Panel suggests new way to test engineers

An All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) committee has suggested changes to the way students are tested in engineering colleges across the country along the lines of the system used in premier institutes like IITs and NITs, officials familiar with the matter said on Sunday.

In premier institutes, students are rarely grilled on theory, but on concepts and application with an emphasis on analysis and ‘quants’ or quantitative problems. AICTE had setup the commitee on exam reforms comprising of experts from various fields in earlier this year which submitted the draft report in March. Over 3,500 institutes are approved by the AICTE.

The AICTE, the apex body and regulator of technical education in the country, has called a meeting on Monday of vice-chancellors of technical universities, deans, directorate of technical education officials, and teachers, to discuss the report, according to an AICTE official, who did not want to be named.

The committee has suggested a number of measures including a focus on projects, training and “situational questions”, the official added.

“Currently we have descriptive questions that encourage rote-learning rather than promoting the critical thinking of the students.

It also focuses more on testing the subject knowledge of the student,” the official said. The committee’s report also includes model exam papers prepared along the lines of the new method.

The plan now is to “have clearcut learning outcomes for each programme and have an exam to test each of those outcomes,” said the official.