Study of Adaptive Educational Initiatives in Unaided Rural Engineering Institutes

Abstract

Engineering education is the activity of teaching knowledge and principles of the professional practice of engineering. Engineering ranks fourths i.e. after Arts, Science and Commerce in enrolments. Despite promising future prospects; the percentage of students opting for engineering programmes among total higher education aspirants has been consistently decreasing since 2014 and this problem is significant in unaided rural engineering institutes. The one-size-fits-all learning experience in engineering institutes plays a vital role into the decreasing admissions. Adaptive education is the approach that tailors the learning experience to the individual needs and abilities of each student. It utilizes technology, data analysis, personalized learning pathways, just-in-time feedback and resources to optimize the learning process. The impact of adaptive systems is governed by how fast teachers better understand the adaptive strategies and what they can do for education. Often this process is very slow and resisted by the academicians. Hence despite offering rich promises, adaptive education is very difficult to implement. The extent of overlapping of conventional and adaptive educational initiatives determines the learning experience of the students. Higher the overlapping better will be the learning experience. Hence the study was proposed to understand the overlapping of adaptive educational initiatives in unaided rural engineering institutes. newlineThrough an in-depth literature review focused on adaptive strategies, various educational facets such as teaching, learning, curriculum, exposure, pedagogy, etc., and demographic parameters including age, gender, work experience, education, and annual income were explored. These aspects were put into practice and tested for reliability.