T. A. J. Reddy, P. S. Reddy
status in 2007 and subsequently was accorded signatory status on 13th June 2014 at Wellington, New Zealand.
This accord is gaining increasing importance among many countries.
2. Education Technologies
We don’t have to look hard to find teachers utilizing new technological tools to replicate old educational models.
For example, we find that most of the distance education institutes employ the same instructor delivering the
same lecture to the same audience. Now the difference may be that the audience can be larger. This distance
education model does nothing to address the concept of lifelong learning. This traditional model places the stu-
dent in a passive role, merely absorbing as much information as possible. Instead, more collaborative models of
distance education could be employed. For example, one can use live video connections with partner universities
to bring together professors and students in a forum where all parties contribute and benefit from the collabora-
tive learning experience. However, the overall dependence on the traditional instructional model dominates the
majority of today’s educational system.
“Just-in-Case” to “Just-in-Time”
Much of the failure to utilize technology in education today is, as Thornburg [3] puts it, “the assumption that
content [is] king... in a world of rapid information growth, it is context that matters... context is king” (in Thor-
burg, 1997, p. 5) [4]. Thornburg [3] advocates that rather than teach students a stockpile of facts to use “just in
case” they might need them some day, “Just in time” learning be put in context—i.e. master the ability to gather
the appropriate facts and then creatively leverage those facts towards the learning objective. Teaching should
create situations where the students are required to locate the facts and information specifically related to the
context of the question at hand, and then to utilize that information effectively. Rather than having students learn
facts “just in case” they might need them some day, it is better to put them to “just in time” learning; collabora-
tive learning environments where groups of students find solutions to real world scenarios.
3. Curriculum
Apart from acquiring the necessary knowledge, skills and competency of the particular discipline, the engineer-
ing graduate has to develop certain soft skills, which may have to be acquired not directly from the curriculum
but from involvement in co-curricular activities. It is useful here to refer to the Accreditation Manual where
these attributes such as the following are stated:
a) Ability to acquire and apply knowledge of science and engineering fundamentals;
b) Ability to communicate effectively, not only with engineers but also with the community at large;
c) In-depth technical competence in a specific engineering discipline;
d) Ability to undertake problem identification, formulation and solution;
e) Ability to utilize a systems approach to design and evaluate operational performance;
f) Understanding of the principles of sustainable design and development;
g) Understanding of professional and ethical responsibilities and commitment to them;
h) Ability to function effectively as an individual and in a group with the capacity to be a leader or manager as
well as an effective team member;
i) Understanding of the social, cultural, global and environmental responsibilities of a professional engineer,
and the need for sustainable development; and
j) Expectation of the need to undertake lifelong learning, and possessing/acquiring the capacity to do so.
The engineering colleges must be sensitive to the state of marketability and employability of their graduates.
They will endeavour to “dance to the ever changing tune” as required by the industry as far as possible, but there
are technical as well as financial constraints; and further the caution is that any new changes to a programme
need at least five years to establish and bear fruit.
Out Come Based Education
One of the more newly-introduced factors in the engineering programme evaluation process is the Outcome
Based Education (OBE) approach. The institution or a college must be able to show evidence that it is fully
committed to embrace the OBE approach and show progress towards this direction. The Washington Accord