The general observation is that the GenerationZ is very conscious of the resources like the internet, the mobile and emergent technologies. Traditionally, courses have been taught in a classroom teaching mode, where the teacher speaks and the student takes notes. The generation Z tends to ask “if what the teacher teaches is already available on the Internet, why do I really need to attend the class?” The vision of this generation is to stand out from the crowd and do something different. Therefore, there is a need to address this generation-based challenge in terms of pedagogy. Therefore, JNEC has taken an innovative initiative, named the Engineering Exploration Programme, in where questions are posed to the students and they attempt to find the answers. The difficulty of the questions that are posed to the students, are gently increased with time. For example, at the beginning of the semester, students are asked to create anything socially and environmentally relevant, from sheets of paper.

The Engineering Exploration Programme, is a co-designed and co-taught course, where each student, independent of the level of perceived intelligence is given personal attention. Each session of the programme is filled with several student-driven activities and videos, which facilitate the understanding of the topic and eventual learning. The journey of learning begins with the framework of Engineering Design, where the students develop solutions and are able to compare them with reference to objectives, constraints and functions. During this journey, the students are exposed to handling microprocessor boards like ArduinoUno, several motors and sensors.

Subsequently, near the middle of the semester they are given a social, industrial or environmental “need statement”, based on their likings of smaller groups of five students, for which they develop a prototype by the end of the semester. Of course, these need statements are tuned to the knowledge levels of the first-year students. Exhibitions of these projects are conducted at the end of each semester.In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the pedagogy of the programme was challenged. In the presence of strict social distancing norms, it became important to address this problem.

The faculty members of the Engineering Exploration programme, modified the delivery mechanism by the use of online tools, modellers and simulator. Further, driven by the fact that the delivery mechanism of the programme enhances their curiosity, the students were willing to attend the sessions, and answer the questions that were posed to them. Some of the creative solutions, from the very first online delivery session are given here.

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the pedagogy of the programme was challenged. In the presence of strict social distancing norms, it became important to address this problem. The faculty members of the Engineering Exploration programme, modified the delivery mechanism by the use of online tools, modellers and simulator. Further, driven by the fact that the delivery mechanism of the programme enhances their curiosity, the students were willing to attend the sessions, and answer the questions that were posed to them. Some of the creative solutions, from the very first online delivery session are given here.

Our journey ahead would be to keep on motivating the students for more innovative projects and solutions. Our vision is to create not only employable engineers, but also nurture entrepreneurs, and patents.

(Author is SPOC for Engineering Exploration course and Associate Professor from Department of Civil Engineering of Jawaharlal Nehru Engineering College (JNEC) which is constituent college of MGM University, Aurangabad.)