Proceedings of the International Conference on Transformations in Engineering Education

The Corporate Member Council of the American Society for Engineering Education together with IFEES recently surveyed engineering stakeholders around the world to develop a series of competencies and characteristics necessary for a modern engineer to work in a global environment. This study and others send a clear message that we must improve the focus on fundamentals, teach more real-world thinking, increase coverage of emerging areas, teach problem-solving skills, offer more instruction on oral and written communications, instill in students an awareness of ethical, environmental, and social issues, and so on. These findings have significant overlap with those of that National Academy of Engineers [1] and National Science Foundation [2] as well as the outcomes sought by accrediting bodies such as ABET, IChemE, and Engineers Australia. In addition, we must not increase the total number of credits or time required to complete a degree. It is clear that these goals are not achieved by traditional engineering education and that a major transformation is necessary to create an engineering ecosystem that supports the development of global competencies. What is the role of teaching, course, and curriculum reform in this transformation?

While global challenges (such as changes in demographic structure, demands for better living conditions, sustainability, climate change, and other changes in nutrition, water sources, health, energy, environment) are becoming a part of our daily life, the importance and the necessity of the graduates who have global attributes are becoming more and more important. Since most of these global challenges are much more related to the engineering issues, engineering education with a global perspective is needed. The competences to achieve global engineering attributes can not only be obtained from one engineering college. Many engineering schools are requesting at least a term for study abroad. In year 2020, 7 million of the students will be mobile globally, and the aim for the European Commission is that 20 % of graduates will take at least study abroad.

In India, over 5,000 engineering colleges affiliated to different universities offer conventional engineering education. Teachers in colleges do the teaching, but universities rigidly control the programme of study, syllabus, and examinations. The quality of education is a matter of concern. MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) permit learners to access and benefit from the teaching by renowned professors. MOOCs offer an unprecedented opportunity to revitalise education. These cause complete disintermediation of the university system, making them very affordable; however, they have several shortcomings in their present form. Students enrolling for a MOOC still have to conventionally study the subject for their degree. Complete absence of physical group activities in a classroom under a teacher’s mentoring is another serious issue. Conduct of practical sessions in laboratories is an important aspect of engineering education, for which MOOCs offer no alternative.

We propose a blended MOOC model for adoption in India. It envisages acceptance of MOOC grades by a university towards its degrees. It also stipulates an important role for local teachers, who will use a ‘flipped classroom’ model of teaching. They will conduct group discussions and problem-solving sessions rather than mere lecturing and locally give and evaluate assignments of which the marks will be factored in the final grade. They will also conduct laboratories where needed. They will thus mentor and guide students, under their charge.

ABET is a not-for-profit, nongovernmental accreditor of degree granting programs in applied science, computing, engineering, and engineering technology. ABET uses a peer review process to evaluate academic programs at the associate, bachelor, and master’s levels. This paper discusses the evolution of the ABET accreditation system from an input-based system which focused on what was being taught, to an outcomes-based system which focuses on what is being learned.

The present status and the challenges and opportunities ahead for engineering education, both at the national level and at the global level, are explored in this paper. There are many distinctive and unique characteristics of the new millennium which place new demands on the engineers we produce. We are living and working in a world that is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, requiring innovative strategies for educating our engineers. The emerging accreditation systems and processes and the Washington Accord Graduate Attributes provide guidelines for producing global engineers ensuring global mobility. Nationally, we have several policy pronouncements over the years, which serve as drivers of change. The recent global university rankings have attracted worldwide attention of the academic leaders and other stakeholders and are serving to determine university policies and practices. We have to create research-intensive institutions in our country if we have to figure among the top of these lists. Some of the issues of concern are discussed. Professional ethics and human values are important for engineers in the practice of the profession and need to be inculcated through both curricular and extracurricular means. As for the agenda ahead, the destination is reasonably clear, and there are several national policies and reports which serve as the road map, but several hurdles and challenges have to be overcome in order for us to bridge the gap between the potential we possess and its actual attainment.

The twenty-first century poses several grand challenges: clean water, clean air, climate change, energy, biodiversity, and sustainability. We need to

invent

,

innovate

, and

entrepreneurially

implement solutions to solve the mega problems. The solutions to these problems will not be solved by a select few. Billions all over the world will have to contextualize the solutions to their problems and implement them. As we democratize innovation and entrepreneurship, the twenty-first-century Engineering Colleges will play a central role in inventing, innovating, and educating

entrepreneurially

students who can solve problems. We need Engineering Colleges all over the world to be involved in the process.

The twenty-first century is witnessing ubiquitous technology; workforce economically active beyond normal retirement age, learning lifelong, interacting, and mobile globally; businesses with markets and supply chains spanning the world; growing demand and enrollments in professional engineering programs; diverse engineering education providers; worldwide comparison of engineering schools; and international recognition of accredited engineering programs and mobility of students. The surge in demand for professional qualifications in emerging nations led to the scenario of undergraduate engineering education being akin to liberal arts education with diverse career options. Recent decades also saw widening of engineering field covering many new disciplines which flourished at the interfaces with other disciplines. Yet in every country, employers are able to find only a fraction of graduates with requisite knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes suitable for employment. In other words there is a need to rethink the way engineers are trained and to align the curriculum to the needs of the twenty-first-century world. Sharing of best practices and continual improvement in all aspects of engineering education are desired for preparing engineers for the twenty-first century.

The trend towards globalization affects engineering educators on three interrelated dimensions: a dramatically new landscape of world economy, the next generation of engineering job, and the education of the “next gen” engineer.

Never has the speed of development in the area of engineering been as accelerated as it is today, as we observe the enormous and driven growth of the area of engineering. Today’s tendencies require concerted new efforts in engineering education – or in other words, the importance of pedagogy in the field of engineering is growing enormously. These changes strongly demand new didactic and pedagogic paradigms. The International Society of Engineering Education (IGIP) offers to contribute to the relevance and pedagogical aspects related to developing educational concepts in engineering education.

Transformation of engineering education is taking place all over the world to address the needs of the twenty-first century. Gone are the days when engineering graduates will automatically gain employment; the world now does not need just any engineer – the world needs good engineers who are well prepared to take on the challenges of this century. Realizing these challenges, what is our role as engineering academics in this transformation? As individuals, how can an academic teaching engineering students transform engineering education? While we may feel powerless and doubt that what we do as individuals can make a difference, it is important to remember that transformation can take place at different levels: individual or grassroots, departmental or faculty, and institution and nationwide levels. While change can start from the top-down, sustaining it from the bottom-up is just as crucial.

This paper presents a teaching method that effectively integrates multimedia resources, software and chalk and board teaching. This method enhances the learning of fundamental concepts of digital signal processing (DSP) in a large class. It follows the application-based approach of introducing an audio or video application. The concepts linked to the application are demonstrated using software. The math associated with the concept is worked on the board. This method helps the student to understand the difficult concepts of DSP. It is effective in a large class in an affiliated system. In an affiliated system, the curriculum is prescribed by the university. The teacher has little or no flexibility in the framing of the curriculum. The content, the number of hours and the pattern of the questions are all dictated by the university. This method has proved effective within these constraints.

Information retrieval is one of the most important technologies of present times due to vast availability of information. Lots of systems with varying information are available through the Internet. Useful information can be retrieved from these systems. The Web is a crucial application available on the Internet. It provides a medium to study and learn various subjects in the education domain. Large amount of E-content is also available on internet sites like NPTEL, OCW, OCC, CORE, UNIVERSIA, TOCWC, KOCWC, RuOCW, BigBlueButton and YouTube. NPTEL has covered more than 600 courses which include recorded video lectures. There is no search engine available providing a mechanism to search content within these videos. All these monolithic lecture videos are around of an hour’s duration. Learners face difficulty when searching a keyword-relevant content in these videos. A keyword-based system to search within a single lecture video or across multiple videos is required to reduce the time to use this content. It will be useful to have an efficient information retrieval system helping many students to search the NPTEL content. In this study, a search and ranking system is proposed for the video content of NPTEL lectures.

The developing market economy of our country makes greater demands for engineering education. On the other hand, the training of student’s basic theories, concepts, knowledge, and basic skills must be strengthened; also the cultivation of innovative spirits and practical abilities should be carried out. It is required that while broadening specialist field of engineering education, basic theories and fundamental qualities should be emphasized. This paper presents culture of learning by doing through incorporating mini project concept in small group of student at first year engineering. It results to develop problem-solving and presentation skills, excellent team spirit, increase research skills, self-confidence, attitudinal change, and sense of achievement in the students. An example of mini project is also presented.

Collaboration between industry and academia can happen at various levels. It is for mutual benefit and can make meaningful contribution to the society. Interaction can happen for various reasons including curriculum design and development, training and skill development, basic and applied research, technology development and transfer. This paper discusses the efforts made by NMAM Institute of Technology, Nitte, an autonomous Institution to utilize this interaction in order to cover some of these areas and thereby enhance the teaching–learning experience of students and teachers and contribute to overall growth and development of the Institution.

Advanced Computer Architecture is a core subject of the B.Tech course in Computer Engineering in Delhi University, taught during the sixth semester. The subject is a conundrum of concepts derived from various subdisciplines of computer science such as computer organization and architecture, networks, parallel processing, operating systems and algorithms. The pedagogical method adopted in the classroom to impart knowledge on this subject is therefore as vital as is the content, its delivery and the use of practical tools. This paper analyses the impact of using the proposed overlapped concepts methodology for teaching ACA, on students’ learning experience. The aim is to enhance the understanding of complex scenarios involving multiple concepts, evaluate alternative solutions and design systems – an essential graduate attribute. The analysis indicates that the technique of seeding relevant fragments of a set of related concepts within the larger context of a base concept currently being focused on sharpens the cognitive ability to identify linkages between concepts, helps build complex scenarios and triggers ideation.

Today’s global world of education requires that current learning practices have to be revolutionized to challenge the traditional system of learning. There is a passion for the establishment of intelligent environment to radically transform our society to enable the different kinds of learners. Intelligent learning environment refers to a category of educational software in which the learner is ‘put’ into a problem-solving situation. This learning environment is quite different from traditional courseware which is based on sequential teaching and evaluation based on sequence of questions and answers.

This paper focuses on showcasing the use of modern tool, LabVIEW

TM

, that can help to make a difference to teaching and learning experiences, by enriching the learning process. LabVIEW

TM

tool provides a quantitative, time-based simulation environment as well as real-time implementations, where students formulate a solution to a given problem and get feedback on how well a solution works. They can ‘see’ (visualize) the things happening and understand the concepts better. The simulation is a realistic visualization and animation of a mathematical problem. As we know, a visual type of learning provides powerful results for better learning, and the use of this tool has proven better results. In this paper, the use of this tool in teaching the course Virtual Instrumentation and concepts of digital signal processing C++ has been discussed. Better learning by students has reflected in their performance in exams as well as projects. This lays a foundation for active learning and smart class approach.

