The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi has completely revamped its curriculum after 12 years with concerns about burden on students and changing industry demands being among the major reasons behind the massive exercise, according to Director Rangan Banerjee. In an interview to PTI on Tuesday, Banerjee informed that the last curriculum revision was done in 2013.
"The industry demands are rapidly changing... there is a whole new emergence of AI and focus on sustainability. The exercise for this revamp began in 2022. Over the last few years we have taken extensive stakeholder feedback. We have been talking to our alumni, students... our faculty are involved with industry and society. We have tried to incorporate flexibility to make the curriculum more exciting for students," he said.
"The concern about burden on students was definitely one of the factors which guided our curriculum revamp. We have restricted the number of core credits per semester and specially in the first two semesters when the first year students join, they will have a relatively reduced load. We have also tried to see that in the first year the class sizes are smaller," he added.
Banerjee explained that the reduced class size for first two semesters will now be 150 instead of 300 to ensure more personalised attention.
"We have also focused on learning by doing. So this has been on our minds to reduce the stress but we also want to ensure that we have elements of rigour and choice in our curriculum and then try to minimise the load," he added.
An honours programme has been introduced as an add-on to the BTech degree. Additionally, an undergraduate student can now petition for an MTech degree in any available MTech programme at IIT Delhi at the end of their third year. This will allow a student to graduate with both bachelor's and master's degrees in five years. "One of the important changes that has been introduced in the curriculum is in programming education by integrating AI-based code generators into the introductory course on programming. Students from all BTech streams will have to undergo mandatory training on how to use AI responsibly and ethically to future proof them," he said.
"Similarly each graduate will have some training in sustainability. We are providing more opportunities for hands-on learning, internships and teamwork, so that our graduates will be more future ready and will be able to actually make an impact in India and the world," he added.
The 15-member curriculum revamp panel extensively studied the syllabus being taught at eight institutions -- Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge University; Harvey Mudd College, California; Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Indiana; besides IIT Bombay, Gandhinagar and Hyderabad.
"The revised undergraduate program is an outcomes-based, flexible curriculum that allows for choices in general engineering, basic sciences, and humanities courses. Further opportunities for pursuing a minor degree or specialisation in a variety of areas have been incorporated," Banerjee said.
"The revised curriculum has a strong focus on hands-on learning. Students will be given an early exposure to the department.. in the first year itself. Laboratory and tutorial components in most departmental courses allow students to engage with faculty in a deep and meaningful manner. Modules related to environment, sustainability, creative expression, and ethical reasoning have been built into many courses to ready young engineers for current global challenges," he added.
The institute is also launching three new courses from 2025 academic session -- BTech in Design, Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and MTech in photonics.
"The MTech-MS (Research) curriculum has a rationalised, outcomes-based programme structure, with an emphasis on industry connect and project-based learning. Two mandatory components - one capstone project emphasising problem-solving through teamwork and a summer internship emphasising external-connect in the new curriculum - will make our students industry- ready," he said.
"Flexibility is built into the revised curriculum, allowing students to explore courses outside their core academic unit. Flexibility to undertake the master's thesis in an industry is also facilitated in various programmes," Banerjee said.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
