REIMAGINING ENGINEERING EDUCATION FOR 'TECHCELERATING' TIMES

Education 2047 #Blog 05 (30 NOV 2020)

The concept and format of a four-year undergraduate degree programme in engineering is more than 200 years old (shorter/ longer versions also exist) and has remained the same- unchanged, unquestioned and unchallenged since its creation; needless to say attempts to rejig have been strongly resisted and rejected. It evolved at a time when books (democratized to some extent by the libraries) and teachers were the only source of information/ knowledge which students would receive and use it for practising it in their profession as engineers. It was then, over two centuries back, possibly realized that a full four years' worth of knowledge needs to be there in the memory of the student, “just-in-case” of need, at the respective workplaces. To ensure that prospective engineers rose to the expectations their employers had from them, examinations were conducted to ascertain that they carried the knowledge all the time and examinations were a tool for that, besides pronouncing the calibre and competence of the engineers.


Nobody really knows how much of knowledge was actually needed, how much was useful and how much was used. The entire batch of students was administered the same course, same set of instruction and same examination obviously for jobs that demanded the application of previous knowledge and left little scope to invent or add new knowledge to the pool, which was left to those who chose to study more for higher degrees. Clearly, the aim of engineering courses was the preparation of professionals for engineering new solutions based on scientific principles or extending the known solutions further. And for this, it was important to arm them with knowledge needed "just-in-case".


The qualification of a person to be an engineer depended on books and teachers, both repositories of knowledge. Thus, the activities that could be taken up during the course were limited by the access to information that was in the books or the journals or technical manuals created. A limited amount of hands-on experience came through the practical classes- structured and pre-defined. Thus, there was no room to apply or practice what was learnt and one had to carry four years of academic load, to the shop-floor or real work-places. Much later, internships in research institutions and industries were introduced, as they had a better infrastructure, were focused in their activities and introduced the students to the professional work-spaces before they got initiated in a professional world.


Now that we are in the knowledge era and knowledge of not just four years but of entire humanity available in a democratized form, at the click of a button or gesture before a screen, do we still need to persist with the status quo? Why not let the students learn how to learn in the first year, practice it in the next three years and stay a lifelong learner? Why not challenge the students with problems for 4 years (or at least three years) and let them learn engineering, sciences, humanities and all the skills required, even as they crack the problems and fail also in the process? Why not train them in four years to spot the dots (of knowledge) initially and then on connecting the dots, using all the resources? Yes, it is about challenging the status quo of 200 years, warranted by 'techcelerating' world!


Let's imagine how the elements of engineering education would or should change in this configuration, the focus being not on subjects but exposure to a wide range of real problems and training on the application of knowledge and pick-up skills. Foremost, the hard infrastructure consisting of laboratories, workshops etc. must be open 7x 24; yes, that is, 7 hours a day for 24 days in a month. Over the decades, there has been drastic reduction in practical exposure over theory (which can be accessed online now). This infrastructure, however, needs an infusion or integration of equipment that allow training on currently missing 21st century skills- problem solving, critical thinking, communication, lifelong learning etc and placing it at the centre. Actually engineering education which should be around these skills and hands-on/ practical experience, has veered away into the cognitive domain from the union of cognitive, affective and psycho-motor domains, seemingly because the latter challenges the comfort zone that most institutions have gravitated into.


The emerging trends conditioned by exponential technologies point towards engineering education being geared towards creation of not just jobs, but also opportunities, knowledge, applications, resources, products, processes; to put it succinctly, for innovation. But in reality, the efforts in education institutions fall short when it comes to delivering on innovations. According to a recent study published in the Harvard Business Review,  most of the successful entrepreneurs are middle-aged, even in the tech sector. This was a study of 27 lakh start-ups which revealed that the average start-up founder was 45 years, when s/he founded the most successful tech companies. The engineering students are not even half this age, and driving them (and their faculty) for innovations needs rethinking. However, the finding should not be a deterrent to graduating youth from adventures and ventures, and in making attempts and meeting failures- so as to train them taking on changes/ challenges after leaving college. It is against this reality and exponential changes in technology that we need to reflect upon for deciding on the knowledge, skills and values to be imparted through the curricula/ courses.


For the digital learners past their teens, the coursework should be left open as common for all branches and must essentially be a set of problems from all possible domains, to allow pursuit of their interests than what a university can prescribe and examine them in. The students should be encouraged to find a problem/ challenge, put it into a theoretical framework, recall/ fetch relevant knowledge, apply skills while working on the solution and document all attempts (including failures in solving); also, leave it freely available, for anyone to use as such/ build on it. A series of such do-it-yourself, learn-by-yourself, test-by-yourself activities should be at the heart of engineering education now. How about then, letting students create their own degree, even as they get trained to handle the unknown, uncharted and unforeseen? After all, technology now allows tracking all the activities and in building up one’s academic credentials.


