Journal of Engineering Education Transformations

Abstract

The advent of globalization urges the Indian industries in diverse domains of engineering to adopt highly skilled manpower. The pattern of recruitment by the industries has been changing from recruitment-training model to recruitment-work model to meet the global needs and standards. Hence, to be aligned with the recruitmentwork model, it is an urgent requirement for the higher engineering educational institutions to adopt instituteindustry collaboration. The paper emphasizes the need of Institute-Industry(?2)collaboration, and illustrates the collaboration of Kalasalingam Academy of Research and Education with IBM-ICE in designing the curriculum and its implementation. The curriculum considers tracks such as Data Analytics, AI&ML, Cyber Security & Cyber Forensics, IoT etc. For effective teaching and learning, the collaboration facilitated the training of the faculty members by IBM personnel, adoption of innovative assessment schemes such as project based evaluation, non-standard quizzes, open book test, peer evaluation and industry personnel evaluation. The series of industrial webinars and guest lectures provide continuous support on updating the latest trends and technologies for faculties and students. The project-based and practice-based learning groom up the research skills of the students. A study is conducted with a stratified sampling on 400 students of the University in 3 batches, composing students trained through institute-only curriculum and ?2curriculum in equal strands. The skills of the students are evaluated through society oriented problems, reflecting the students� ability in applying the engineering knowledge on real world problems. Empirical evaluations are conducted on the outcomes of the students on grounds of internship offers received from industries, papers published and patents filled on societal problems. The evaluations reveal that the design thinking, self-learning ability, state-of-the-art knowledge of the ?2 curriculum-oriented students are 59.27% ahead from the former case of students. Being a continuously improving model, it is obvious that the student outcomes and the societal growth will grow in par with the technology development. In addition, the institution has collaboration with SAP, through which students are trained to secure international certification and hence boost the chances of getting jobs. At the outset, it is believed that the Institute- Industry collaborations will help in making the graduates readily employable and aid in societal development.