Harish Mysore, director, India Operations, IEEE, revealed efforts underway to patch India's educational issues with what is being called Blended Learning.
Sunil Gupta, director, Product Innovation, and Lavanya Sayam, product design manager, IEEE, told that there's a lot happening in the IT industry but "in the core industries-whether it is electrical or mechanical engineering-not many people are going into these fields whereas the need is growing very rapidly."
While India's consumption of electronics devices is rapidly growing, it just doesn't have enough production of electronics. "That gap is increasing rapidly and something needs to change," added Gupta.
It is this gap that the IEEE in India wants to address by encouraging and delivering a new learning approach. The recently launched programme blends 'assisted' e-learning with significant lab work.
One of the challenges with e-learning, according to Gupta, is that in many cases we just speed through the courses; it is difficult to get user engagement.
"The key is we want to make sure the students have the practical skills necessary to get a job and get productive quickly-that was our focus," said Gupta.
"So first and foremost we must have content-the course material that follows the de facto standard within the industry or the education system. So anybody who takes the course from IEEE should have the confidence that the course has not only been vetted by the experts from the industry (who are members of the IEEE) but also by the experts from the academia and that the course material is constantly updated as technology evolves. This would also give the industry confidence that anyone who has taken this course has gone through content that is relevant to the industry."