Instead of conducting EXAM (Examining Xeroxing Ability of Mind), the students should be given TASK (Testing of Aptitude, Skills and Knowledge) by the assessing and certifying agencies, as they are all digital learners and under training. Their certification can be based on two things: (a) number of problems attempted (not solved included) and faithfully documented (b) open book examination to test the understanding of concepts. While the first could involve peers in the assessment, the latter can be open evaluation with generous use of rubrics (evaluators too will learn in the process!). Promoting 'race-ism' as they are, serious thought also needs to be given on having examinations integrated in pedagogy (peda (greek)= child) as they are at school level, particularly for adult learners who now get trained as digital learners first.


One needs to be mindful that with exponential growth in technologies, data is coming from all sectors (including education) and is expanding seemingly to fill the space available. Faster communication, computational and search speeds, together with declining cost of storage have altered the behaviours and also the expectations of stakeholders in the education system. Large volumes of data are being retained because users have no way of making out obsolete data and the disincentives for storing obsolete data are less apparent than are the disincentives for discarding potentially useful data. Further, the continuously refining ability to search out needed information in a jiffy or get help for the same from any quarter, is making the case stronger for “just-for-the-case” education. Clearly, a paradigmatic change is visible in teaching-learning in colleges: lesser attendance in classes, declining note-taking in classrooms, reduction in writing/ sketching/ doodling on papers, searching for answers from databases etc.; all suggestive of reducing need to commit information to memory.


Teachers in such an evolving dispensation would not be required entirely as subject experts but as builder, shaper and manager of ecosystem that prepares/ supports budding innovators, besides circumscribing the roles of problem identifiers, anchors/ players in problem-solving exercise, experts in technical documentation, accomplished in advanced level of search, well-versed with softer aspects like intellectual property, quality, safety, ethics etc. With their redefined roles and unique (re)positioning, the teachers can help graduating students to evolve as innovator, entrepreneur, manager, mentor, teacher, researcher, content developer, assessor, administrator or many more evolving roles. The change of role warranted gets accelerated by the fact that learners no longer want a teacher to only speak (there are a plenty online now) but see them apply knowledge to create something new; a sufficient pointer to why classrooms are not so interesting anymore and learning is happening outside. Moreover, it will become increasingly impossible for a teacher to stay updated with accelerating frontiers of knowledge, and put the learners on the leading edge. Thus, teachers will actually evolve to be everywhere, but as navigator, pathfinder, counselor and confidant (as delineated in Roadmap for Education 2035 prepared by TIFAC)- rolled into one. They need to skill themselves accordingly and also be prepared to compete with other online/ virtual/ robotic teachers!


The whole idea of teaching (by sage-on-the-stage and even guide-by-the-side) will be losing its relevance as the knowledge to be applied will be searched/ created by the learners themselves. The knowledge about resources so created and creators (and also associated experience) will be available for others to use, after having been put to use for which was created. So it will not be the knowledge alone which will get into the repositories but also experiences (documented text, audio, video, holograms etc) and delivered eventually through ‘immersive MOOCs’. Learners will be prompted to share them and get reciprocated, thus contributing to a huge repository of experiences which would be accessible anywhere, anytime and anyone, obviating the need of committing the entire course to memory.



We are in the times when technologies go obsolete even before the courses end; information retention is redundant as are most low-order skills and therefore, reimagining and realignment of engineering education merits serious consideration. The delivery of content, imparting of instructions, conducting of practicals, administering of examinations- all need a rethinking, especially when the identified graduate attributes in respect of engineers are heavily loaded in favour of non-technical and soft skills, emphasized upon by the industry too. Also, the trend should be on increasingly empowering the learners enrolled, to pursue their interests and realize their full potential rather than power the drive for enrollments and peddle mediocrity further. The reimagined future lies in less teaching and more learning, more of participatory learning than broadcast-reception, restructuring higher learning on the principles of andragogy (instead of pedagogy), moving from control of universities to learner autonomy, from promoting lapping up the known (knowledge) to tapping on the unknown and from EXAM to TASK- to turn out well-rounded, confident and responsive engineers prepared for handling technologies (and problems) that don’t exist, adequately armed with skills and committed to build a self-reliant India.

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Author is an Adviser with All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) on deputation from Technology Information, Forecasting & Assessment Council (TIFAC).

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