Engineering Education Today: some thoughts

(Keynote address delivered at the national Conference on Power Electronics in Sustainable Energy Development at Amrita University, Coimbatore on 2nd May 2014)

Introduction: The background

During the six and a half decades after independence education in general and engineering education in particular have undergone tremendous changes in India. The growth in numbers has been exponential, remaining more or less stagnant in the initial years and showing an explosive nature in the recent past. Elsewhere in the world, advancements in Technology were taking place at a great pace, and we as a Third World country had to catch up. Jobs in the global market were plenty and our youth had to grab a fair share of it. The Government was left with no option other than to open the flood gates of privatization. Entrepreneurs, small and big started investing in Engineering colleges leading to mushrooming of degree institutions all over the country. Most of the investors had no lofty ideals, other than the profit motive. In this rat race, some states went to ridiculous levels offering engineering seats to all students who applied for it. Chicken farms were converted overnight to engineering colleges and filled with aspiring students. Obviously the growth in numbers has not been healthy and organic, but a great deal unhealthy, erratic and cancerous. Poor infrastructure, incompetent teachers and a rudderless academic management are but natural concomitants of this uncontrolled profiteering. Over and above this, religion, caste, creed and other mafia groups have built their islands and fortresses in the system, replacing merit and equity with money and nepotism. Religious groups could effectively cover up their real motives with the external cover of “Prophet Motive”. Controlling agencies like Universities, UGC and AICTE were rendered impotent by political forces and money power. Yet we discuss engineering education because there lie in the core, students, teachers and institutions not affected by this proliferation and dwindling of standards.

The Engineer: Expectations

Before discussing any further we should clearly know what an engineer is expected to do in the profession and what the content of his education should be. Engineering was recognized as a learned profession in the West many years after the Industrial Revolution. The advent of steam engine and locomotives necessitated professionals competent in design, construction and maintenance of engines. With the divergence of knowledge it became necessary to define new branches like Civil and Electrical Engineering from the original Mechanical engineering concerned only with engines. These bifurcations took place in the early forties. Electronics, Communication, Computer Science and Chemical Engineering developed as new branches of engineering in the sixties. In spite of this divergence in knowledge there is something common to all these branches- a fact that students are unaware of, and educators conveniently forget.

Irrespective of the branch or field of study the engineering method of problem solving involves five stages: (1) Identifying the physical problem and all the variables and constraints (2) Constructing a model (3) Analyzing the model and arriving at a solution (4) Interpreting the solution in the physical plane (5) Applying the solution to the original problem. The model referred to could be a physical model, a mathematical model or even a combination of the two. As problems become more and more complex, involving larger number of variables and intractable relationships physical models are difficult to construct and the engineer has to resort to mathematical modeling. A mathematical model will have a set of equations describing the relationships among variables, would need solution procedures and the need to interpret the solutions back to the physical plane. The engineer’s prowess really lies in his ability to translate the physical problem to mathematics and back.

Thus the knowledge base needed for the engineer requires a sound mathematical foundation. This was a well recognized fact a few decades ago. The most damaging ill effect of explosive growth of engineering seats and colleges is the influx of student population without the basic skills in mathematics.

The Student Population: Basic abilities and preparation to learn

While engineering seats are ever on the increase school education was (and  is) undergoing the worst kind of degeneration in this country. The student gets promoted automatically for ten years and the pass percent is kept well above 90 in the school final examination. There is no difference between bright and dull students, as they all get well above 90%. In the examination they have to write only the answers they were made to memorize by rote. When they reach the engineering college they expect the teacher to give them answers to all questions to learn by heart for the examination. Intellectual effort has vanished from classrooms and independent thinking is unheard of. A few decades ago a typical engineering student used to score high marks in mathematical subjects and low in descriptive ones. Today, the table has turned: maximum failures are seen in mathematical and analytical subjects. Reasons for this turn-around are easy to identify.

1)      About 50 to 60% of students admitted to engineering degree programs have very poor learning aptitude and ability, particularly in mathematical/analytical subjects

2)      Plus Two education had drained out what little problem solving ability they had in the early stages of schooling

3)      Most of the jobs in the IT sector do not require real engineers, and non-content programs that ensure a degree would fetch a remunerative job

Given these unfortunate circumstances what best can Universities and other educational institutions do to impart a meaningful engineering education? We should take the given conditions as constraints on the system (we can certainly find more), then define our objectives and look for optimal solutions within the solution space. Removal/reduction of the constraints should be part of a long drawn plan where the whole country should be involved. The emerging solutions can be categorized into three: Infrastructure-centered, Student centered and Teacher centered.

Infrastructure Centered Solutions:

It is true that the number and quality of teachers did not (and cannot) keep pace with the increase in number of seats and colleges. The few good teachers available in better institutions can be utilized to cater to a much larger population if we depend on modern communication systems and information technology. E-learning is advocated by many people in power like MHRD, AICTE and some of the IITs. My considered opinion on this solution is that remote lectures given by experts can only supplement, and not substitute classroom lectures. This is amply demonstrated by the failure of MOOC program organized by MIT, USA. They reported a participation of just five percent in these on-line lectures of high quality and freedom of choice to students.

I find there are two types of teaching learning process: I call one of them “pull system” where a student, desirous of knowing something pulls it out of where it is available, be it teachers, internet, library, textbooks or journals. The second one is the “push system” where the teacher tries to push knowledge down the throat of the unwilling recipient. In India we find that University education goes by and large in the push system. Under the circumstances I have no hesitation in asserting that e-learning is a colossal failure in India as a substitute for classrooms.

