BENGALURU: “We have to realise that 18 to 20-year-olds are under tremendous pressure and experts need to find a way to deal with it and help them learn better,” said Prof Amitava ‘Babi’ Mitra, Executive Director, New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET), School of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on Friday.
While giving the keynote speech at Regional Research Symposium on ‘Problem Based Learning’ organised by the Karnataka State Higher Education Council and Aalborg Unesco Centre for PBL in Engineering Science and Sustainability, he said that students are under a lot of stress. “From the #MeToo movement to the George Floyd murder and then a pandemic -- students are going through all these. We need to be empathetic and flexible in our approach,” he added.
He further said that this pandemic has also reinforced the need to work on societal problems. “Let’s not teach our students how to build engines, systems and machines. Let’s teach them how to build engines of change,” he said. “If we have clear expectation from students, we should work towards fulfilling that. Every syllabus needs to clearly define learning outcomes, the daily happenings of the class, projects and the evaluation process,” he exhorted.
Former ISRO Chairman K Kasturirangan urged engineering students to be immersed in problem-based learning, so that optimal solutions can be found for real world problems.“The PBL method introduces students to real-life problems and motivates them to find solutions in a collective way. This also enables students to experience the aesthetic, emotional, moral, creative, analytical, and other aspects of the situation in a holistic way,” he explained.
Deputy Chief and Higher Education Minister Dr CN Ashwath Narayan said that the government is committed to introducing novel learning methods in order to reduce the gap between theoretical and practical knowledge in the higher education courses including engineering.