AICTE Chairman dwells on plan to change curriculum

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 16

To attract students to engineering colleges, All-India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) Chairman Anil D Sahasrabudhe elaborated on his plan of revising the curriculum and engaging trained faculty.

Prof Sahasrabudhe was at Panjab University (PU) here on Monday to attend the India-UK Industry-Academia symposium.

He said: “There are more than 10,000 colleges under the AICTE. The present curriculum is outdated so a new state-of-the-art curriculum is required. The faculty will be trained with the help of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses),” said Prof Sahasrabudhe.

The faculty was required to be trained in the new teaching methods which would be made mandatory for their promotions, he added. “The focus would be shifted from rote learning as new learning modules have been prepared. There are students from the rural and deprived sections whose communication skills need to be integrated. Colleges will work on improving the language skills,” he said. He said outcome-based question would be introduced in papers and internships in the industry would be made mandatory.

Elaborating on student-induction programme, he said a faculty member would be attached to about 25 students for three weeks and the students will stay with the teacher throughout the day.

Smart India Hackathon

He said ‘Smart India Hackathon 2018’ was a part of the programme where 340 challenging problems from 27 government departments and 17 state governments for software hackathon were put up and more than 1,300 institutes and 12,000 teams participated.

“It was a 36-hour grand finale which was held on March 30 and 31 at 28 centres in 24 cities and 17 states. Hardware Hackathon with 64 problem statements was being planned in June,” he said. He said the AICTE was keeping a tab on the number of start-ups emerging out of engineering colleges and more than 500 start-ups had come up last year.