For any knowledge-intensive undertaking (such as a stream or branch), it is critical to frame its birth and growth to understand where the discipline stands and what innovative endeavors lead to the creative accomplishments currently witnessed in its knowledge products. In this research paper, we describe the research and development of a knowledge platform called Interactive Knowledge and Modeling Techniques for Engineering Education Research. This research paper mainly describes with the explicit goal to provide a mechanism to better understand the emerging field of engineering education research and, more importantly, provide members of the engineering education research community with tools and infrastructure which allow them to understand the structure and networks of knowledge within the community at any given time. Using a theoretical model that combines ultra-large-scale data mining techniques, network mapping algorithms, and time-series analysis of knowledge product evolution, we attempt to characterize and provide insights into the topology of the networks and collaborations within engineering education research.

The various changes to the automobile systems and the integration of the systems have made more challenging for becoming a successful automobile engineer. Various reforms are taking place in the engineering education at the national and international levels. To stand in the competitive age, the engineering institutes are supposed to get accredited by NBA New Delhi and in the coming days to also get accredited by ABET – an International Accreditation Board. Wipro Technologies have started a giant project entitled “Mission10X,” through which they have targeted to train 25000 engineering faculties. The main motto is to make teaching–learning process more effective and interesting by various means. Using puzzles is one of them. It has been well documented that crossword puzzles are an effective teaching tool. Not to mention that they are enjoyable to complete. Puzzles can be solved individually or in a group. Solving puzzles in a group will also encourage the students for group discussions and will develop their intrapersonal and interpersonal skills. In this paper, the puzzle-based learning approach has been discussed with its advantages, especially for Automobile Engineering Education.

Beyond the physical arrangement of a classroom, a psychological environment is also created, based on the interaction of key players in the classroom, namely, students and teachers, and their interaction which creates class dynamics. Moos’s work, which has permeated the literature on classroom environment, is based on three essential areas of classroom environment: (1) relationship dimension, which focuses on the interpersonal relationships between students and students and the teacher in a classroom; (2) personal development dimension, which centers on individual characteristics of the classroom member; and (3) system maintenance and change dimension which includes attributes such as classroom control and order as well as responsiveness to change. The process of academic audit captures the classroom dynamics in an environment of ease and comfort. Classroom dynamics here refers to delivery effectiveness, learning experience of students with different learning preferences and styles, and factors that hinder the effectiveness of both teaching and learning. A detailed audit process is laid down including the guidelines to auditors and postaudit counseling to faculty. The audit is designed to capture the five important dimensions of a teacher, namely, subject knowledge, preparation, communication, class control and concern for students, and opportunity to interact. The audit process is going to map the individual teacher and the course on a ten-point scale with appropriate weights for the five dimensions. Weightages for dimensions are decided based on the opinions of the senior faculty and academicians. Based on the scores, the faculty competency enhancement is planned and appropriate actions are initiated to train the faculty in the specified dimensions. The outcome of the audit is evident in terms of improved learning outcomes, enhancement of teaching deliveries and competency, collaborative learning, and good academic environment.

The basis of the Indian Information Technology and Information Technology Enabled Services (IT and ITES) is changing from contract programming and business process outsourcing (BPO) to full life cycle development and end-to-end process ownership. These developments require professionals with better entrepreneurial and innovative skill sets. The skills depend largely on intrinsic motivation that should be fostered in colleges, if not earlier. As per self-determination theory (SDT), intrinsic motivation relies on a sense of competence, relatedness, and autonomy. We hypothesize that teamwork is one of the potent techniques for addressing the three. The paper uses ethnography to compare two case studies at an IT department at a college that had teamwork as an integral part. It also covers limitations and future scope for the study.

Open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design. Open source tools may be viable alternatives to popular closed-source applications and some open source tools offer features or performance benefits that surpass their commercial counterparts (

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/O/open_source.html

,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

). We at BVBCET (BV Bhoomaraddi College of Engineering and Technology, Hubli) developed a wide range of Software Applications using Open Source Programming Tools and Technologies to meet the requirements of managing the Academic Information for autonomous engineering colleges. The applications developed using open source technologies include (i) Student Information Management System (SIMS), (ii) Student Assessment Management and Examination System (SAMS), and (iii) Examination Results (eResults). Brief overviews of these applications along with the benefits are presented in this paper. These tools were found to be very useful for managing and administering the information in an autonomous engineering college and well appreciated and used by the stakeholders for the last few years.

Rajarambapu Institute of Technology (RIT) is established in 1983. RIT has gained autonomy in 2011–2012. With the advent of autonomy, we take an opportunity to design curriculum and introduce innovative evaluation and assessment methods to ensure better learning. This paper discusses about curriculum development process of Information Technology Department. As a first step of curriculum design, process curriculum and cross curriculum competencies required are identified. According to the identified requirements, PEOs and POs are defined and then IT syllabus structure is formed based on the key areas. To support thinking competency, new assessment strategies are adopted such as programming test, mini project, quiz, demo, presentations, case studies, etc.

Indian Information Technology (IT) industry has witnessed unprecedented growth since the mid-1990s. Being a people-centric business, IT companies have continuously innovated to attract and retain talent needed to sustain the business growth. The rejection rate of on-campus recruitment performance has evidently indicated the necessity to enhance the students’ technical and behavioral knowledge and skills. Inadequacy in teaching and learning infrastructure such as faculty, industry-relevant content, powerful assessment methods, and accelerated learning aids has impacted employability. The Industry Readiness Program has become essential to bridge the skill gap for making the engineering graduates ready for the IT industry. Engineering students who successfully get exposure to such an industry readiness training program can become productive from day 1 in IT industry. This paper talks about the design and implementation of such an industry readiness. This program has also contributed a part of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) Fundamental Skills of Information Technology (FSIT) program along with other IT organizations for the students to augment them at par with the IT industry requirements.

The application of cloud computing in education not only relieves the educational institutions from the burden of handling the complex IT infrastructure management but also leads to huge cost savings. The motive of this paper is to encourage the usage of cloud computing in the education sector, especially during disaster for the smooth running of the system. Traditional techniques used for disaster recovery were very costly. The education sector could not afford this because of limited funds. But with the advent of cloud DR, it is now possible for education system to go for disaster recovery techniques for securing of data during disaster. In this paper, the various cloud computing-based disaster recovery techniques and their benefit to the schools and university systems have been discussed. The traditional education management systems have also been discussed and a model has been proposed for their implementation using the cloud computing platforms.

Today, with advancement in technology, teachers have been conscious about the quality of teaching. Teaching can be enhanced through information communication technology (ICT) tools in the education system for better understanding of the subject. Information communication technology can be utilized for the education sector. ICT can play a great role in formal and nonformal forms of education. Lots of companies are coming up with digital materials for poor students. Many are making specialized hardware to meet the requirement of the elementary education system.

RIT, established in 1983 as a self-financing institute, is well known for its continuous experiments, leadership in academic practices, and excellence in engineering education. In the journey so far since 2008 with the help of IUCEE, RIT has progressed in leaps and bounds right from curriculum development to teaching-learning process and assessment. The Institutional Performance is measured on the basis of competent curriculum, achieving course learning objectives in turn achieving program educational objectives and program outcomes of all the programs. Various IUCEE Faculty Leadership Institutes (FLIs), webinars, Virtual Academy courses, and visit to US universities have helped RIT in transforming itself from a well-known institute in western Maharashtra to one of the leading private institutes at the national level. In this paper, the attempt is made to present how this transformation took place. With the help of IUCEE, RIT shifted from the old paradigm of one-way lecturing to two-way joyful learning experiences with better, advanced technical knowledge and globally adopted advanced pedagogical tools. And also it explains new practices we learned and followed and its impact on students’ result and overall students’ satisfaction index (teaching index).

Energy consumption, material application, packaging, and recyclability are the major areas to be considered for greener electronic products with reduced environmental effects and increased eco-efficiency. Design for green electronics includes lead-free solders, conductive adhesives, environmentally friendly packaging and design technologies, LCA and assessment, life cycle cost analysis, and data management. Engineering graduates should be taught sustainability, its principles, and how these principles can be incorporated into the design and manufacturing processes. Engineering students have to be exposed to design for the environment, directives, environmental law, technology, waste management, and electronic waste recycling. This paper gives introduction to green electronics, sustainability principles, curriculum, and content, teaching, and learning methods needed for green electronics. This paper analyzes the content necessary and the methods for educating the engineers for sustainability, problem solving, and the skills required. This paper enlightens the reader of the content, skills, and the design methods for sustainable engineering.

Human beings are ethical beings. They judge human actions as good or bad based on their mere understanding of “ethics.” But this is not adequate for professionals to judge their actions as good or bad. They need knowledge of “applied ethics.” For example, physicians need medical ethics; lawyers require legal ethics, etc. Similarly, engineers need “engineering ethics” for their professional tasks, whether it is about designing machines or innovating technology, etc. No doubt, they deserve appreciation for their professional tasks, which they carry out through rationality and quantitative aptitude. But mere rationality and quantitative skills could hold them accountable for societal insensitiveness and engineering disasters. They cannot shirk their responsibility for engineering disasters that are the consequences of their designed products. So, it is imperative for them to incorporate “engineering ethics” in their professional tasks. In this context, this paper attempts to answer how “engineering ethics” is different from “ethics.” Why do engineers need to do a course on “engineering ethics”? Should it be made compulsory for engineering students? What to teach, how to teach, and who should teach this course? How should engineers integrate “engineering ethics” into their tasks? What type of responsibility do they have towards the society at large?

Nowadays, it can be observed that computer laboratories have encountered many challenges which prevent them to achieve their quality objectives. The management of computer laboratories is a time-consuming manual process which is often a tedious job of maintaining the records in books. In a university, the systems are maintained by the lab assistant/in-charge. To know about who is using the system, they maintain a lab record in which the user details are stored. But this can easily be modified and is not very reliable. In case of any theft, damage, and breakage of components, it is difficult to trace who the actual culprit is. This work helps the lab assistant/in-charge to trace the person who has committed theft, damage, and breakage to components by identifying the system ID.

We study the application of log tracking to educational data collected from the Department of Information Technology at Guru Nanak Institutions, Hyderabad, India. The results are automated and accurate and thoroughly help the lab assistant/in-charge in further enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the traditional processes. It can be used to analyze the existing work and identify existing gaps and further works. As our further work, we use our model as a process model to develop an appropriate system for any other technical institute; if found useful, this model can be adapted, so that the university will reach a higher academic standard.

In the twenty-first century, higher education institutions are under pressure to attract meritorious students and develop them as graduates with superior skills, pertinent capabilities, and right attitude. Achieving this requires adapting to flexible curricula – relevant to stake holders, creative delivery, and outcome-based learning. In this research, an effort has been made to redesign the curriculum of Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) program at Siddaganga Institute of Technology (SIT), an autonomous institute, in Karnataka, India, using quality function deployment (QFD). The methodology of research involved design of questionnaire for capturing the voice of customer (VOC) in the context of changing curriculum requirements that are synergistic with real time. Then data was collected using the questionnaire, from 148 stakeholders who included faculty, alumni, employers, and students. Further QFD was used to transform customer needs (VOC) into design requirements of curriculum. While analyzing the data, analytical hierarchical process (AHP) was employed as a prioritizing method. The results of the study indicated that to improve the IEM education in general, focus should be given on specific courses in the curriculum that are highly desirable to meet present-day challenges in the industries. Also the curriculum should adopt teaching–learning practices that produce competent engineers and managers with a flair for lifelong learning.

