s not the case. It means they provide you with the courses with a specific number of credits and you have to choose the subject with those number of credits and then add it to your existing courses.
For eg. – PHY1001 is the Course Code for Physics which is a 5 credit course. The course is divided into 3. One for theory, another one for lab and the third one for project. Now, this does not mean that you can take 3 credits out of 5 or 1 of the project component out of 5 (to clear the misconception that might arise).
Now, when you have bagged up all your courses the next thing that you have to decide is, What should be given more importance? the Slot or the Faculty.
So, a slot is what usually decides your time table and exam. Keeping in mind a detailed knowledge about slots is important during Course Registration. While you are arranging the slots keep in mind no slots should clash in between. This cannot be the case that you have 1 or more subject in the same slot. VIT wants you to attend all of them and obviously vice versa never happens(pun intended).
So, if you prioritize slot it’s up to you take the best teacher within that slot. For this most of the students reach out to their seniors for suggestions/feedback.
Now, if you really know a fabulous teacher and it does not bother you about the slot. And you want to take his or her classes then do it accordingly.
On the whole I think here at VIT with the introduction of Fully Flexible Credit System, the students are given the choice to make their time table, so it’s their responsibility to do it wisely. An effective timetable will surely make his/her life at VIT easy and also promise a bright future.
What you should remember
FFCS stands for Fully Flexible Credit System. In FFCS, you can view the slots(timings) in which a particular faculty is available and choose the slots that suit you the best.
But since the number of seats in each faculty’s class is limited, you won’t always be able to choose your favourite faculty and your desired slots. In the first semester, choice of slots will be based on your VITEEE rank and second semester onwards the college will consider your CGPA and attendance as well.
Salient Features
- Choice in the order of selection of courses for each semester.
- Choice in the timings / time slots in the selection of courses.
- Choice in the selection of number of courses per semester.
- Choice of preparing his / her own Timetable and Academic Plan.
- Balanced curriculum with engineering, science, humanities and management courses.
- Ample opportunities to do inter-disciplinary courses.
- Soft on slow learners by offering important / common courses in all semesters.
- Optional Summer / Intersession semester to do courses.
- Opportunity of under graduate research experience.
- Value addition with double Major / Minor / Honours option.
- Branch change option in B.Tech. at the end of first year.
All the best!
