Technology Tools to Enhance Learning in Engineering

Engineering education in India has seen plenty of reforms over the past century and is
still in transformation. Governments try a lot of reforms hoping to develop and improve
engineering education through various activities and bodies like All India Council for
Technical Education, University Grants Commission etc. These reform measures primarily
aim to spread proper engineering education throughout the country.
Education is a bipolar activity according to the famous educationist John Adams, the
two poles being teacher and student. This holy relationship however has been a measure of
how well the teacher teaches his or her students and how well the students learn from their
teacher. It is definite that one would not learn a subject if he or she has no interest in it. This
interest comes either by self, or by the teacher who handles that subject. Self interest is not as
common as it comes from students of high intellect only. Majority of students fall in the
middle level of intellectual strengths. Each and every student is unique irrespective of the
level of intellect. So teaching in the older ways is not contemporarily feasible.
As we all know, teaching engineering became tougher and tougher as the number of
students increased; science and technology developed; the ways of learning and teaching
changed. The amount of effort to be put into doing anything greatly ebbs when one uses
technology. Students are keen to utilize the technology of today as much as possible, so
should the faculty community.
All teaching methods or models aim at the promotion of self study and/or
interpersonal learning. The integration of technology with teaching methods is highly
recommended if the active participation from the student is ensured by the teacher. An active
participation from each student ensures the transfer of knowledge completely from the
teacher to the student. This in turn helps self study and interpersonal learning. Proper
understanding of concepts, ideas, theory and applications is achieved which in turn helps the
student to score success every time he/she is tested of his/her wisdom.
To learn sciences is to learn from nature. To learn engineering is to learn from the
sciences i.e. directly or indirectly from nature itself. Technology in its simplest form can be
found in computers, tablets, smart phones as students may name it. For teachers, technology
is mainly the software part where they can prepare presentations, videos, animation, podcasts
and other multimedia equipment. Such tools should be sufficient to convey the ideas and
knowledge to a normal student of the average thinking ability. Unfortunately it is in the
nature of most of the students of our country to misuse technology rather than positively
utilizing it to the betterment of their education and career. It is for this very reason that
educational institutions in our country ban the use of technology in smart phones, tablets etc
inside college or school campus which could otherwise enhance the learning and teaching
process. However, it is important that every student is aware of the learning aids they may get
with the proper use of technology.
In US, engineering education is not just about classroom and textbook learning, the
teachers as well as students use technology to enhance learning from the fundamentals to
hardcore concepts. Teachers present scientific concepts through real world models and
applications using live demonstrations, videos etc. This helps the students to understand the
theory quickly. However, not all subjects can be tutored like this. The involvement of
students is very important in technology enhanced learning. The more the student earns
interest in subjects, the better the learning becomes. Apart from classroom learning, students
are nowadays expected to explore the possibilities of technology like internet, other
communication means etc to learn from home or outside the classroom. This can be videos of
working models, animations, simulations, presentations or even lectures. Even teaching
methods like flipped classroom, group learning etc evolve by this self developed curiosity in
students.
Internet is mans best and worst invention, the best if used properly. As far as
engineering education is concerned, a student can find a lot of self learning videos from
Youtube, presentations in Slideshare, ebooks, webinars etc. No matter how many online
resource a student uses, some facts must be learned from lectures alone. Even though it is
well known among the faculty community that premium engineering education institutions in
our country offer free online education with the support from governments, a huge majority
of students are unaware of this. The Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD)
offers financial aid to the premium and government run engineering institutions to spread the
quality education through online courses under projects called National Programme on
Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), Students Online Laboratory through Virtual
Experimentation (SOLVE) etc. which offer free online learning for students. Certain highly
reputed self financing institutions also offer online training in engineering subjects as well as
science subjects through projects like Easygyan, CoEDAS etc which can be subscribed for
payable fee amounts.
NPTEL (nptel.ac.in) is the most successful of online learning courses in India.
NPTEL provides e-learning through online web and video courses in Engineering, Science
and Humanities streams. NPTEL aims to enhance the quality of engineering education in the
country by providing free online courseware. NPTEL is the initiative by the 7 major IITs
spread in India and IISc Bengaluru, funded by MHRD, India. TEQIP funded highly reputed
engineering institutions also contribute to NPTEL these days.
SOLVE (solve.nitk.ac.in) is a Virtual Lab from National Institute of Technology,
Surathkal, Mangalore; funded by National Mission on Education through Information and
Communication Technology (NMEICT). The virtual labs at SOLVE focus Chemical, Civil,
Electrical and Mechanical disciplines of engineering. Another initiative of MHRD through
NMEICT is named Virtual Labs or shortly VLab (vlab.co.in). VLab aims at providing all the
laboratory experiments to be performed virtually so that students can have the clear
understanding of what is being done during these experiments. VLab offers virtual labs in all
the core engineering disciplines, Biotechnology, Physical and Chemical Sciences. VLab
relates laboratory exercises with lectures from NPTEL.
Many universities in US and Europe offer online learning materials in engineering.
The obvious major being the Open CourseWare by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), Boston, shortly named as OCW (ocw.mit.edu). Unlike NPTEL, OCW offer open
online courses apart from engineering in humanities, arts, science, medicine, economics etc.
Coursera (coursera.org) is another education platform that partners with top universities and
organizations worldwide, to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. EdX (edx.org) is
another non-profit online free learning initiative created by founding partners Harvard
University and MIT; offering open courses in almost all fields of education contribute by the
top universities around the world.
Students can find a variety of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC) in the internet,
provided they utilize these resources only for the betterment of their education and
development of a successful career. By undertaking these courses, students can have life-long
learning and learning at their convenient schedules. It is up to the students to not misuse
technology and resources, whether in the hardware or software form, but to best enhance
learning. Young teachers also must improve their knowledge in using technology, help the
senior teachers who are not sufficiently accustomed to the use of technology enhanced
learning and help the students to positively bring the technology tools into play. There are
two important qualities that every individual, be that teacher or student, should possess for
the proper use of all these learning tools interest and attitude.