Engineering education in the Indian context has evolved over a long period of time having witnessed varied revolutions across the globe and having assumed strategic decisions at varied levels. Engineering education in India is, steadily, marching towards higher levels of maturity with sincere attempts to benchmark against renowned world standards. In order to, continuously, discover the scope for improvements, it is essential to observe the evolutionary trace on the timeline. This paper is a contribution in this direction.

Manual drafting improves spatial skills and helps to develop mental conversions into 3D reality, whereas computer-aided drafting is too successful because of being easy to draw complex drawings, time saving, easy editing, mass storage of drawings, and ample tools to draw complex shapes. The integration of manual drafting and the use of CAD software to draw engineering drawings bridge the gap between the spatial skills and mental conversion of 2D to 3D drawings with the advantages of computer-aided drafting as mentioned. Traditional methods of classroom teaching have proved out to be boring and inactive. Experiential learning through new techniques in Computer-Aided Engineering Drawing (CAED) classroom is a must to create excitation in the classroom and attain teaching-learning experience to the highest efficiency. This paper describes how the integration of manual and computer-aided drawing can be done indicating the Course Learning Objectives (CLOs), mapping of CLOs with Abet 3a to 3 k criteria, and chapter-wise evaluation scheme and also suggests different techniques of experiential learning and their methodology implemented in this course which enhance the manual and computer-aided drawing integration. This paper also clearly indicates the outcome of the techniques, with a significant improvement in the academic excellence of the students.

The outcome-based education (OBE) system is one of the emerging trends of education which helps students to progress in their professional career and makes teachers more creative about their teaching methodologies allowing them to improve the quality of teaching by adopting suitable teaching tools. The measurement of attainment of program outcomes is an important tool which provides a yardstick to visualize how far an institution has succeeded in delivering what it visualized. This paper provides a method by which the attainment of program outcomes can be quantified by using various tools like internal evaluation and various other surveys. This method is evolved and practiced in the department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, BMSCE since practicing OBE concepts. This method can be aptly applied by all colleges which are in the line of accrediting their program to the NBA.

The innovation curve has become saturated; the low-hanging fruit has been exhausted by traditional problem-solving approaches. Any advancement in the education sector from here forward requires a new thinking paradigm: design thinking. This paper documents the process of infusing design thinking into the minds of the education system’s greatest problem-solvers: policymakers, engineers/designers, educators, and students of high school, undergraduate, and graduate schools. Using the formation of the Education DesignShop as a case study, we analyze the benefits and points of contention when using a design thinking approach, typical of tangible product designs, in a large-scale application, the systemic reform of education.

Engineering graduates should have good critical and logical thinking. Apart from having book knowledge, the student should be able to solve present engineering problems keeping in mind the impact of it towards global, economic, and environment aspects. The traditional teaching methodology, being teacher centered with passive students, using blackboard and audiovisual presentations will not impart the skills required for a professional student. To impart self-learning and inquiry-based learning abilities which help students in lifelong learning process, changing the teaching methodologies and evaluating system is required. This paper presents the modern teaching-learning methodology based on activity-based inquiry-guided learning (IGL). It also elevates the results of its implementation as a case study. IGL is more student centered and gives more focus on learning rather than teaching. Along with the steps involved in designing activities, the assessment methods used are covered here. The IGL methodology which is student centered when integrated into curriculum promotes process skills, peer communication, critical thinking, student-teacher relationships, lifelong learning, and responsibility for one’s own learning.

A major concern in engineering education pertains to design fixation, which hinders the conception of novel ideas. The term design fixation refers to the designer’s reluctance (or inability, in some cases) to consider multiple strategies to formulate and solve a design need. The design fixation phenomenon severely limits creativity and results in pedestrian design solutions. The primary objective of this paper is to correlate the effect of the Indian engineering education with the extent of design fixation in the engineering students of different disciplines. This work provides a deeper understanding of the design fixation phenomenon by establishing a conceptual framework for the design process based on the theories of knowledge representation in cognitive science. It can provide crucial insights that will help students to overcome the adverse effects of fixation.

We propose a prepare, present, and publish (PPP) paradigm for online education in engineering colleges. We comprehensively survey various cost-effective avenues for digitizing and disseminating E-learning material based on the learners feedback. Most of these methods were implemented online and were evaluated based on survey polls and the learner’s feedback. Since it is a difficult proposition for all engineering colleges to adopt a common method owing to their demographic, economic, and social differences, we analyze the strategies on factors such as the complexity and privacy. These online teaching strategies help a teacher save his valuable time by incrementally adding and revising his content, which allows him to recollect a previously taught course and gives him a larger scope for learning newer courses. In a student’s perspective, learning becomes easier, particularly in case one is not very comfortable with the teacher’s accent or has not completely understood or missed out on a particular topic, for instance.

Meaningful learning is often regarded as the ultimate learning status for a learner, regardless of the learning environment. Digital signal processing (DSP) is a core paper for students of Electronics and Communication. Unlike other subjects, DSP is considered to be a tough subject by students. In this paper, we provide suggestions for instructors and designers so that they can promote the quality of learning. This paper was inspired by various research outcomes in pedagogical teaching methods with respect to digital signal processing in which many researchers have discussed on ways to improve a classroom environment. Those ideas are discussed in this paper and then supplemented with general advice and specific suggestions from the experience of the faculties who handle digital signal processing for quite some time.

Employability of engineering graduates has been an area of concern for academia and industry alike. Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham has attempted to bridge the gap by getting feedback from industry and creating a course that will address these issues.

The learner style plays a pivotal role in pedagogy. In this paper, we have presented the adoption of Felder and Silverman model to analyze the learning styles of the students and use the same in the design and delivery of data mining course. One group is found to be verbal learners and the other is visual learners. The control groups have 52 students. The experiment shows that appropriately tailoring the teaching style has resulted in better results. The results reveal that 90 % of the students scored above 70 %. Thus, we have concluded that matching the teaching style and learning style gives good result.

WiMAX is one of the latest broadband wireless technologies that supports applications like voice, video and surfing over very large geographical areas. WiMAX is seen as a technology that can solve the reachability problem in countries like India because of its wider reach. Connectivity and education is vital to any country to usher in economic growth, health care and improved entertainment services. Broadband wireless technologies like WiMAX have started providing cheap connectivity to schools and colleges. Telecommunication industry is also smart enough to quickly adapt to this new technology. In order to bridge the gap between industry and academia, there is a need for more flexible delivery and extensive study of such courses to satisfy the needs of telecommunication industry. The changing trends in telecommunication companies towards WiMAX deem it necessary to pod it to every engineering student. This paper presents a WiMAX hands-on lab for graduate and postgraduate students aimed to awaken students to this technology. The contents of lab have been designed based on the use of simulator like Qualnet, ns-2 or OPNET. We present a brief overview of experiments that can be performed on WiMAX using Qualnet and can be included in the subjects of wireless technologies. Learning outcomes of this lab are also presented.

This paper discusses details of the curricular reform effort to design an integrated learning experience in curriculum threads through mini-project in Electronics and Communication undergraduate. Traditionally, capstone projects because of their integrative nature are expected to provide an opportunity for the student to synthesize and demonstrate the learning that has happened across the program. Often it becomes difficult to choose problems for capstone projects that call for the application of the knowledge and skills acquired in all the curriculum threads. Mini-projects vertically integrated with each of the curriculum threads of the program are carried out by the students in the prefinal year and provide an opportunity to integrate knowledge and skills acquired in a set of courses belonging to the curriculum thread to solve complex engineering problems. Introduction of mini-projects also provides sufficient resolution to directly assess student learning outcomes in each of the curriculum thread. As these projects are carried out in teams, students are able to develop and demonstrate several professional competencies that are critical for engineering practice. The paper demonstrates that the theme-based mini-projects provide an integrated learning experience in a curriculum thread and help to develop curriculum design and modifications.

Education brings about holistic development of an ‘individual’ and depends on learning, which is engendering changes in knowledge, skill, and attitude. Both education and learning are essentially subjective processes. The developmental goals and needs and ways to realize them differ with almost every individual. The modalities of acquiring knowledge, skill, and attitude also vary widely. Therefore, it is important to understand individuals in the realm of education and learning. While there are many possibilities, Learning Style that describes relatively stable preferences of students to receive and process information appears to be more appealing to understand students. There are umpteen number of learning style models and instruments that are available. We surveyed them and zeroed on Felder–Soloman Index of Learning Styles (ILS). It is based on Felder and Silverman’s model and assesses preferences on four bipolar dimensions: Active–Reflective, Sensing–Intuitive, Visual–Verbal, and Sequential–Global. The paper discusses our experience of using it in a variety of courses.

Theory of machine is an important course of mechanical engineering, which develops students’ ability of system and concept design. The concept design of mechanical motion is the most crucial part in mechanical engineering design that plays a vital role in developing students’ creative ability. In the teaching process of this course, kinematic kit and modern design tools are used to guide the students to realize the concepts and it is believed that this lays a solid foundation for understanding of design of machine elements course. Model building has been done using elements available in kinematic kit. At the end of the course, analysis was done to measure the effectiveness of students learning and it is found that physical construction of a model helped students to generate ideas and resulted in better visualization and understanding of mechanisms. This pedagogical practice also helped students to understand the concept of motion change by introducing different kinematic elements.

Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) in its format has put a new spin on experimentation skills in engineering education. The National Board of Accreditation (NBA) in India has adopted the graduate attributes (GAs) in line with the program outcomes (POs) of ABET. Specifically, outcome (b) states that engineering graduates must have “an ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data.” While the ability to conduct experiments, as well as the ability to analyze and interpret data has been addressed by traditional laboratory courses, the ability to design an experiment presents a new challenge for teachers and students alike. The paper first discusses steps involved in design and conduct of experiments and analysis and interpretation of data/results, then a general process for experimental design and finally, presents an example of how this process is used to teach design of engineering experiments in a postgraduate program. The students were made to work in laboratory on an open-ended experimental design as a course project in addition to regular classroom activity. In the tutorial component of this course, students work through 7 multiweek modules that have been developed with a robust framework. Integrating design of experiments (DOE) into a course project builds teamwork, communication, and use of statistics in machining process in addition to enhancing the learning experience.

The laboratories play a significant role in the professional career of engineers. They strengthen the concepts learnt by the students in the classroom. Data Structure (DS) laboratory course in 2nd year of undergraduate Computer Science and Engineering aims to think logically to develop good programming skills by considering real-time applications. DS laboratory course has impact on learning of courses in higher semesters.

The paper presents

S

ample,

U

se DS,

C

hoose DS, and

C

hoose Problem (

SUCC

) tool kit to describe the activities for different categories’ like demonstration, exercises, structured enquiry, and open-ended experiments. The platform required to conduct the laboratory and usage of data structure for a given application is achieved through Sample and Use DS activities, respectively. Choose DS experiments focus on recognizing the suitable data structure for a given application. Depending on the data structure given, the students identify a suitable problem and implement as Choose application. These activities enhance the ability to identify and define data structure and problem formulation and design a program. The SUCC tool kit is compared with traditional method and study shows the higher learning curve in students. The SUCC tool activities are also analyzed and results show that 90 % of students are successfully able to use and choose DS in implementation of different applications.

