The 2009 award-winning Hindi film, 3 Idiots , on three students’ career choices and life after college may or may not have inspired the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) — the statutory body for technical education in the country — but studying engineering won’t be the same anymore.
Making the new batch of students, whether in Nalgonda or New Delhi, feel comfortable right at the start has been made compulsory. Thanks to the AICTE, about 100 girls and 80 boys admitted to the University College of Engineering and Technology of the Mahatma Gandhi University (MGU) here, will paint, sing, dance and do yoga for three weeks starting Tuesday.
They would also not just be lectured, but learn and participate through group discussions, debates and role play facilitated by advocates, police, fire and traffic personnel, a bank manager and even a neurosurgeon, before they actually enter their respective ECE/ EEE/ CSE classes.
The three-week ‘Induction Training’ mandated by the AICTE this academic year onwards, is not just an ice-breaker and aimed at improving students’ communication skills, but “a multi-pronged approach tool to help build relationships, understand society and become good engineers, citizens and human beings”, a guide released to all universities last year states.
It was implemented on a pilot basis in IIT-Patna, IIT (BHU) and IIT Mandi in 2016, following a recommendation by all directors of the IITs, and the programme’s important components were derived from the Human Values course run by the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, suggest the footnote.
MGU Vice-Chancellor Khaja Altaf Hussain says, “It will be like a warm-up to a student's quality and professional development ahead. It will also develop their employability skills.”
The training in three phases — initial, regular and till its closing on August 9 — will have the students develop a mentee-mentor relationship with a senior and a faculty person, that would go on till the completion of the four-year course.
