Vidyaweb - Grow by Learning Together

According to a survey, jointly carried out by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the World Bank, 64 percent of surveyed employers are "somewhat", "not very", or "not at all" satisfied with the quality of engineering graduates' skills indicating existence of a major skill gap.

This makes a strong case for the engineering colleges and institutions to focus more on employability and quality.

The top three most important general skills identified were integrity, reliability and teamwork, while the top three most important specific skills are entrepreneurship, communication in English and use of modern tools and technologies.

The survey has said that employers are relatively satisfied with the graduates when it comes to communication skills in English, but not with the graduates' reliability.

The survey also said the companies differed in the kind of engineers they would like to hire.

IT companies demand advanced computer skills and communication in English, while infrastructure firms want engineers with strong knowledge of math and abilities to use modern tools and technologies.

"If colleges want to improve the employability of their graduates, they have to focus on reducing these important skill gaps through improvements in curriculum and teaching methods." said Hiroshi Saeki, an analyst at the World Bank.

"Most important, graduates have to be able to formulate, analyse, and solve a real life problem using standard engineering techniques," he added.

Added FICCI secretary general Amit Mitra: "This finding shows that the faculty and deans of each college have to closely interact with employers to design education programmes that respond to the specific skill demands of the employers."

According to Andreas Blom, senior education economist at the World Bank: "The survey highlights the need for colleges to focus on the skills of the graduates. Each college should define the set of skills that a graduate is supposed to have after each semester.

Further, colleges need to change pedagogical style from teacher-centric to student-centric, and include more assignments for students to independently analyse and apply tools on real life problems, he added.

"Only through such changes in the teaching-learning process will the future engineers become more employable."

Experience shows that the element valued most by distance learners and critical to the success of educational experiences is not technology, but interaction. Technology will remain as a tool, and the best part it can play is to facilitate creative interaction among:

• distance learners and the content
• the distance learners and the distance teachers
• amongst the distance learners themselves

Long term goals of Vidyaweb include imparting e-learning for the technical streams, primarily IT while striving for:

1. developing an environment where the e-learners are able to share their backgrounds and experiences openly
2. making the content delivery method intuitive with an easy learning curve
3. motivating the e-learners for playing active roles and independently taking responsibility for their learning
4. making the e-learners aware of the new patterns of communication, both asynchronous like forums and real-time like chat, to be used in the distance programme
5. Informing and sensitising the e-learner to varied cultural backgrounds of fellow participants

The typical syllabus for a traditional higher-studies course in developing countries teaches too many things. This philosophy of casting a wide net, however, adversely affects the chances of the students, especially those in technical streams, because the technical subjects like computer application involving disciplines like programming not only require in-depth technical knowledge but a fair experience of putting that knowledge to use.

Vidyaweb sees subjects revolving around web-programming as the most appropriate for kicking-off e-learning considering its gentler learning curve, the good open source tools available, general interest in the subject and most important of all, industrial demand. According to Wikipedia:

Since the mid-1990s, web development has been one of the fastest growing industries in the world. In 1995 there were fewer than 1,000 web development companies in the United States, but by 2005 there were over 30,000 such companies in the U.S. alone. The web development industry is expected to grow over 20% by 2010. The growth of this industry is being pushed by large businesses wishing to sell products and services to their customers and to automate business workflow.

In recent experimental and quasi-experimental studies contrasting blends of online and face-to- face instruction with conventional face-to-face classes, blended instruction has been more effective, providing a rationale for the effort required to design and implement blended approaches. Even when used by itself, online learning appears to offer a modest advantage over conventional classroom instruction.

In our opinion, it would be difficult to help non-IT savvy learners with any success with online learning due to the limited reach of the Internet and the prohibitive cost of making e-learning useful for the non-ICT courses. The students opting for ICT courses have better chance of understanding the online medium as well as having better access to the PC and the Internet.

Power cuts and inadequate Internet reach could be issues that need to be part of the equation right from the very beginning. Vidyaweb strives to address these issues by offering offline alternatives. Also, it is hoped that the situation in this regard will improve with time and with the PC prices and Internet penetration showing encouraging trends,

After interacting with thousands of distance learners, we have come to the following conclusions:

1. The distance learner has degree as the priority not the knowledge and skills
2. Distance learner is almost always engaged in another parallel activity like part-time or full-time job or course and is not studying as a full-time student
3. Many of the distance learners are people who couldn't make the cut-off for the regular universities
4. Distance learners are naturally concerned a lot about the affiliation and accreditation aspects about their respective institutions. However, they could not collect enough information or were misguided by the institutes offering
5. Many distance learners get disillusioned with their chances for higher education midway leaving them demotivated
6. The use of language at the Vidyaweb sites indicates that the knowledge of English is at best mediocre amongst the technical distance learners and it might be deduced that a large number of the students might not be able to understand the conceptual elements of their course material which is almost always in English.