The paper discusses the Open End Activity (OEA) initiated in the computer graphics laboratory course. The course includes assignments on basic concepts such as 2D/3D object creation, clipping, transformation, and open-ended experiments. The open end means no protocols to execute the task. The students are given the openness to choose the problem statement in computer graphics area. The different areas in which the open-ended experiments explored are gaming, simulation, and animation, such as car race game, story animation, and wireless network simulation. OEA is used to conduct open-ended experiments. It is a group activity, which is carried out by different teams. The activity is conducted in four different phases such as problem identification, design, implementation, and uploading video to the Internet. The rubric-based assessment is followed to evaluate the open-ended activity. OpenGL, an open source library, is used for the implementation of the assignments/open-ended experiments.

The OEA induces the students to develop problem identification, problem-solving skills, independent and creative thinking, willingness to explore new ideas, self-learning, and teamwork experiences. The authors’ observations indicate that the open-ended experiments achieve a, c, g, and k Program Outcomes (POs) of ABET. The results show that the average attainment of these POs is 7.6 on the scale of 10.

In this work, we attempt to leverage technology in the conventional teaching methods, to result in improved teaching–learning process. The improved teaching–learning process happens due to the shift from an input-based education system to outcome-based education (OBE) system. In an OBE system, the focus is on the learning by the student, and is measured by the competencies/skills developed by the student at the end of every course, and contributes to the overall attainment of skills at the time of graduation. The National Board of Accreditation (NBA) has specified through the Graduate Attributes (GAs), the abilities every engineering graduate needs to have acquired. The usual delivery methods in a course are lecture, tutorial, and laboratory. We discuss possible modifications in these traditional teaching methods by leveraging technology and include another self-study component. Every delivery method is discussed with the GAs being addressed. The methods are general and may be incorporated in any course.

This paper discusses development of project-based ‘product design and realization’ course for undergraduate students. The course offered at an early stage of the curriculum is aimed at providing engineering design and product realization skills to the students. Creating an appropriate learning experience in product design is challenging owing to its multidisciplinary nature. An innovative multidisciplinary design-to-realization approach is adopted in this course and student teams are required to design and build working prototypes for predefined products. This course brings a new perspective to the multidisciplinary approach to teaching product design. Introduction of project-based design experience at an early level provides students with an opportunity to develop capabilities to design complex systems in the future. Further, this approach facilitates meeting challenging requirements of several ABET-based educational outcomes: technical as well as professional.

In an effort to increase the richness and scope of students’ learning experience, the Industrial and Production Engineering program has recently upgraded its curriculum with manufacturing technology as the major thread. It is proposed to make the curriculum context based on ASME #150 Gate Valve. The purpose of this project is to provide a real-world, product-based framework to integrate and expand the learning experiences from different courses and lab exercises. As students are exposed to the design, manufacturing, and quality challenges presented by the project, they are better able to see the limitations and constraints that would otherwise be simply theoretical and easy to ignore. This paper gives an overview of the project and outlines some of the possible benefits as well as challenges that may have to be encountered while integrating the curriculum in this way.

Automotive electronics is a course that requires skills from multiple disciplines including, but not limited to, mechanical, control, computer science, and electronics. The course is introduced to address the needs of embedded and automotive industries, hence providing the necessary knowledge and skills required for those industries. The objective of the curriculum is to enhance learning and improve student’s implementation skills. In this paper, we propose to introduce the exercises including real-world case studies and experiential learning. The major challenge of teaching this course was to teach mechanical concepts for electrical science students and to develop electronics for mechanical systems. The practical demo sessions by automobile labs gave the desired foundation for the course. The engine management concepts were taught using a very popular simulation software, AT Electronics tool, which is a combination of electronics and diagnostics. This activity gave a real feel of engine management systems to learn how complex systems work and to diagnose faults with them. The paper also discusses another major activity in the form of course projects. The course projects resulted in the application of domain knowledge and improvement of skills by using appropriate tools. In addition to these activities, all regular classes included animations and video presentations to make the concepts clearer. Special lectures by industry experts were also arranged to give the students a wide perspective of the subject. The paper discusses the impact of these activities in the form of student feedback, placement results, and participation in technical events. This experiential learning helped the students to improve comprehensive application ability and innovative consciousness.

The heat and mass transfer is an important application-oriented course taught for working in the mechanical engineering arena and the other allied courses like automobile engineering and chemical engineering. The pedagogy for thermal engineering courses like heat transfer has undergone changes over the years through novel ways of industry participation, discussion of application-driven issues, facilitation of problem-solving skills, performance of analysis/design of thermal systems, and the use of computational tools. Albeit to these initiatives, the process has complicated due to the urgent need to update the course material with new technology issues and reduction in credit hours available to the thermal courses [

1

].

A segment of the students have an apprehension to this course owing the prerequisite of calculus knowledge and analytical skills as evidenced in thermal courses. In view of this, the heat and mass transfer course needs implementation of certain pedagogical tools to facilitate active learning by the student community. The implementation of course delivery based on Bloom’s taxonomy has improved the modus operandi of delivery of this lab course. The categorization of the experiments as demonstration, exercise, structured enquiry, and open-ended enquiry has given ample opportunity for the faculty to address the ABET 3a, 3b, 3c, 3d, 3e, 3g, and 3k criterion to a greater extent.

The paper presents Self-Study (SS) component as a pedagogical tool for enhanced learning in a set of identified course. The objective of the SS component is to enhance the understanding of the course beyond the classroom teaching. The traditional modes of course design, course delivery and course assessment provide less scope for in-depth learning of courses. Outcome-Based Education (OBE) is an effort to overcome limitations of traditional education by using many progressive pedagogical models, ideas, to meet

a-k

student outcomes of ABET and NBA. To meet the expectations of present engineering education, few courses of Electronics and Communication engineering programme are modified using SS component. Typical methods of SS component are course project, term paper/seminar, field work, modelling and simulation, case studies, proof of concept/prototype development, etc. The attainment of depth of learning is demonstrated using two activities, namely, course project and term of SS component. The student outcomes are assessed by using designed set of rubrics for each course-SS combination. The tradition mode of delivery facilitates the attainment of technical outcomes of ABET, whereas along with technical outcomes professional outcomes are also achieved through SS component. The assessment of attainment of student outcomes and student feedback of SS component act as inputs for the continuous improvement of teaching-learning process.

The National Board of Accreditation (NBA) in India has come up with a new requirement in its document published in January 2013 – which is a complete overhaul of what it was a few years ago. The expectations of NBA for an engineering educational institution are now driven by graduate attributes – the qualities that a graduating student has to demonstrate for having possessed through the engineering education. The graduate attributes mentioned in the NBA document are comparable with the more familiar program outcomes (POs) – the term used in Outcome-Based Education (OBE) framework and also in the ABET document to measure the attainment status of competence of professionals. The competence is also measured subsequently through Program Educational Objectives (PEOs) after 3–5 years of graduation which is beyond the present scope. Many engineering institutes in India have started work on implementing OBE framework with program outcomes as the measure of attainment of attributes expected of a graduating engineer. Such institutes are in an ambiguous state as to how they can switch their processes to meeting the new NBA requirement of addressing graduate attributes from the program outcomes that they have acquired familiarity with. The paper shows how the graduate attributes can be mapped to POs in institutes offering undergraduate engineering education so that one can continue with the established processes of measuring the attainment status of program outcomes and also meet the requirements of NBA.

Project-based learning (PBL) is an instructional method in which students learn a range of skills and subject matter in the process of creating their own projects. Sometimes, these projects are solutions to a real-world problem. But what is most important in project is that students gain the design experience. They work in groups and bring their own experiences, abilities, learning styles, and perspectives to the project. Students work in teams under the direction of a faculty advisor to tackle an engineering design project. Engineering communication, such as reports and oral presentations are covered. We emphasize practical, hands-on experience, and integrate analytical and design skills acquired in companion senior-level core courses. In this paper, we propose to introduce the project-based learning approach throughout the course at various levels and its impact at learning ability and employability. This experiential learning helped the students to improve comprehensive application ability and innovative consciousness.

This paper is intended to discuss the active learning practices followed for students of Automation and Robotics as a course project activity, evolved through a structured literature survey under subjects like Mechatronics System Design [MSD] and Real-Time Embedded Systems [RTES]. Activity-based learning has always proved that it can foster faster learning by students with enhanced skills essential for their engineering career. Thus aiming at increased student participation and effective learning in line with ABET accreditation requirements, a literature survey-based course project activity was introduced to enable students to acquire some of the prominent competencies like designing, identifying, formulating and solving engineering problems, communicating effectively, professional ethics, using modern engineering tools and lifelong learning capability. Thus the activity involved two important steps: (i) Literature survey of papers for the allotted areas in a group of two to three members for the entire class of students. (ii) Extending the literature survey in order to solve problem, build solution, and demonstrate using software and hardware models in the laboratory. This is the activity proposed to achieve higher levels of learning and thus address majority of a–k criteria, which otherwise cannot be achieved through traditional lecture-based teaching. Hence the methodologies adopted for guiding students, evaluation of developed models, and the analysis of feedback got from students before and after undergoing this activity are discussed.

The program outcomes defined in outcome-based education shall be broadly categorized into technical outcome and professional outcome. In engineering education, the professional outcomes are addressed to some extent by introducing humanity science course. Professional outcomes are addressed by mini and capstone projects. However in core courses the activities need to be designed to address the professional outcome. In this paper, we propose an active learning method called “Let us join” which is intended to address the professional outcomes. These activities are necessary in today’s scenario of education as knowledge sharing and group learning among students is seldom observed. The process of conduction of the activity and attainment of POs are presented in this paper. A survey was carried out before and after the activity, looking at the social relationship, self-drive for initiating communication and ability to integrate the information and document the information. The activity assesses students and also grades them according to their contribution in the activity.

Globally, teaching engineering courses using PowerPoint lecturing and assessing through objective tests is not a new practice. However, from the Indian context, these practices are still getting explored in teaching. The current study attempts to improve students’ conceptual understanding of engineering courses, using objective tests followed by immediate group discussion practice. Objective test encourages students to explain answer to questions that seem tricky or confusing. The present study showed improved performance of students in theory as well as in practical of complex course like System Programming. This study provides evidence on improvement in performance of students by using this teaching practice.

A lot of emphasis is being placed on the development of the global engineer with the recommended twenty-first century skills. The shift to outcomes based engineering education and accreditation is already complete in the developed countries while the shift is still in progress in India. Rapid changes in technologies, a diversified classroom populated with students having different epistemological beliefs and thinking and rising cost of education are putting a lot of pressure on engineering education in the developing countries. This calls for innovations in the engineering curricula. The challenge of the twenty-first century skills is applicable to both the engineering teachers and the students. This paper makes an attempt to show that by adopting proper instructional design principles and a right balance of both objectivist and constructivist pedagogies combined with a technology enriched classroom a true transformation of the engineering teacher to a teaching engineer can happen in the context of classroom engineering or re-engineering. This should enable the teachers to move from a purely didactic approach to teaching to a more constructivist based teaching environment. This paper draws upon various research papers, reports and recommendations and outlines a conceptual design approach to create effective learning environments for classroom engineering and enable the teaching engineer. A typical course in engineering design has been taken as an example.

