HRD to rope in MIT to reform pedagogy, curriculum of NITs

NEW DELHI: The premier US varsity - Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is being roped in to reform pedagogy and curriculum at National Institutes of Technology (NITs) across the country.

According to sources, the HRD ministry has approved the matter and will soon ask MIT to depute a team of experts in engineering discipline to visit a few NITs including Srinagar, Jaipur, Agartala among others.

“The idea is to examine their current academic standards and suggest improvements in various fields including the curriculum being used with reference to the global practices and suggest changes accordingly,” said a senior HRD official.

Sources said that concerned over poor teaching methods and tools used by the faculty at NITs across the country, the HRD minister Smriti Irani wants to revamp the institutes and a formal proposal will be sent to MIT. “We are in touch with the university and they have shown a keen interest in the project,” said a senior HRD official.

NIT Srinagar was recently rocked by student protests and a number of students had submitted a series of demand to the ministry to upgrade the institute following which they returned to the institute.

One of the major tasks of the team that will visit the institutes from MIT will be to verify the critical understanding of engineering concepts by students in the final year of under-graduation and their ability to use the concepts in real life situations.

“They will also suggest modalities of industry-academia collaboration in updating the syllabus and will examine the existing pedagogical practices being followed,” said a senior HRD official.

Recently, the ministry had also decided to engage Standford University to run a quality check by designing a capsule test to measure learning outcomes of engineering students to sharpen their skills before they graduate.