Infusing Design Thinking Mindset in Engineering Education—A Pioneering Step Towards Excellence and Sustainability

An engineer must be a problem solver. But today, an engineering education became a business for some avaricious individuals to mass manufacture an engineer. Hence the real practical learning has been washed out from education in engineering and almost all streams. In materialistic world today, every individual wants fast and easy go solution for all kind of problems. Evolution of technological era aimed to make life easy and comfortable for human being, but the sustainability was always overlooked. Design Thinking approach with system thinking, in turn focuses on human comforts and unmet needs of user. It comprises the creative process through which we can get innovative solutions for complex problems. This paper describes the efforts in introducing the Design Thinking mindset across the engineering disciplines at Gujarat Technological University (GTU), Ahmedabad, India. GTU has introduced Design Engineering subject in AY 2014–15 from 3rd semester onwards which is based on Design Thinking approach. To spread the awareness related to Design Thinking as a new approach, University is organizing Faculty Development Program continuously, in 1.5 years total 34 FDP have been organized and more than 2100 faculty members from around 125 engineering colleges across Gujarat state affiliated with GTU has been trained. The paper describes the efforts for implementation and constraints faced, statistical analysis of the feedback for the subjects, pedagogical innovation through syllabus, impact analysis for various stakeholders etc.