A course on Microcontrollers is being offered in the Department of Automation and Robotics at BVBCET since last 2 years. The students enrolled in this department come from different disciplines such as Mechanical, Mechatronics, and Electronics. Teaching microcontrollers for such students is a challenging task because of the diverse background of the students. In this paper we propose a course design which will hold the interest of the students and at the same time be able to teach about the current microcontrollers. The course is so designed that it has three objectives. One, the student should be able to program both in assembly and C language. Two, use real-world concepts and techniques to identify the real world problems and solve to automate them. Third and the important objective is to make students capable of using this course in mini, minor and major projects and in their industrial career. The laboratory was developed using a frugal approach in which low cost open source kits were identified and acquired in more numbers so that the students could easily take the kits and work wherever they want. The experiments and projects were built around these open source inexpensive kits. The results are very encouraging and they show that all the students took interest and were comfortable with microcontroller kits and were able to build good projects at the end of the laboratory.

The aim of this paper was to study the flipped classroom teaching method and its implementation. It describes various technologies which can be easily adapted to the flipped classroom teaching method. Flipped classroom is a pedagogical tool where the learning is transformed from passive learning to active by exposing the student to the course content before the lecture sessions and those conventional sessions are converted to act as a meeting session with the instructor where various activities such as solving worksheets, discussions with the instructor, a hands-on session on the current topic or a debate can be held thereby creating a inclusive learning experience for all the students in the classroom environment. This method also transforms the lecturer from being a pedagogical tool as described in the Victorian classroom styles to a source of knowledge and inspiration for the students. This also provides the time for fostering the purpose on learning the course by citing examples, various real time use cases of different concepts learnt during the course. The course itself is analyzed for its performance and generalized to create a strategy to select courses in different fields of engineering so that it can be a tool to diverge from traditional teaching practices implementing flipped classroom technique.

In developing countries, many higher education institutions experience a growing gap between their curricula and the demands from society, business, and industry for a more flexible workforce with high skills in problem solving, teamwork, and project management. Many universities want to put a strong emphasis on traditional, disciplinary knowledge production because timeless, universal knowledge is important in a world where everything is in flow. Chronic industry complaints about skill deficiencies in engineering graduates, the gradual dwindling rates of engineering students with good academic performance records, the worldwide adoption of outcome-based engineering program accreditation, and findings from both cognitive science and thousands of educational research studies showing serious deficiencies in traditional teaching methods force the universities for changes in how engineering curricula are structured, delivered, and assessed. This article tries to discuss the various ways suggested by Kolb and Fry’s theory of experiential learning and instructional strategies in designing the curriculum. Effective teaching and learning throughout the study was conceptualized as that situated within a social constructivist framework. This is a descriptive study in design. The literature component of the study utilized a content analysis methodology with a view to identifying strategies of practical application and potential to facilitate learning in classes, such as active learning, collaborative learning, cooperative learning, inductive teaching methods, and novel practices for change are suggested.

Engineering education scenario today is failing to meet the industrial requirements, and one major reason for this may be exam-oriented students, but again a question can be asked,

why are students exam oriented?

Many reasons right from their background to classroom teaching may give us the answer. It has been found that around 30 % of students are not involved in the teaching-learning process. The way a subject is posed by the faculty in the class and the way the faculty delivers methods adopted for communicating and interaction with students will be the basis of how students will take up interest in the subject. Hundred percent involvement of students in the classroom teaching-learning process

(not physical)

may help changing their attitude as well as enabling them to understand the importance and application of what they are studying. Conventional means of teaching and learning should be kept aside and new innovative ways should be developed and a faculty should divert himself or herself from being a teacher to a facilitator; this will encourage students to be participative and improve their involvement leading to proper understanding and grasping. Through this paper, the authors have tried to convey means through which involvement of students can be increased in the class. Concepts like learning by doing, model-based study and freehand drawing are used to penetrate the concept deeply and improve the involvement of students. Results have shown that learning by doing is one of the best ways to make students understand and learn the subject more clearly than other conventional teaching methods. Some limitations do exist, but through some more skills, efforts and time, experiential learning will enhance the technical background of budding engineers. Case based, model based and involving maximum number of students in performing/doing will take conventional blackboard and even content delivered through multimedia to an experiential learning and take technical education to new heights.

Most of the institutes concentrate to achieve program and course outcome based on result analysis, students’ placements, students’ feedback to faculty, and the National Board of Accreditation period of the departments. This paper concentrates on students’ learning objectives of particular courses as well as program. Paper helps to achieve the vision, mission, and goals of institutes in coordination with the program and course outcome of students’ learning objectives. This facilitates smart assessment of the program and course outcome. It concentrates on smart faculty feedback system as well as students’ feedback system by the faculty.

In today’s ever-increasing world of information technology, it is not enough to say that teaching learning process in engineering education is not considerably efficient, since the use of traditional teaching methods like blackboard and presentations will not cope up with the new generation. Nowadays hand-held and PDA devices are becoming part of human life. As today’s generation are more interested in hand-held devices, teaching learning method should focus to gather point of interest of students to enhance practical learning. The proposed work explains the technology enhanced methods implemented for UG/PG courses using palm device like Aakash Tablet. Techniques used in making the students enjoyable learning in class room Clicker app for MCQs make allowing students to solve instant queries, quotes, phrases using tabs and PDAs, Cloud apps for data sharing within the class, Use of intranet in handled devices (Moodle), Virtual labs, and Classroom presentation using android apps. These techniques were used in teaching both UG and PG subjects like soft computing and advance database systems respectively. The observations were made while implementing the abovementioned methods and some of the key factors were identified. The students found enthusiastic in learning interactively using palmtops and result analysis of both the have been made and it was observed that the student’s performance was good compared to last year.

Quality circle is a group of people that come together and work voluntarily to solve work-related problems. It has the proven and systematic 12-step methodology that can be applied to solve almost all types of problems. It involves application of several quality circle tools and techniques such as Pareto diagram, cause and effect diagram, why-why analysis, 5W-1H principle, etc. to solve the problems of interest. The present work underlines the concept, methodology and applications of quality circles in engineering education with special reference to its implementation at Rajarambapu Institute of Technology (R.I.T.). The concept of ‘quality circle’ has received wide acceptance in industries due to the systematic problem-solving approach and monetary savings it offers after solving the problem. In case of educational institutes, though the concept has been used all over the world to tackle the problems such as students’ projects, development of laboratory setups, etc., still the use is not widespread when compared to its implementation and outputs in industries. Since 1983, R.I.T. is well known for its continuous experiments and leadership in academic practices, thus striving for excellence in engineering education that is being delivered to its stakeholders. The institute is devising and implementing a number of practices with an objective to empower academics. One of such best practices which is consistently implemented from the last 15 years is ‘quality circles’. The institute has taken sincere efforts and proved over the years with the number of problems that are solved and the appreciation it has received that quality circle is equally good in education, though the benefits are not of monetary nature. In this paper, the process of formation of the groups, types of problems addressed, methodology to solve the problems, awards received and benefits of the activity are presented in sequence. Also, details about the financial assistance provided to quality circle groups and challenges that are faced by award-winning group along with its case study are reported in the paper at the end.

Transformation from a traditional teacher to a learning facilitator is a major change. This change is resisted quite often because of two reasons: lack of strong need to change and loosing the class control. In student-centred instruction (SCI), the teacher still has traditional functions like lecturing, designing assignments and tests, and grading and providing students with opportunities to learn independently and from one another and coaching them in the skills they need to acquire. Good professors may feel awkward when they start using student-centred methods and their course-end ratings initially may drop. It is tempting for instructors to give up in the face of all that, and many unfortunately do. Attempt is being made in this paper to demonstrate the personal transformation of a traditional engineering teacher to a learning facilitator, and various issues concerning the change process are discussed. Faculty Leadership Institute (FLI) of Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) on Effective Teaching during July 2008 is a turning point for change. This workshop had enough influence and strength to dispel all the preconceived ideas about teaching and create an urge to embrace student-centric outcome-based teaching learning. A strong belief was developed in IUCEE mantra “

I am teaching

,

are they (students) learning

”. The challenge lies in preparing both self and the students to accept the new learner-centric teaching methodology and facilitate the process of learning. The author experimented the outcome-based teaching for the courses taught and convinced about the positive response and change in classroom dynamics. Once convinced, the author started conducting workshops on the outcome-based education to bring in a change in the process of teaching and learning.

Engineering education has taken a paradigm shift in post liberalization era. A number of colleges imparting undergraduate, postgraduate, and Ph.D. programmes in engineering and technology increased, and hence availability of seats for engineering aspirants is changed. But it is observed that in the last 3 years, seats are remaining vacant and students are selecting only reputed institutes. There is a fierce competition in every aspect to attract admission and build image with respect to academic and placements. This demand leads to the change in the working of engineering colleges. Many of them are not in a position to sustain, either they are closed or on the verge of winding up. This clearly indicates that institutions did not focus proper strategic planning which shows the path of future direction and action to cope with the changes and complexes in the environment. Generally, corporates are making strategic plan and implementing properly. A few foreign universities and big institutions are using strategic plan, and they are getting edge in the competitive environment locally and globally. Strategic plan helps in planned development and growth of an engineering institution. This leads to achieve and to impart quality education. It is a road map, lightly filled in so that it gives you plenty of room to manoeuvre. You get specific when you are deciding the action part of the plan, where you link it with people and operations. This paper outlines a one-page strategic plan of Rajarambapu Institute of Technology, Sakharale, and gives insight on planning and implementing strategy of RIT to impart quality engineering education in diverse, dynamic, and complex environment.

Assessment of student learning has become indispensable for determining if students meet the desired standards of course content. An innovative way of carrying out student learning assessment, which is not the typical pen-and-paper method, is by using a tool like Moodle. Moodle facilitates us to build different types of assessments. Moodle, which stands for modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment, is an enormously versatile system for course and learning management. It is a course management system (CMS), also known as learning management system (LMS) or a virtual learning environment (VLE). It is a free web application that offers a wide variety of teaching tools, and educators can use it to create effective online learning sites. One of these tools is the quiz module that represents an alternative to traditional face-to-face courses and paper-based testing. This paper presents reports on experience of 6 months (one semester) with e-learning using open-source software “Moodle” for the course Wireless and Mobile Computing (MCAE608) of IV semester MCA. As part of continuous internal assessment, online quiz was conducted using Moodle to check the level of understanding at the end of each chapter of the course. Moodle-generated quiz reports that include Grades report, Responses report, Statistics report, and Manual grading are presented in the paper. Quiz questions and students’ answers can be analyzed to carry out a psychometric analysis to identify the appropriateness of the questions stated in the quizzes and to assess student ratings on this activity as a guide for improving the teaching and learning process. The feedback from the students suggests that students were very positive about the use of Quizzes for Formative Assessment of the course. From the teacher’s perspective this method can be called as Green Assessment of Students’ Performance, since it is a paperless one. The teacher can also hook into the critical areas of poor performance of students and plan improvements accordingly.

