Can increase in percentage of electives in Engineering stream boost students knowledge on Engg?

Replies

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  Anil Jain

  50% subjects as elective, you kidding me? That's not worth-it as it would mean that students would decide on the go that in which stream they want to do engineering 😁
  
  I do not know if any engineering college in India will have that number of lecturers and bandwidth to accommodate the choice of 50% of electives.
  
  Few years back when I had completed the engineering, i had got option of 2 electives in 4 years (All of the three electives were in final year); and it was not easier to manager those elective lectures.
  
  -CB
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  Sarathkumar Chandrasekaran

  Anil Jain

  50% subjects as elective, you kidding me? That's not worth-it as it would mean that students would decide on the go that in which stream they want to do engineering 😁
  -CB

  Its not like that they can select from any stream.......
  There are many subjects inside a department in which they are allowed to do so that we can get a student who had specialised and depth in knowledge in that particular area.
  Following is a list of elective papers available for me but they had chosen "jigs and fixtures & two and three wheeler".
  
  There are many great subjects like automobile aerodynamics,composite materials and robotics but we were not even consulted to choose .
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  zaveri

  my list consisted of atleast 20 subjects, but we had a choice to study any five.
• 

  jeshukb09

  SarathKumar Chandrasekaran

  I had recently cited a news on Madras IIT where they had announced that they would soon introduce a plan in which 50% of the subjects would be changed as electives and combine online study and self study in near future. I want to ask our CEans point of view on this topic.
  1) Can increase in percentage of electives in Engineering stream boost depth in knowledge in their Engineering stream?
  2) Does it increase the students love towards their subject?
  3) Does our colleges have sufficient staffs?
  
  Its a nice move but I want to make a note here that many of the colleges were short of lecturers and professors and if implemented "Would students be able to learn something real from them?"
  
  Last Question:If you are a student explain your experience in college in selecting the electives and does it have any impact in you?
  
  About my college: In our college we are not supposed to select our electives and our department would select it by considering the staffs availability .WE HAVEN'T HAD A CHANCE TO SELECT OUR OWN ELECTIVES>>>>>>>>>
  
  Share your thoughts........

  
  
  
  Yes I do favor the decision if the opportunity of selecting elective subject is introduced with effectiveness.
  
  It will surely lead in the deep knowledge in the subject, as the subject is taken by the student as per his interest. But the most problem faced in this is the availability of faculty for those subjects selected by the student. A faculty is necessary for guiding and evaluating the student in his subject. This can be overcome by the online study facility, but that also has its own limitation in clearing the doubt by the student.
  
  Overall, this is a good idea to be implemented and will enrich the knowledge of students if made possible.
  
  In my college also we were not allowed to select the electives and had to keep aside many interesting fields of study.
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  Jeffrey Arulraj

  One thing about elective selection in any university, There is a minimum cut off percentage in the number of students who have to opt for it.
  
  For example in Anna Univ a minimum of 15 students must opt for a single subject for that to qualify as an elective in your college
  
  PS: Getting this magic number is always hard in a class of 60
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  Anoop Mathew

  I would have loved this option back in college, but as CSK said it's not easy to get the subject you want. I really hope they bring it out for PG courses in India. It's a hard bargain otherwise!
  eg: Network engineering students
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  Vikram S Bargah

  During our college days we were asked to choose two subjects from the list of 10 subject in the final sem. but the final subject was decided on number of students vote of it. So those who don't have interest have to study the same.
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  Dhananjay Harkare

  Its good to increase OPEN electives as students interested in a particular topic can choose and actually enjoy these subjects. As with highly qualified faculty, implementing this would be easier in IITs. In other not-so-good colleges, its better to first manage resources and faculty.
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  Sushant Kumar

  Yes electives helps us to understand the topics very well because when we select a particular topic we do well research on that and we understand what our interested streams are and we can really work on that but according to my knowledge i read an article about IIts that even their students to teachers ratio are not good as compared to the foreign institutes but this doesn't mean we should not accept this great idea , we can make this idea more comfortable to our situation by making less no. of electives and slowly making the change rather than making a drastic change
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  Sunil Singh

  My take on the initiative that IIT Madras is taking to introduce a plan in which 50% of the subjects will be electives is worth appreciating. As in the present scenario companies are looking forward to hire engineers who have at least some knowledge in all the sectors and streams other than having a core competency in their stream. The saying "Jack of all but master of none" seems to get faded in near future. It has become a herculean task to even get a campus placement leave alone a handsome package.
  for eg. I have my friends pursuing C.A. with Engineering, which I had never even dreamt of.
  As in our college about 40 subjects were floated from various branches and we had to choose any one depending on our interest. This was a really enthralling, as one can choose a subject of civil engineering even if he/she belongs to CS/IT branch.
  Students just enjoy learning subjects they are interested in and try to get in depth knowledge by taking in efforts like reading more about the subject via internet and many other ways. This kind of attitude is usually not seen towards other subjects, as students learn those subjects just because its part of the curriculum and they need a degree with good percentage.
  So I think yes increasing the % of electives will surely boost the knowledge in that particular subject given the fact that subject is chosen by the student and he/she is not compelled to opt for it. And yes it will surely increase love towards the subject.