The All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) on January 24 came up with a new model curriculum for undergraduate degree courses in engineering and technical courses. This was formally released by the Union Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javedekar in New Delhi.
The All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) on January 24 came up with a new model curriculum for undergraduate degree courses in engineering and technical courses. This was formally released by the Union Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javedekar in New Delhi.
The revised model curriculum has been designed in such a way that the credits have been reduced from 220 to 160 to pass out as an engineer, with focus on fundamentals, and ample opportunity for students to take electives from both the disciplines and cross-disciplines, provision for internship to understand industry requirements hands-on, and project work in the final year relevant to industry.
The AICTE has urged the institutions/universities to adopt the model curriculum for various engineering disciplines. This is a suggestive curriculum and the university/institution concerned is allowed flexibility in readjustment of courses/credits within the overall credit structure of 160 credits in an undergraduate degree programme.
Volume I of the new model curriculum is a 458-pg report and contains details of the mandatory credit courses, while Volume II is a 220-pg report that contains mandatory non-credit courses.
Salient features of the model curriculum
- Three-week induction programme
- Number of credits reduced from 220 to 160
- 6-8 weeks mandatory internships with credits during summer before course completion
- Courses on Constitution of India, environment science/engineering, and Essence of Indian Traditional Knowledge included
- A novel concept of virtual laboratories introduced
- Curriculum on entrepreneurship included to support AICTE’s start-up policy
Prof. Anil D. Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE, in the report has said: “In engineering education, IITs have been a sterling example, not only in India, but have become a global brand. Therefore, it was imperative that a revised AICTE model curriculum be prepared by the best faculty drawn from the IITs, keeping in view the latest industry trends and market requirements in all major engineering subjects and be made available to all universities and engineering institutions in the country.”
Similar exercise is being done for programmes at the diploma and post-graduate levels in engineering, MBA, PGDM, Pharmacy, Architecture, etc.
Though the talk is much about the inclusion of mandatory but non-credit courses on Constitution and Indian Traditional Knowledge, it is the three-week induction programme that is the major highlight of the new model curriculum and which the experts as well as college heads believe would prepare the student not only for the four-year study but also life ahead. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has developed the course on Essence of Indian Traditional Knowledge.
The three-week induction programme to be offered at the beginning of the programme is to make students feel comfortable in their new environment, open them up, set a health daily routine, create bonding in the batch as well as between faculty and students, develop awareness, sensitivity and understanding of the self, people around them, society at large and nature.
Prof. Rajeev Sangal, Director (IIT-Benaras Hindu University), and his team have developed the guide to the new induction programme.
The ideas behind the lengthy and focussed induction programme is that it was felt that engineering students only have domain knowledge and do not have understanding of society and relationships. “The success of gaining admission into a desired institution but failure in getting the desired branch, coupled with peer pressure generating its own problems, leads to a peer environment that is demotivating and corrosive. Start of hostel life without close parental supervision and a poor daily routine further worsens this. To come out of this situation, a multi-pronged approach is needed,” explains Dr. Sangal in the induction programme report.
Each day of the three-week programme is packed with different activities - physical, creative arts, human values, literary, language and computer proficiency, lectures by eminent people, visits to local areas of interest, familiarisation with department/branch, etc.
To keep up the momentum, the mentor-mentee system will be formed and will be an ongoing one. For every 10 first year students, there would be a senior student as a student guide and for every 20 students there would be a faculty mentor. This group would remain as such for the entire four-year study duration.
These measures are expected to “generate well trained manpower in engineering with a feeling of responsibility towards oneself, one’s family and society”.