The goal of Atharva College of Engineering (ACE) is to create a new generation of engineers with the spirit of innovation and creativity. The institute cherishes a dream of becoming the leading ‘Centre of Excellence’ in Engineering and Technology.

This paper suggests various steps taken by ACE to improve the skill set of graduates; emphasize soft skills; refocus the assessments, teaching-learning process and curricula towards analysis and creativity; and interact more with employers to understand the particular demand for skills in that region and sector. The details of the application of IUCEE learning at Atharva College may be viewed as a case study.

The outcomes that have been successfully achieved or are in progress to ensure enhanced use of technology to improve the teaching learning process are as follows: (1) a virtual class room to get advantage of expert lectures through Webinars, Distance Education Centre of IIT Bombay, NPTEL Lectures, etc.; (2) a virtual laboratory under the guidance of the College of Engineering, Pune for practicing simulations to understand the basic concepts thoroughly; (3) a hobby centre where students work on small electronic circuits on breadboard to get the output leading to introduction of mini projects in each subject at least for 2nd and 3rd year students to develop awareness of trying something with their own hands; and (4) Ember, an entrepreneurship development cell for relevant awareness and skills amongst the students. Within a span of 2008–2011, the students started commercial ventures and technical ventures for the benefit of Atharva students only.

The gains from external sources are as follows: (1) ACE succeeded in getting Innovation Entrepreneurship Development Centre and funding for projects leading to multidisciplinary engineering approach in our students. IEDC funding scheme is started by the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, (2) A Robotic Cell established in ACE gets mentoring from IIT-Bombay, and (3) Atharva students started a Receiving Station for soon to be launched satellite ‘Pratham’ of IITB students.

Now that we have become a member of IUCEE, we look forward to have more guidance on research methodologies, project-based learning and direct collaboration with experts for the latest technologies. Partnering with a foreign university for mutual benefit remains yet another focus.

In the affiliated system of higher education, implementing the curriculum decided by the university becomes a challenging task for an individual faculty member. It becomes essential to apply the curriculum innovation in response to stakeholder needs. One such attempt done in one of the unaided engineering colleges in Maharashtra is presented in this paper. The syllabus for Production Management subject at the final year Production Engineering course was developed by the University of Pune. However, the faculty members developed a plan for curriculum innovation based on the inputs received during the IUCEE FLI programme. Some of the active learning techniques adopted provided an opportunity for the students to work in teams, collect information, visit industries, prepare reports and present their findings. This has resulted not only in better understanding of the subject as reflected in the university results but also in developing institute-industry partnerships. This exercise has been carried out for the last 6 years and over 400 students have been benefitted. The feedback received clearly indicates that if the curriculum innovation is applied properly, it is possible to transform the traditional course syllabus into a competency-based syllabus resulting in overall improvement in the quality of technical education.

In this competitive world, teamwork, learning ability and soft skills along with academic excellence are prerequisites for the career growth of a student. In the global work culture, engineering students have to work in groups. It is the responsibility of the institute to restructure the learning situations in the changing scenario. A few changes in college teaching are required for bringing in the desired change in which students learn in groups. This paper is about structuring the appropriate teaching-learning environment for learning the soft skills. Herein, we describe the experiment conducted at K. K. Wagh Institute of Engineering Education & Research, Nashik, India, for teaching the characteristics of a master student and developing soft skills through cooperative learning. In cooperative learning, students work in groups to maximize their own and each other’s learning. An attempt has been done in this study to demonstrate the application of cooperative learning for developing the soft skills through the master student programme.

Blogs and wikis are some of the new and exciting Web 2.0 technologies used in classrooms. These technologies of wikis and blogs can help the faculty for direct online learning activities that encourage peer support, collaboration, and dialogue. Well-constructed blog assignments may provide a safe environment and encourage a collaborative learning culture. This study explores the use of Web 2.0 tools in classroom and laboratory activities. In this work the authors (teachers) used blogs for lab assignments, submission and maintenance of online lab journals, and continuous assessment of students’ progress in the Visual Basic Programming Practices course (MCAL509). The purpose of this work is to make use of public social software Web 2.0 tools like Web wikis and blogs for classroom activities and for continuous internal assessment of lab assignments of this course. As part of this work, the blog was created at the blogger called

http://prpatilji.blogspot.com

. The blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multiuser blogs with time-stamped entries. The feedback from the students provided evidence that the blog assignments had a positive impact on in-class participation rate and laboratory environment. Key advantages identified include green assessment of student performance, ability to retrieve feedback while away from home, confirmation of receipt of assignments, more convenient storage of past assignments, and the ability to obtain a replacement copy of lost assignments.

Teaching and learning are most important for teachers and students in any educational institution. The students need to perform well in their academic to gain knowledge, skill, and competency for their better career. Teachers play an important role in making the students to learn the fundamental and advanced concepts, various domain expertise and skills and competency. The most challenging process in any education institute is the evaluation of student performance. There are many ways by which the student performance can be evaluated. Traditionally we follow class-based learning (CBL) where we conduct an examination to evaluate the student performance. This paper discusses about the more effective and efficient learning model named as project-based learning (PBL).

In the past decade, the swift growth of computer and communication technologies opens up many opportunities for developing innovative learning environments with rich resources. Technology-enhanced learning shifted the focus from technology to support factual learning and the reinforcement of very basic skills to stimulate students to engage in meaningful learning and situated learning. The basic objective of education is to prepare the students for life. Technology-enhanced learning is technology-based learning and instructional systems through which students acquire skills or knowledge, usually with the help of teachers or facilitators, learning support tools, and technological resources. With the support of technological development, students are able to gain higher-order skills, such as rational thinking and problem-solving skills individually or collaboratively. Technology-enhanced learning has become an interdisciplinary issue attracting researchers from various disciplines to work together. In the recent years, the technological development of new technologies has generated considerable enthusiasm towards TEL. In this paper, we define the importance of TEL and different tools available with their classification and discuss TEL environments which enable access to a range of materials, learning tools, and communication facilities that enable the students to become more actively involved in developing their understandings, increased learner responsibility, and a focus on realistic tasks with passion.

In engineering studies, the undergraduates usually take up project as a major subject in the final year of their degree programme. However, the incorporation of project-based learning (PBL) and integrated projects in each year can improve the learning of undergraduates. This paper provides a comparative study of project-based learning and traditional classroom learning. The desired learning outcomes and effects of PBL on undergraduates are also discussed. The study is based on integrated PBL which is incorporated in the course curriculum of Chitkara University, Himachal Pradesh. Two groups of undergraduate students of different batches have been considered for the analysis. The results show that the students who had PBL in the 1st year and integrated project in the 2nd year show better performance than the students who were not involved in PBL or integrated projects till the 3rd year.

In the era where digital technology reigns supreme over most engineering applications, digital signal processing is the heart of smart engineering solutions. Therefore, there is a need to grasp the fundamental techniques involved. A fundamental course in digital signal processing can turn out be a nightmare in the absence of an inspirational method of course delivery. The availability of simulation tools and their widespread use have facilitated quick and easy implementation of ideas and concepts. This also encourages one to develop prototype models on seeing the simulated results. This paper presents an initiative to ameliorate the learning experience of students belonging to the electrical and electronics discipline in a course as important as digital signal processing. Hitherto the emphasis for most course instructors was on developing good standard material for teaching a course. The transformation brought about in engineering education demands a paradigm shift that calls for effective strategies contributing to experiential learning. A sound mathematical foundation is a pre-requisite for the course. It serves well to have Matlab/Simulink usage to enhance the learning experience. The learning outcome attainment results presented justify the effectiveness and improvement in learning brought in by the introduction of the lab in place of a tutorial in the curriculum.

It is well accepted that learners even at academic institutions come with different abilities and flavours. Personalising the education is one of the 16 grand challenges as per the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Measuring the outcomes of an education, progress of learning, etc., plays an important role in generating personalised feedbacks and recommendations in personalised learning environments facilitated by either an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) or an expert academician in conventional institutions. Any assessment would require a medium of expression to measure the achievements/outcomes of learning. Most common among them are writing a set of reasoning statements, writing algorithms, diagrams/sketches, occasional viva voce, etc.. The intention of this paper is to share one of our assessment practices during 2011–2013 where the medium of expression is as chosen by the students; we call this method of assessment as “open assessment”. We also share the techniques of recording assessment data, policies to ensure student‘s participation in assessments and grading philosophy for such assessment methods. Finally, we present a short analysis to highlight advantages and disadvantages of this method when practiced in institutions with academic autonomy in India.

In Indian context, outcome-based education is gradually being adopted. Our institute has switched over to outcome-based education in the recent past. This methodology leads to a quality-based attainment of the program educational objectives (PEOs). However, the program outcomes (POs), based on the graduate attributes, need to be evaluated during their matriculation. These POs can be achieved, to a great extent, through the various course outcomes, which are the results of predefined learning objectives that were set for the course. Higher level of attainment of course outcome entirely depends upon the course content and its effective content delivery. At our institute, certain experiments were carried out to assess the course outcomes. The experiments conducted used a blended instructional strategy. Two experiments were conducted for the computer programming “C” language, while the other was for the System Programming course. Instructional strategies include program visualization, debugger tool, and short-test immediate group discussion used in these experiments.

Program visualization used visual cues to illustrate the flow and execution of a computer program as scaffold in resource-constrained classroom to teach “C” language compared with the traditional approach. This simplified the understanding of dynamic and usually hidden processes during program execution. Debugger tool demonstrated a step-by-step execution of the program and showed the presence of errors and values of memory in the watch window. This helped students to minimize errors and predict the output of the program correctly. Short test followed by immediate feedback and group discussion enhanced learning outcome of the System Programming course. From the above experiments conducted, it is inferred that the students’ learning outcome depends on instructional strategy being used by an instructor. Therefore, while planning for course delivery, on the basis of predefined learning outcome, the teacher needs to develop the assessment measures to be used and then accordingly select instructional strategies for engaging students and assist students in attaining the identified learning outcome. There is no single best strategy available that a teacher should choose, but rather a combination of various instruction strategies will assist students in developing interest, understanding the content, and eventually achieving learning outcomes. Hence, subject teachers need to facilitate the students’ learning process by using instructional strategies relevant to the learning objectives.

Higher education system in India and across the world is experiencing sea change with the information, opportunities, and knowledge available. Engineering education, in particular, benefitted immensely with modern tools available. Quality assurances through assessment by the Washington Accord (WA) of International Engineering Alliance (IEA), Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET-USA), and National Board of Accreditation (NBA-India) across the world have set standards to excel to meet set outcomes!

The Washington Accord Agreement recognizes that “Accreditation of engineering academic programs is a key foundation for the practice of engineering at the professional level in each of the countries or territories covered by the Accord.” Engineering education in India has been transformed from input-output mode to outcome-based mode recently to meet global challenges. In this regard, all stakeholders in the society shall come together by keeping a positive will with unified thought process to achieve the outcome.

