Thinking beyond syllabus......

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible. Arthur C. Clarke

I happened to read an article in Economic Times recently that highlighted increasing number of engineering graduates running the risk of being unemployed every year. The study was supported by the reports of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), pointing out to the flooding number of engineering institutions at all levels across the country as one of the major cause to this situation.

India's engineers are striving to grab jobs in the face of extremely demanding market. According to various reports of NASSCOM, the number of passing out engineering graduates in India alone is more than the US and China combined. The major challenge before the Indian Technical education curriculum is to enhance the placements of these graduates in the two key industries information technology and manufacturing.

A student from any engineering institution has to face a huge competition with the explosive number of other peer engineering graduates from variety of levels e.g. IITs, NITs, Autonomous colleges and colleges from State universities for his / her survival. On the other hand, employers emphasize more on, “what they can do with the technical knowledge” rather than “what they know”. We need to make way-out to our budding engineers to sustain in such demanding scenario ……

It’s therefore high time to strengthen and expand student’s knowledge by thinking beyond syllabus. The regulatory body for technical education, AICTE recommends covering “Contents beyond Syllabus”. The first step towards, achieving this would be igniting students minds to think about applications and deployment of the knowledge they study during their engineering education.

The need of an hour is to think and act beyond syllabus……

The teachers in technical institutions need to introduce to students the world beyond syllabus for every subject. Apart from regular exam-oriented syllabus coverage, students need to explore the actual deployment of the subjects in various application areas.

You can contribute to inculcate learning ability in students through contents beyond syllabus through following activities….just have a look!

1.	Generation of self learning facility.
2.	Personal counselling to students or group of students for pursuing knowledge beyond syllabus with some examples.
3.	Motivating students for exploring internet based learning.
4.	Motivating students for participation in various competitions or co-curricular Events.
5.	Use any audio/ video / image information in addition to cover regular syllabus to cover your subject contents.
6.	Motivating students to take EDX courses to support their regular curriculum.
7.	Motivating students to take IIT Spoken Tutorial courses to support their regular curriculum.
8.	Preparation of course material on intra-net in any of the following form
	i.	Interpersonal Skill Development
	ii.	Technical Skill Development
	iii.	Business Skill Development
	iv.	Student Academic Support Programs
9.	Organization of
	i.	Presentation on non-technical topics
	ii.	Technical Symposiums, programming and Quiz contests
	iii.	Paper presentation and project exhibitions
	iv.	Soft Skills" workshop for students
10.	Organization of student’s development activity for
	i.	Interpersonal Skill Development
	ii.	Technical Skill Development
	iii.	Business Skill Development
	iv.	Student Academic Support Programs
11.	Identification of various Journals and conference papers that publish present state-of-art related to domain of your subject.

I hope the above activities will help teachers and students to think, act and explore the knowledge beyond horizon if conducted as a regular practice in addition to the conventional syllabus coverage…Wish u all happy learning!!!

Writing Abstract!!

Have you ever noticed how promos for movies are edited? Have you noticed that we curiously watch movies or TV serials based on the catchy promos.  Yes, we are many times tempted by the way promo provokes us to watch the actual movie or TV serial.

At present entertainment media is doing wonders to create promos that drive the public crazy about the movies before their release. The box office successes of movies or TRP ratings of TV serials depend largely upon the catchy promos.

Oh….ho..you may wonder that what it has to do with abstracts…that we draft during research paper / research project report writing? Mind well, the abstract of your paper may lead to acceptance or rejection, based on its meaningful and thoughtful words.

Abstract is summary of your work. Writing abstracts is a significant process. Although people neglect the structure of abstract, it definitely drives the decision parameter on whether your paper / project are worth to read or accept.

So, a reader who is digging through a long list of papers available on the internet may decide to read your paper by reading the abstract. It is desired that abstract of a paper should help a reader to find appropriately the contents; he or she is searching for. Similarly an abstract must eliminate the overhead on reader to read volume of irrelevant information during his / her literature review.

Friends, there is no algorithm or generalized process or recipe for writing abstract. I hope this article will help you write your abstract at least that serves its objective. Let us try to list down the steps that you may adopt to write an abstract.

Steps:

1.                 Introduction (approximately 40 to 50 words).

2.                 Problem statement (approximately 40 to 50 words).

3.                 Approach / method (s) (approximately 40 to 50 words).

4.                 Results (approximately 40 to 50 words).

5.                 Conclusion (approximately 40 to 50 words).

This is just a guideline. The word limit may depend upon the type of abstract. Abstract may be descriptive, informative (extended) or Critical. The above mentioned word limit may be flexibly changed as per the publisher’s requirements.

The following diagram will help you draft your abstract according to the steps mentioned above.

Hints:

1.                 Write your paper / project report before writing the abstract.

2.                 Avoid Quotes and citations, humor, jokes etc.

3.                 Avoid graphics, Tables charts, and equations in abstract.

4.                 Avoid use of words “I” or “we”.

5.                 Make it readable, without complex terms that most readers don’t relate.

6.                 Avoid abbreviations or acronyms.

Tip: How to keep the word limit?

This is the toughest task…isn’t it? It requires a little linguistic exercise. First write the abstract comfortably considering all the above structural components (i.e. Introduction, problem statement, approach / method (s), results, and conclusion). Now do Natural language filtering.

1.             Eliminate stop words, phrases and sentences with less linguistic importance.

2.        Replace phrases with equivalent single word synonyms. In other words, Analyze meaning and rephrase some sentences with less word count.

You may refer online help available or help provided by popular word processing software to do this. Hope this helps. 

Happy researching!!