Our institute has a Best Practice called ‘In-Plant Training (IPT)’ which is a credit course, says HOD Aerospace Eng.

In a conversation with Shiksha.com, Assistant Professor and HOD Aerospace Engineering department, RK Muthuraman at Periyar Maniammai Institute of Science and Technology talks at length about the institute’s Outcome-based teaching methodology that aims at monitoring the outcome of each and every student through course outcomes, Programme Outcomes, Programme Specific Outcomes. This pedagogy helps the institute to equally focus on all the students and also design the curriculum accordingly.

Dr Muthuraman is an Aeronautical Engineer with a First-class grade in Graduation and Masters. He has been associated with PMIST for the last seven years

Q: What are the salient features of the teaching methodology adopted by your college? How does this differ from others?

A: Among many initiatives that we have taken with an aim to impart a quality learning experience to students, some of them are mentioned below:

• Our institute adopted ‘Outcome-Based Education (OBE)’ since 2015, where we constantly monitor the outcomes of each and every student through course outcomes, Programme Outcomes, Programme Specific Outcomes.
• Our courses have continuous assessment tools where the skill set of the students will be mapped and evaluated accordingly.
• We have a strong Mentor-Mentee system, which would help the students to represent and get solutions from their respective mentors either it may be in academics or non-academics related issues.

Q: How are you preparing your students to be Industry ready?

A: Our institute has a Best Practice called ‘In-Plant Training (IPT)’ which is a credit course. For this the student should undergo training at their respective industries during their summer vacation every year. This will be evaluated and given due credits based on their performance. Through this, the student will come to know the work culture and needs of an industry and we will guide them to shape them further through our soft skill and personality development programme at our campus.

Q: What are the qualities you are looking for in student applicants? What qualities do they need to do well in your course?

A: Interest and determination towards aviation and space technology are the qualities we prefer for the Aspirants of Aerospace Engineering. These qualities will help them outperform in the curriculum.

Q: How do you ensure that your course curriculum is up to date and meets industry requirements?

A: We have a Department Advisory Committee (DAC) which comprises student representatives, our alumnus, our Department faculty members and two external members from academics and industry. This committee would suggest the changes in the syllabus to be carried out on par with the needs of the industry and from the experience of the present students and faculty members.

This will be sent to the Board of Studies (BoS) of the Department, composed of faculty members, alumni, Eminent Professors from other reputed institutes and an industry expert. This committee will discuss, decide and put forth its suggestions to the Academic council of the institution for approval.

This process will be carried out once every four years and if needed in between also the committee will discuss and update the syllabus and curriculum to meet out the industry requirements.

Q: Is your college receptive to innovation, technology, science & entrepreneurship? How? Could you cite some examples of these?

A: Yes, our institute has its motto ‘Think-Innovate-Transform’. We encourage our students and faculty members to do their research and development activities and motivate them to publish Papers and Patents.

To cite a few examples, our department Faculty members and students along with our Centre of Excellence training and Research in Automation Technologies (CETAT) have taken up a R&D project from Indian Air Force and completed the project, which was submitted to our Nation. Our Faculty members have a patent for this project.

We also motivated our alumnus who had an idea of becoming an entrepreneur and we mentored them to start the following ventures:

• Dronera the Indigenes
• Vimanna Labs India Pvt Ltd
• Aerostat
• Drone Dues