Quality products shall be attained by robust accreditation systems, assessment procedures, curriculum design, and coordination between regulatory bodies like AICTE, UGC, MHRD, State Council for Higher Education (SCHE), NAAC, and NBA in the system.

This paper aims to highlight the key issues related to outcome-based education through standard accreditation procedures and assessment methods to be adopted to get the desired outcomes.

Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Kakinada (JNTUK), Andhra Pradesh, India, is one of the largest providers and facilitators of engineering education, having 289 affiliated colleges of engineering and technology, management, and pharmacy under its fold. The rapid spread and proliferation of engineering education and the entry of private sector have brought in quality concerns in their wake. The hands-on experience reveals that the notable gap between expectations and realizations is the cumulative symptom of ineffectiveness of what is being practiced hitherto, in addressing the quality concerns. JNTUK system has left no stones unturned to channelize its resources and deliberate, research, and innovate the mechanisms and practices to reduce this gap, in tune with the new paradigms showing up in engineering and higher education. It revises the curriculum of UG and PG for different disciplines in affiliated and constituent colleges incorporating outcome-based education (OBE) and is the first government university to take up the task of OBE approach in the country. As JNTUK has to manage 289 colleges, it has evolved a quality assurance tool for uniform application across all its affiliated institutions. JNTUK has demonstrated its leadership to lead and contribute for quality assurance in technical education at regional and national levels, in collaboration with apex bodies of UGC, NBA, APQN, NPTEL, IUCEE, Mission 10× of Wipro, and Campus Connect of Infosys. To bridge the gap between expected and delivered technical education, JNTUK has planned to establish incubation centers for transdisciplinary product development and research promotion in the focused areas of research with private and public partnership. This paper outlines how the JNTUK system sustains the quality through concerted efforts of empowerment of faculty, use of ICT for better management, delegation of ownership, and developing models of quality assurance. The university intends to share what it has achieved and leaves the scope for achieving further by learning from others in the arena of engineering and higher education.

Owing to globalization and liberalization, technology transfer from resourceful countries to all developing countries has become inevitable. Many Indian industries neither opt to invest and establish their own R & D Centers to develop indigenous technology nor do they network systematically with knowledge generators such as academic institutes. The first option requires large funds to create R & D infrastructure and is financially not viable for small-scale sector, whereas for the second option, there is only a theoretical response. Critical analysis is necessary to address the reluctance of both industry and upcoming educational institutes to cooperate effectively to confront their technical, operational, and financial hurdles. At present, both prefer to go for foreign collaborations at individual level instead of creating any symbiotic relationship.

This paper attempts to discuss the need of relationship between industries and educational institutes and broadly states the inherent means of cooperation, the objectives, and the nature of various forms of interactions. The paper also highlights the criticality of the industry-institute interaction.

The goal of any technical institution is to produce skilled, globally competent professionals through quality technical education and to prepare them for immediate employment. Industries engross these knowledgeable professionals and enhance its production capabilities by contributing the latest technologies. To produce proficient graduates ready for the industry, it is necessary to know the requirements of the industries through industry-institute interaction. Hence, a good and vibrant industry institute interaction to promote education and entrepreneurship is definitely required. To build good rapport between the industry and the institute, institutes should have Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the industries.

Industry-institute interaction (I-I-I) is the most preferred activity for mutual benefit and growth of industries as well as institutions. I-I-I provides the best platform for showcasing the best practices, latest technological advancements, and their implementation and impact on the industry. Also, I-I-I promotes industry experts to participate in curriculum design which plays a significant role in preparing the students ready for the industry. Through I-I-I, industries can participate in technical education programs and cross-fertilize ideas for systems improvement. Teaching-learning processes can be improved by integrating industrial training to the students which also provides an exposure of the corporate world. Students should be encouraged to undertake the final year projects in the industry with a joint supervisor from the industry. I-I-I promotes development of entrepreneurs which further leads to rapid industrialization and hence improved well-being of a country. I-I-I can also increase the research and development activities in both industries as well as institutions which further leads the nation to grow technologically and socioeconomically.

In the contemporary world, technology is inevitable irrespective of the profession, and the realm of education is no exception to this phenomenon. Education, and the teacher’s role in the transformation of knowledge, has been challenged to address the contemporary needs of a learner. The advancement of technology has led to changes in the mind-set of learners, as well as better comprehension of information. To make the process of learning better and more effective, certain techniques or methods are employed (i.e., LCD projectors, PowerPoint presentations, and Cloud-based tools). These new technologies have replaced the traditional method of using transparent sheets and projectors in classrooms. This improvement in audiovisual equipment has grabbed the attention of the learners. The combination of new learning styles, teaching pedagogy, new technology, and good infrastructure leads to a better education. If these latest trends are not used in an active manner, then the purpose of the teaching and any effectiveness of delivery will not be useful. This paper is an attempt to study the positive effects of using technology-based education tools in the technical arena.

At present All India Services have mainly three sectors such as the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS), and Indian Foreign Service (IFS). However, there is no such challenging examination for recruiting teachers in the academic sector in India. In this paper, we suggest the relevance of conducting such an examination to recruit teachers in engineering education from the graduate level, in order to bring a positive change in the quality of engineering education in India. We name it as the Indian Technical Teaching Service (ITTS). Our views to implement this idea have been given through a set of guidelines in this paper. However, actual implementation is a policy decision, which is beyond the scope of this paper.

The goal is to make younger generation in India, globally competitive design engineers in Electronic System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM). Karnataka government and IESA (India Electronics and Semiconductor Association) are taking major initiative to bring out working policy in ESDM. According to the mentioned ESDM policy, the plan is to bring up 28 million and make them ready for the global product design market. K-Pages provides methods and apparatus to train engineers for the ESDM industry. K-Pages is built on the 4 Quadrant learning method (used in NPTEL) and extends from there on.

Quadrant I of K-Pages provides synchronous and asynchronous lectures on OSCAD tools which are free and available in

http://www.oscad.in/

. It is carried out by using online resources and access device like Aakash tablet PC (from MHRD) with OSCAD tools (runs in Ubuntu 13.04).

Quadrant II of K-Pages is using learning and collaboration tools such that engineers are having option of asking questions on a given online content (via spoken-tutorials

http://spoken-tutorial.org/

) or lectures. It is providing collaborative learning option by integrating others questions and answers with respective technique of board design and analysis.

Quadrant III of K-Pages provides training on “product design and product making” to learning students by using hardware and associated software infrastructure.

Quadrant IV of K-Pages provides test environment and also certification options to learning engineers.

For example, if engineers had finished all three modules and associated test then these engineers are qualified to take up work in the design and development of board design. K-Pages offers low cost option for engineers to get trained in ESDM. K-Pages is expected to deliver very high quality engineers to ESDM industry in India. K-Pages provides opportunity for learning engineers to trade their products via online store. K-pages provides platform to create innovation on human resource development for ESDM industries. The unique features of K Pages are, (1) hybrid delivery model (2) affordable and scalable (3) meets current electronic industry needs and constantly keeps pace with it, and (4) collaboration with students, industry and academia.

Industry is one of the primary customers of the engineering institutes and universities. Those customers are constantly complaining that fresh engineering graduates lack conceptual understanding, critical thinking, and creativity. According to a recent report published by NASSCOM, only 25 % of the engineering graduates produced in India are readily employable in the industry because of lack of deep technical knowledge and creativity. In this paper, we focus on using self-learning models as an innovative teaching and learning strategy to enhance conceptual understanding and foster creative thinking in engineering students.

The student survey shows that these models help engineering students in many ways. These models not only enhance conceptual understanding of difficult and complicated terms in highly conceptual courses like Engineering Mechanics, Strength of Materials, Structural Engineering, etc., but also motivate students to think on their own. Hence, the use of these models in teaching produces critical and innovative thinking skills required to solve challenging real-world problems. The hands-on experience on such self-learning models helps students to learn from experiences and develops the ability of lifelong learning.

Our country is going through rapid technological changes and economic growth. Its sustenance will mainly depend on the innovations that must happen in all quarters of the industry and in business enterprises. Though innovation is now talked about, no systematic efforts are undertaken in the engineering colleges to develop and foster skills among interested budding engineers and transform them as inventors. In this paper, the efforts of BMS R & D center for developing and supporting innovative thinking with the first year students. The methodology consists of spreading awareness and continually encouraging innovative skills among interested students. The BMS College of Engineering is pioneering a systematic effort including both academy and industry, to build an environment that will produce young innovators. The actual implementation of the initial stage is presented in this paper. The outcome of the efforts has started to bear fruits. Incentives like student patent filings, paper presentations, awards, etc., have increased dramatically.

Many new interactive learning techniques are emerging as students started showing interest in new digital tools. Students are collaborating and discussing new ideas, figuring out possible solutions. As a result, educational institutes inclined towards project-based leaning exploring real-world challenges. Design, simulations, and social networking technologies have much to offer in immersive learning. We consider here the cloud-based services like Autodesk Fusion 360 as a learning tool to quickly develop new ideas and to create detail designs with the latest industrial and mechanical design workflows. In the classroom, next-generation students can work faster and share their ideas and project assignments with faculties from anywhere. Fusion can bring innovation faster and accelerate the learning process. These cloud services transform classroom teaching into immersive learning to make learning effective and intuitive.

Generic skills play an important role in increasing employability and credibility of a student. As for the engineering students, these skills are imparted in the learning activities given to the students. In this newer “group assignment” writing method, students are first asked to form compatible groups among them well in advance in the beginning of the semester. Later, the predefined assignment topics were randomly allotted to the students. The activity demands that students working in a group of 3–4 need to understand the broad statement of the given chapter-end assignment topics and collect the information from various sources including textbooks, Internet sources such as blogs, research journals, etc. Later, students need to prepare a report and submit in a stipulated period of time. Reports collected from students were evaluated for different criteria such as the depth and technical significance of the information collected, logical order of content preparation and presentation, and skills and creativities related to document preparation. Finally, the reports were discussed with the students in the class and awarded with marks. Skills such as writing, collection of information, depth of collected information, organization, teamwork, innovation, and creativity were evaluated for this practice. In our preliminary study, we implemented this newer method of “group assignment” practice to the Molecular Biology and Immunology theory courses of the second and third year B.E. Biotechnology students, respectively. Students were actively involved in this newer activity and found it as an interesting activity. Students’ perceptions about the assignment work were collected at the end of the semester using questionnaires. Results from the questionnaires indicated the following observations: 38 % of students strongly agreed for the opportunity for creativity in group assignment writing, more than 70 % of students agreed that the group assignment writing instigated them to read more and work actively for a concept, 60 % of students believe that the assignment writing work made them understand better the topics, around 38 % of students strongly accepted that the evaluation method adopted was better and judicious over the evaluation for traditional assignment writing, and beyond all about 20 % of students strongly found it a bit laborious. Overall, as a teacher, we personally believe that through “group assignment” writing activity, the generic and professional skills among students can be nurtured by carefully and cautiously looking at the student’s changing perceptions about the writing activities inside and outside the classroom for the betterment of the student’s future.

