Project-Based Learning to Enhance Employability and Entrepreneurship: A Collaborative Approach

Background: For better understanding, the reality, legitimacy of concepts learnt in the classroom, practical implementation on the concepts learnt is today's need. The employability of engineering graduates is a matter of concern as employers accept knowledge in multi-disciplinarily areas. Graduates need to develop soft skills, the ability to solve situation-based problems and work in a team. In addition, graduates need to develop skills and attitudes for professional practice. It is a challenging task to train the graduates in an academic set-up for the changing work environment. These graduates are challenged with the unknown environment as they are part of multidisciplinary teams. Motivation: In engineering institutes, it is possible to train the graduates to work in multidisciplinary teams through projects. Project-Based Learning is a robust pedagogical strategy that trains the graduates to work in unfamiliar multidisciplinary teams, guiding students to develop skills and attitudes to work in changing environments. It also trains them to develop critical thinking and solve situation-based problems. Project-Based Learning is adopted at the university by encouraging students from multiple departments to participate in an engineering design competition to design, fabricate, and race formula-style vehicles. Objectives: To become a common platform for students participating in extracurricular projects to discuss and exchange ideas, design concepts and develop camaraderie. To be a forum for engineering talent from the institute to showcase their skills, innovate and acquire practical experience through mobility-related competitions.