Social Immersion Project for Experiential Learning of Sustainable Farming Practices: A Case Study

Abstract

Social Immersion projects (SIP) extends an excellent opportunity to the undergraduate engineering students to learn the engineering skills through experiential, participative and collaborative learning. This makes them to understand the challenges of real world and the best possible technical solutions to such social issues. It gives students a hands on experience of applying the knowledge of engineering to solve practical problems of society at large. The active participation in SIP inculcates the students with work ethics, and practical insights about environment, energy, economy, Social and safety aspects in Sustainable Development Approach (SDA). Agriculture provides impetus to social and economic growth of any country. However, water is the most important input for agriculture output and its efficiency. During this study, students have visited and interacted with the farmers of the two villages, Kukkanahalli and Puttenahalli near Bengaluru. This has provided them with insights of sustainable farming by observing and experiencing the existing practices on the field and interacting with farmers of all category, small to large holding. Keeping this in view, the students' involvement in such social immersion project creates an experiential learning platform to learn the concepts of sustainable farming.