Course abstract

The quality of Teaching and Learning in Engineering has come to be an important issue in India to all stakeholders including teachers, students, parents, Managements, University, AICTE, NBA, and Industry, especially after the introduction of new Accreditation Process introduced by NBA in 2015. The quality of learning of the graduating engineers determines the quality of their placements. While there was significant research in the last few decades in our understanding of how people learn, there have not been many intersections of this knowledge with the instructional practices at institutions of higher learning. The dominant instructional method still remains lecturing. Industry, Regulatory Bodies and Accreditation Agencies in India want the engineering graduates to attain a set of Program Outcomes (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) which are discipline agnostic and a set of Program Specific Outcomes identified by the Department offering the program. The curriculum of a program decides the nature of learning experiences, including the courses, projects, internships, and co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. The focus on students attaining a specific set of outcomes requires a shift from a teacher-centric approach to student-centric instruction. While good teachers, in any era or in any part of the world, were and are always student-centric in their approach, the process of designing and conducting a course remained informal in nature. The contexts of instruction including quality and background of students, teacher expertise, the physical environment and the system in which instruction takes place, available resources, regulatory and accreditation mechanisms, and assessment and evaluation mechanisms are very varied. There is no unique method that leads to good learning in all contexts. The course addresses many of the common issues of teaching and learning in engineering in the Indian context and tries to provide a complete solution to a teacher to the process of design and conduct of an engineering course leaving all the academic freedom he/she wants to have. While at some places, the suggested solutions appear to be specific, they can be treated as examples, and alternate solutions can be worked out by the teacher. In the present-day context, all the teachers have a very important role in getting their engineering programs accredited by NBA. An understanding of all the criteria of NBA SAR will facilitate the teachers to understand the