In all branches of engineering, computational work/simulation is now rightly seen as the third vertex of a triangle, complementing observation and theory. This requirement necessitates an engineering student should know computational concepts as well as a whole new language to express these concepts. These are challenging tasks and students might face difficulties in learning the finer details of the language and its usage. While these are important, they are not strict prerequisites for using Python for their computational needs. Minimizing the students mental loads, allow them to concentrate on the core computational ideas. IPython Notebook provides a programming environment that offers many advantages for students as well as for instructors as these are free and open source software (FOSS). Nowadays reproducible research is gaining importance and this idea in scientific computing is to archive and make publicly available all the codes used to create a paper’s figures or tables, preferably in such a manner that readers can download the codes and run them to reproduce the results. IPython Notebook feature of Python advocates this philosophy and in this paper, author shares his experience how it can be used effectively to promote teaching/learning and reproducible research.

The real-time embedded systems (RTES) find wide ranging utility in numerous applications that range from trivial devices to high-end sophisticated systems that include applications in flight control, railway signaling, robotics, medical devices and telephony. The RTES concepts therefore constitute vital know-how segment of engineering graduates dealing with process control and automation. The knowledge of process control systems is very essential for undergraduate students of Automation and Robotics discipline for development of safety-critical applications.

This paper presents the pedagogical approach taken in the course delivery of RTES Laboratory through LabVIEW-based assignments to facilitate learning of necessary competencies in implementation of real-time embedded solutions. This goal is achieved by an introduction to the basic concepts of real-time embedded system, such as state machine diagrams, deterministic and nondeterministic processes, semaphores and interrupts-driven programming techniques.

The re-structured RTES laboratory was conducted using NI CRIO 9075, NI Robotic Starter kit 2.0 and Stellaris ARM cortex M3 boards. The RTES laboratory effectively addressed the (a), (b), (c), (d), (e) and (k) ABET criteria through specific focus on experiential, hands-on learning using industry standard tools like LabVIEW and Keil. The motivation behind this was to create an environment for students to apply the theoretical aspects to real-world problems. The different strategies or approaches used in the present lab setup provide effective solutions to overcome the drawbacks of conventional teaching of the course that lacked the integrating experience. The approach facilitated the development of competency in students in building real-time control algorithms on tightly integrated hardware using LabVIEW Real-time and FPGA modules.

The curriculum design is the process of collecting, organizing and sequencing the lessons or content to study the course in orderly manner. In this paper, authors propose a framework to design the curriculum for the courses: Data Structures and Design and Analysis of Algorithms. The proposed framework integrates these two courses into a new course as Data Structures and Design of Algorithms (DSDA). In this framework authors divide the entire content of these courses into two themes: One is static allocation and another is dynamic allocation. The aim is to enhance the relationship between these two courses by teaching the algorithm design techniques through the applications of data structures, which also improve the skills of teaching and learning the course. The curriculum includes data structures, design techniques and some flavor of parallel computing. The curriculum design addresses the program outcomes (POs) such as apply basic knowledge, identify and formulate a problem, analyze and design the solution and implement the process or component to meet the desired needs.

The laboratory component of Enzyme Technology course is designed to provide hands-on experience to inculcate the experimental skill during isolation, purification and assay of various enzyme preparations. To improve the attainment of program outcomes through Enzyme Technology laboratory course, the experiments were categorized as demonstration, exercise, structured enquiry and open-ended experiment. The primary objective of open-ended experiments is to enable the student to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data. The experiments were carried out in a group of two so that students shall develop the ability to function effectively as an individual and in a group with the capacity to be a leader as well as an effective team member. The present paper describes the design of the open-ended laboratory experiment and its impact on attainment of program outcome and the overall students’ learning experience. Student teams were given only with problem statement, keeping the study approaches open. The students were expected to carry-out literature review and design the experiment, with due consideration to resources and feasibility. All the students were graded by adopting evaluation rubrics. The evaluation results show significant improvement in the achievement of program outcomes. It is observed that design of experiments as open-ended one improves the learning experiences and nurtures the innovativeness and creativity among students.

A survey of Freshman students at BVB College of Engineering and Technology revealed that more than 20 % have not given any kind of seminars until their pre-university (K12) education, and more than 50 % have given only thrice. Many engineering graduates fail to explain how some of the Engineering products/gadgets work even though they see and use them in routine life. In this regard, a new chapter “How Stuff Works” was introduced in Elements of Mechanical Engineering course taught at the first-year level. Students in the team were asked to study a product/gadget in detail and were asked to present a seminar to the whole of the class. This paper deals with necessity, implementation and usage of the new chapter and course seminar. This new initiative is in practice for one full academic year and the results are encouraging.

The Energy conversion course constitutes the application of knowledge acquired in different thermal engineering courses related to classical sciences of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, turbo-machinery and heat transfer. The abstract ingredients in these courses demand an inquisitive approach of delivery and assimilation of the concepts due to which large group of learners lose focus on the course. This consequently ruins the attentiveness of learners towards these courses and hence demands for modified pedagogical practices that promote effective learning. The majority of learners have an apprehension to learn these courses owing to the phobia developed towards fundamental physics and mathematics. In view of this, the Energy conversion laboratory course that integrates the assimilated knowledge of thermal engineering courses demands special attention to keep the student fraternity informed about the latest innovations happening in this field of engineering.

The students undertaking this laboratory course will be given hands-on experience on the intricate concepts that was earlier restricted to mere reading of concepts. This approach will introduce the concept of categorizing the course content into different category of modules that includes demonstration, exercises, structured enquiry and open-ended projects. This practice will benefit the students to a great extent thereby promoting them to undertake capstone projects and research activities.

Lifelong learning is the “ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated” pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional reasons. It enhances not only social inclusion, active citizenship and personal development, but also competitiveness and employability. It enables students to learn at different times, in different ways, for different purposes at various stages of their lives and careers. Lifelong learning is concerned with providing learning opportunities throughout life, while developing lifelong learners. As per Accredation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) 3a-3k Programme Outcomes (POs), a PO-i states the expectation that engineering graduates must have “recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in lifelong learning”. The engineering education must help the students to develop skills, which are necessary for students to develop as lifelong learners and offer courses which help to acquire lifelong learning skills. This paper discusses the elements of lifelong learning, course design through activities and assessment of outcome for undergraduate Computer Science and Engineering programme to meet the Programme Outcome.

As we know that industry and academia are operating as two different domains, due to paradigms shifts, the growing complexity of the business environment made these two domains to collaborate each other. The universities are not only intended to prepare to produce the skilled human resources to corporate world, but also in various intangible ways. The intersecting requirements and jointly inter-reliant relationship requires identifying means of further corroboration academia–industry partnerships. Being the college in a tier-2 city it is difficult to attract industry but, here we made an attempt to bridge the gap between the industry and academia.

This paper attempts to explore how we can work closely with industry, study the extent of academia–industry partnership, and identify possible area where industry’s contribution to academia would be most valuable in the Indian scenario. We are sharing the challenges faced, solutions adopted for Computer Science & Engineering programme to bring industry–academia together to make the students industry ready.

Recent research on the learning process has shown that conventional approach of teaching fails to address all categories of students. Hence changes should be done in the traditional teaching methods as holding concentration of the students in the classroom for complete 1 h of the lecture is a big challenge. The teachers have to attract the attention of students in a classroom, to enable clear translation of the content of lessons and concepts. Many researchers agree on the fact that learning materials should not just reflect the teacher’s teaching style, but should be designed for all kinds of students and all kind of learning styles.

A wise selection of strategies capable of ensuring the smooth and effective delivery of concepts is required. One such strategy that can be adopted is teaching through simulation. Among the available simulation software, Solver for EQuations with User defined ELements (SEQUEL) is a free software with many solved examples, which help beginners to learn it easily. This paper presents the approach followed by the authors to teach Digital Electronics course using SEQUEL. Using SEQUEL as an aid in teaching–learning process has increased student ability to comprehend the analysis of several digital circuits, as it can be used by the students even outside the college campus. This has reflected in the end semester exam results. With this the authors could effectively address level 1 to level 4 of Blooms taxonomy. In this paper, few Digital Electronics examples are presented to demonstrate how free circuit simulation software can assist in teaching the Principles of Digital Electronics to undergraduate students.

In this paper, we propose the process of theme-based capstone project implementation and attainment of program outcomes using rubrics. Capstone projects provide the opportunity for student teams to experience real-world software development by applying the knowledge gained through the curriculum. The project work provides a platform for acquiring transferrable skills viz. team work, communication skills and skills for lifelong learning. The regular curriculum course teaching learning experiences do not provide enough space and opportunity to inculcate these transferrable skills in the students. The typical capstone project process includes problem identification, system analysis and design, testing, performance analysis, documentation and report. Software engineering concepts are practiced during this process. However, process of capstone project faces lot of challenges like practicing industry practices, less emphasis on design aspects, inadequate testing, meeting program outcomes etc. Apart from these, evaluating student’s teams in each phase of capstone course is always a challenge for the guides and review committee members. To address these issues, capstone course requires good planning, execution and evaluation methodology. Towards this, we have designed a process which can be used to evaluate the teams using common templates, rubrics and guidelines based on themes and measure programme outcomes.

The undergraduate research experience is one of several experiences that can impact the future career choices of our undergraduate students. In academia, both the faculty and the students are challenged to embrace engaged learning experiences and evidence-based education through undergraduate research. This has been the

transition in higher education

over the last 20 years: moving towards creating powerful educational environments that improve learning, rather than adding more courses that merely transfer knowledge. However, undergraduate research as a retention strategy does not go far enough. A report from the

Council on Undergraduate Research

succinctly summarizes that undergraduate research should be: faculty-driven, student-centered, and institutionally supported and provides the combination of factors necessary for: pedagogical effectiveness, enhanced learning outcomes, research productivity, and research program sustainability. Research should be at the core and must be instrumental in generating a major interface with the academic and business world. It empowers the faculty for an in-depth approach in teaching. It has the potential to enhance the consultancy capabilities of the researcher. Research can be internally driven or projects can be commissioned by national and international organizations such as the UNO, World Bank, OECD, Asian Development Bank, NCERT, Planning Commission, ISRO, DRDO, Central & State ministries and industrial agencies. Students need to be mentored in the entire research process. The best way for this to happen is to put students in a position to become a research assistant and be truly useful to the research program. Undergraduate research allows students to develop professionally and personally in ways not possible through traditional lecture and laboratory courses. Research is an important theme that threads its way through the undergraduate experience from the first year through to graduation. Weaving together the threads of what is currently underway provides a powerful basis from which to build an enriched, comprehensive learning environment for undergraduate students and encourage engineering graduates towards pursuing research. Undergraduate research allows students to develop professionally and personally. Research experiences give students an opportunity to gain a deeper knowledge of research techniques and processes, apply classroom learning in real-world contexts, explore academic literature, and form meaningful relationships with faculty members and professional researchers. In India the technical education institutes realize the immediate need to bridge the gap between the institute and industry needs and the students must be aware of the latest technology. Therefore, it is essential to establish labs of current technologies in the Engineering departments of colleges. This paper looks forward offering the students perspective undergraduate internships available for undergraduate research. This paper tries to present some of the websites which encourage taking up the research projects at undergraduate level.