Restructuring the courses to include more practical classes and hands-on experience will considerably improve the learning process. Except in IT related subjects this is an expensive solution which managements cannot be persuaded to accept.

Student-Centered Solutions:

The real solution to the problem should be based on how we should shape up our student. I firmly believe that there is no such thing called “Teaching”, and that there is only learning. All that the teachers and the institution can do is to provide the ambience and conditions to ensure that learning takes place at the correct pace and direction. The learning process has to go through five stages:

i)                    Familiarity

ii)                   Memory and Reproduction

iii)                 Analysis

iv)                 Synthesis

v)                  Creativity

A classroom lecture, done in the popular style of monologue  of the teacher in a silent or unresponsive classroom can, at best give the student a ‘familiarity’ with the topics discussed. When an examination is announced some students consult notes or textbooks and try to memorize them in order to reproduce in the exam paper. About 30 to 40 percent of students do not do even that, and they are the ones who fail!! Any remedy that aims better learning should take the student to levels of analysis and synthesis. Creativity is a far cry, but can be attempted in Project work and some unconventional courses. Unless we deliberately reorient classroom work the situation will remain unchanged for years to come.

Fear of Mathematics is the key to the present malady in engineering education. Equally important is negligence of linguistic skills. To begin with, we should design a few bridge programs to get rid of both these deficiencies. Mathematics should be introduced through demonstrations as a powerful tool of engineering. In such courses tests and feedback should not be postponed to the last day, but should take place in the class every day. This should be considered as a preparation to start learning engineering subjects. It is the deficiency in language that drives students away from classical textbooks  towards street notes and substandard books.

Today, most of the students sit in the classroom because their physical presence is compulsory to be eligible to appear for the examination. Contrary to the belief of teachers and public, virtually no learning takes place in the classroom, and every student hopes to start learning the subject a few days before the examination. Is it not a colossal waste of human energy to nail down so many young people in the classroom from 9am to 4pm where they do not intend to learn anything? To wit, they idle away in classrooms, postponing the learning activity to a later, convenient date. Remedy to this serious problem lies with the teacher.

Teacher Centered Solutions

Teachers live in an imaginary world of their own, believing that the monologues they spout out in the classrooms are listened to and understood by the sixty-odd students they address. Diligent and duty bound, they engage the class in this monologue for the whole semester until they “finish the portions”. What is the net result of this exercise? Has any student gone to levels higher than familiarity? If anybody has answered the questions in a periodical examination it is because he/she has worked hard after the class hours. Every one of us should find an answer to the question, “What have my lectures done to the student’s knowledge level?” An honest answer to this question will be quite depressing. It would reveal that we were also party to the colossal waste of human energy from nine to four. It is this ineffective nature of classroom work that has prompted many to say that the teacher can be replaced by a video screen.

Unlike other professions University teaching is one to which any raw graduate or postgraduate can enter without training or experience. Colleges appoint fresh graduates and send them to classes straightaway. There they emulate the external characteristics of their own teachers whose teaching may or may not have been effective. Absence of any norms has led to the present situation where classroom work of the teacher is not defined, guided or monitored. Habits die hard, and you get a large number of bad or ineffective teachers even at senior levels.

Power point presentations and video-assisted lectures have become common these days. One agrees that these gadgets make the classes less boring due to their entertainment value, but I have my own doubts about the efficacy of knowledge transfer. Granting that the presentations are well prepared, they often tend to be textbook material presented on the screen.

Feedback systems:  The basic defect of the conventional lecture mode of teaching is that it does not give any feedback either to the student or the teacher. Neither the teacher nor the student bothers to know how much learning has taken place in the process. This feedback may not be critical in the case of descriptive topics where data or information get transferred in the class. Where analysis and understanding are needed this feedback is critical. Such continual feedback has the power to persuade the student to remain alert in the classes and to look up the lessons taught every day.

A successful method I have used for many years is called “Monday Quizzes”. On the first day of every week the teacher faces his class with a small quiz containing two or three simple questions based on what was taught during the previous week. The valuation and marking should be done on the same day and the papers returned to the class next day. It is important to be prompt in doing this. It is also necessary to discuss the answers and common mistakes after distributing the answer sheets. Both the teacher and student should realize that the quiz is not an examination, but an in-process feedback. As the weeks progress even non-performers try to change their reputation by participating in the feedback process. By the fourth or fifth week of the semester you will find that the entire class is with you, resonating with your ideas and discovering that learning is real fun. The teacher’s personality is of utmost importance in this endeavour. Unless we can create a set of sympathetic listeners no useful communication can really take place in the classes.

Summary and Conclusion

This article describes the constraints like the student quality, attitudes and the challenge faced in educating a large number of students in a discipline that requires learning ability and diligence beyond  average levels. The engineer’s task is defined and the need for adequate preparation in mathematics underlined. The inadequacy of school education and the resultant levels of students are highlighted. The levels of learning from familiarity to creativity are examined and the mismatch between the teaching and learning activities is brought out. The three remedial measures, namely the infrastructure-centered, student-centered and teacher centered are described and their appropriate applications suggested.

References: No reference material was used, except my 48 years of experience and fruitful discussions and interaction with my elders, colleagues and students.