Engineering Education Re-engineered: Gujarat to Groom 100,000 Students for Startups
Over 100,000 students in Gujarat Technological University will undergo three year startup learning
Summary:
A comprehensive three year startup learning program that grooms engineering students
Students will go from the concept stage to final startup launch stage at the end of program, building their products, business models & patents.
First university to give academic credits to startup activities
Introduced state of art learning tools popular in silicon valley into classrooms
Is the largest such program to be ever planned in India
Design thinking methodologies pioneered by Stanford University have been baked in a modular form in the syllabi
The Gujarat Technological University (GTU) has put into place a comprehensive three year startup learning program which is the largest such program to be implemented in India. In Gujarat more than a hundred engineering colleges across the state are implementing the program. The program is first of its kind at the scale in India & will push through the process over 100,000 students immediately. The numbers would rise further as the program expands next year.
The ambitious three year program is structured to help students gain gradually all the skills they need to launch their startups, build their products & safeguard their intellectual property rights. The program has been baked into the academic processes to provide ample time for students to devote for their startup projects. The academic credits have also been provided to students for the startup activities under the program. This will be first time in India that academic credits will be provided for students for working on their startups and bring the startup entrepreneurs form the fringes of the academic systems into the main classrooms. "Research and Development work should be relevant to the needs of the industry and society," said Dr Akshai Aggarwal, the Vice-Chancellor of GTU, at a workshop of Faculty Members from 19 engineering colleges on Tuesday, 16th of September 2014," if it is to be become globally significant. For this purpose, design orientation will have to be woven right into the fabric of engineering education."
At GTU, students begin with design orientation right from the introductory subjects in the first year. In the second year, they begin using ideation methodologies, developed by educationists during the last decade while they take up simple system design problems. As they progress and learn engineering subjects of analysis, materials and systems, the design-orientation is embedded into the syllabi. During the summer, the students are required to make research journeys, called shodh yatras, into industries -usually SMEs, to scout for problems, which can improve a product or a process. Students are encouraged to take up such problems as their Final Year projects. About 3,000 Faculty Members from all over the state have participated in workshops for IPR. Hundreds of them are going through workshops for developing appropriate methodologies for different disciplines for the subject of design engineering.
The program also breaks new ground by introducing new & cutting edge tools- such as brainstorming over canvases & silicon valley inspired design thinking to the students, bringing them closer to their western counterparts. The program has been developed to flip the conventional classrooms into new foundries of ideas and creative thinking by using canvases & a culture of design-thinking. Engineering education in India is yet to use such methods on a large scale in classrooms to spur innovation & creativity. The program is structured to push students through the design thinking, market research, problem identification & solution conceptualization through the first & second year of the program, culminating in the final year where students build & commercialize the product. New frameworks for design thinking, ideation and product development tools have been adopted from Stanford University & Openfuel.
With this program, GTU intends to put in place a new generation of entrepreneurs in Gujarat to spur technological innovation & economic growth and complementing the vision of the new government to support entrepreneurship.
Policy Documents references:http://files.gtu.ac.in/circulars/14SEP/09092014_04.pdf
Photographs of the program/activities can be made available in high quality on request.
About GTU & GTU Innovation Council:
Gujarat Technological University (GTU) opened its doors for students in 2008. On 2nd August 2010, GTU Innovation Council (GIC) was established and within a few months GIC established 25 GTU Innovation Sankuls to bring all the Colleges, affiliated with GTU, close to the industry. Every Sankul is co-chaired by a senior academician and an industry leader of the area. In the summer of 2011, the Sankuls started helping the students in their Shodh Yatras so that when the first cohort of degree engineering students entered the Final Year in August 2011, 73% of them had selected industry defined problems for their Final Year project. On 3rd September 2011 were started the workshops for Intellectual property rights and patenting. In February 2012 were started the Student Start-up Support System (S4) activities. When the first cohort of students graduated out in the summer of 2012, the students, Faculty Members and the Colleges started filing patent applications. On May 1, 2013, a Co-creation space was provided for S4 activities. From August 2013, the new syllabi for degree engineering have been implemented. In August 2014, as the students have entered the third semester, the formal subjects of Design Engineering have been introduced in all branches of engineering.
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