The Innovative Education System of RGUKT: Prof Raja Kumar personally conceptualized and created the curricula and pedagogy for the engineering part of the education system at RGUKT. It was designed considering technological advancements as well as the perennial values of education catered to by the traditional Indian system which were also universally emphasized. The features include, multidisciplinary education, student centricity, customization and flexibility giving importance to individual student's actual choices, sub-streaming for mini-specialization without compromising on the foundation, emphasis to national and local culture and mothertounge, importance to national heritage, internship providing a good exposure to industry, importance to human values, life skills and value based hybridization of education leveraging on technology.
The Unique Multi-Disciplinary Education Created at RGUKT in 2010: Firstly, the VC shouldered the responsibility and personally designed the BTech curriculum to have high level of flexibility with a very significantly broad scope for elective subjects including earning of extra credits to include multidisciplinary courses such as Sciences including biology, humanities, social sciences, and management by the side of cutting edge engineering courses.
Furthermore, despite the huge intake of 6000 students, the curricula and the academic regulations were designed to facilitate earning of a minor in these areas alongside a Major in engineering. Besides a minor in any other engineering branch, mathematics, physics and chemistry, scope for a minor in Biology, mother tongue (appropriately, Telugu at RGUKT), media and music engineering, Kuchipudi dance, Karnatic vocal, Mrudangam, management etc., was created. Many of these Minors have been the first initiatives in the country and unique even today after 12 years. For earning a Minor, typically a student has to take 6 subjects in the domain of the Minor, half of which need to be taken as additional courses while the rest can be taken as a part of the breadth courses of the BTech programme itself. Thus, the multidisciplinary education of RGUKT was defined without a the core affecting the subjects of a Major. Apart from creating the curricula and regulations, video lecture demos from several exponents of performing arts who are Padmashree awardees were created at the university and employed in the classes.
These were created and put in to practice for BTech education, starting with the first batch of students from the year 2010-11. The first batch of students graduated in the same system very successfully with flying colours in June 2014 and perhaps it is for the first time in the country a large number of students of the first batch of RGUKT earned Minors in these disciplines while majoring in a branch of engineering.
It may be recalled that the traditional Indian education system is also the basis for NEP – 2020 and NEP – 2020 also emphasized multidisciplinary education and mother tongue and universities are currently engaged in finding models for applying the same.
Another major innovation done was on the adoption of ICT based hybrid education for classical performing arts. It may be heartening to note that some of the professors whose lecture demos were descended into the classes of the rural students in the rural campuses were Padmashree awardees. The VC has personally guided them on the concept of a Minor, assisted and provided guidance to help the exponents in the creation of lecture demos in the form of e-content. The university created the full e-content for the Minors and adopted the model very successfully. The experiences were amazing. Also perhaps RGUKT was the first to adopt the hybrid education for performing arts.
Performance of the Initiative and Experiences Gained: The experience reveals that the students have varied interests and given an opportunity, they would like to excel in multidisciplinary education. Given an opportunity, as many as 25% students like to run an extra mile to pursue their 2nd interest (may be missed first interest). As many as 70, 20 and 41 took minor in performing arts, Telugu language and Bio-Engineering, respectively. Due to the prevailing demand for management and Computer Science in the society, more than 80% took a minor in these areas, besides others. However, the choice pattern of minor would need a few years for the trends to settle to steady-state interest. There have been many other experiences gained and insights obtained through this life time opportunity.
In the first convocation in 2014, despite that it is the first batch, as many as 1362 students took a minor out of the 5,600 graduated against the intake of 6000, making it a phenomenal 25% taking a minor alongside a major, despite that the Minors are designed without disturbing the credits of a Major. These phenomenal figures are against the backdrop where the minors in some senior IIT’s were not crossing double digits in and around 2014 and almost all the universities including the central universities not even granting a minor.
© Copyright 2023 Prof. Raja Kumar- All Rights Reserved