Engineering curriculum
Prof-Today we are gonna do an interesting exercise.
Rohan –I am very excited sir. Please
proceed sirji.
Prof-Today you will decide on your own syllabus.
Rohan- Sir but usually professors
design the curriculum for us and we just prepare according to it.
Prof- But that day I realized
something; do my students enjoy the way I teach? Do they enjoy the learning process?
Am I able to give them the knowledge they want to learn? Am I able to build
confidence within them? Am I able to develop and refine the thought process
required for their future career?
Then I realized I am not able to
achieve this in my entire 28 years of teaching.
So, from now on I will make learning
a happy journey.
So Today I expect all of you to
design your own curriculum and through this activity, I will explore your
thoughts and channel them into creating a very dynamic curriculum.
Rohan- I am very excited to
participate in this activity.
Anjali- Sir so how will we proceed?
Prof- All 5 students of this batch
will get turns to express their views in front of me and I will make a proper
note of all your thoughts. So let’s begin.
Anjali- Sir in lab sessions, we are
first taught the theory, and requirements, and then our teachers give us a
demo, and then sometimes we get to perform the experiment, or sometimes the
teacher performs and we just watch the fun.
So, sir, I was thinking of a system
where we would be asked to design an experiment for the given aim and we need
to think of some way of proving a given law or a principle or hypothesis and
present it to our professor.
In that manner, we would learn how to think
logically and our reasoning skills would grow beyond horizons.
Suppose for
eg if we are to prove Norton’s theorem then we need to first design a circuit
for this and present it to our professor. In that process, we would learn many
things like how current flows in a circuit and how can we practice reductionism
in circuit design (making the circuit small without altering its effects).
Prof- Great thoughts come from simple
reasoning! I am very impressed with your method. Keep it up!
Well, we can all do that and at the end of presenting ideas and designing an
experiment, we can actually tell what the real design should look like!
Or why the other designs are not
correct, what are their flaws, etc.
In this
manner, we can also teach innovation to our students so that they can excel at the industrial level and earn fame.
We can also use various software for
this like AutoCAD, Vspice, etc so as to promote digital skilling.
Tanya- Sir I wanted to mention one thing too. Why our engineering curriculum is so
theory oriented? Can’t it be more of a practical syllabus?
Like if we have 21 credits, only 10
of them are for practicals. I feel that for us to be good engineers, workshops,
practicals, and industry exposure are very much necessary from the first day
itself.
Prof- That’s a nice thought
Tanya!! That's exactly the way engineering is taught in Russia and other
developed countries- more vocational skills and industrial exposure as compared
to theory. Because in order to perform a practical you anyways would need the
theory or the science behind it, so, if you are being allotted say 2 or 3 days
for a particular workshop-the first day
you will definitely be reading the related theory and then proceed towards
practical and workshop.
Anirban-Sir I feel colleges must give
more choices to their students in today’s competitive world only knowing
facts and science would not suffice, you need to know the latest technology in
this field as well. And the best way to learn the latest technologies in the
domain is through internships, workshops, and industrial visits. Without these, we wouldn’t be able to know the latest technology in the domain.
Prof- Yes, you are right! I will put
your ideas before the syllabus deciding committee.
Ananya- Sir, a new system should be
introduced wherein the college would be awarding grades for participation in
sports, co-curricular activities, debates, other inter-college activities, hackathons,
participating in active research, etc.
That would encourage more and more students
to pursue their interests and hobbies at an early age which is extremely
necessary for being not only a successful engineer but a truly responsible and productive
citizen of India. This would also help in placements because nowadays companies
are also focusing on extra-curriculum activities too.
Prof- Yeah! Excellent Ananya!!
I will definitely look into it.
Eva- We as engineers should be
learning more about machines, the principles behind their workings, and how we can
develop new machines. For all these, we need to open up the machines and see
their internal parts.
We study in
books about the working of a refrigerator but how many of us have actually
opened up a refrigerator and tried to understand its different parts because
the parts vary in real life and can deviate a lot from the diagram given in the
book that we as engineers must know.
So, I suggest there should be
practical workshops within our course wherein we would be asked to make a
working prototype of an air conditioner/drone/a software cybersecurity
tool, etc from the very first day itself and not when we go to third or fourth
year because we learn a lot from practical things than from theoretical
subjects.
And as engineers, if we synchronize practical and theoretical knowledge, then we could work wonders.
That’s the way engineering is taught
in Germany and the results are astonishing.
Prof- Excellent!! I thank all of you
for your valuable suggestions.
The curriculum of engineering has not
been modified for decades whereas it should be modified every year to include
new technologies right from 1st year itself. That is something that
we should do.
Old syllabus and lack of practical
knowledge is something that’s making us underrated engineers as compared to our
Russian or western counterparts.
And in terms of research, we are also
lacking far behind our Chinese or western counterparts. So, we must focus on research
right from the 2nd or 1st year itself for competing with our
Chinese or western counterparts!
References:
The views expressed above are the personal
opinions of the writer.
Credits:
Anubhab Majumdar
Write your Feedback here:
https://forms.gle/C3ybXMPPUaJBgP618
FOLLOW US ON:-
INSTAGRAM :
https://bit.ly/coep_blogs_insta
LINKEDIN:
https://bit.ly/coep_blogs_linkedIn
YOUTUBE:-
Comments
Post a Comment