The Northcap University promotes & motivates innovation

The NorthCap University is one of the leading private Universities in Delhi and Haryana. All India NIRF ranking survey in 2019 has ranked the University as 117 for its Engineering category. The University stands out from other Universities as its mission is to continuously improve the quality of teaching and innovation in all programs and develop competent professionals that are committed to outshine in all domains. The NorthCap University provides excellent opportunities to students by providing resources, mentoring infrastructure, funding for innovating new projects. The University also focuses on up-skilling its faculties in new technologies to cater to the needs of the growing industry.

Today’s advancing technology market demands a gradually evolving education system. To improve student’s skills and prepare them for the industry’s ever-changing demand, The NorthCap University has revised traditional teaching methodology in order to move towards a project-based teaching pedagogy. The amalgamation of theoretical and practical concepts has improved the quality of teaching and has also contributed towards a better student-teacher dialogue.

Dynamic curriculum

Before the start of the semester, the content of every subject is modified so that the students and university stay in tune with the current and futuristic requirements of the industry. It is structured in a way to help students clearly comprehend the objectives of learning any new course. The students are given exposure to theoretical and practical concepts using real-time case studies and quizzes in order to improve their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. The revised curriculum aims not only to attempt to work-out solutions but also to find new ideas with their innovative mindset while gauging the problem.

Motivate to Innovate

To make our university stand-out from other universities, the need is to motivate our students to be more innovative and learn new technologies. For this, the University has established the Incubation Centre in 2017 to help students come up with their new innovative ideas and develop new projects. Some of the best B.Tech projects that are developed for social upliftment are ‘Page Turner using Eye-tracking for Disabled People’, ‘Intelligent Garbage bin’, ‘Online Gifting Solutions’, and ‘Walking stick for Blind people’. Various other ideas have been initiated as start-up challenges like ‘CoopEarn’, ‘AudioVocab’, ‘GMBOT-eSports Redefined’ etc. The students are also given the opportunity to showcase their ideas on global platforms like ‘Technovation’, ‘Hackathons’ &‘TechGig Code Gladiators’. Besides Incubation Centre, the University also possesses a Tinkering Lab to foster students for developing prototypes and shape their ideas. The tinkering lab comprises learning kits and related to electronics, robotics, IoT sensor computer science& IT to promote the development of interdisciplinary projects. Hundreds of projects have been implemented in the tinkering lab such as Smart Office Automation using IoT, Drone Delivery System, Smart classroom with Automatic Room Lock and Light on-off System, Gesture Controlled Car, and Automatic Smart Parking System. Students of all years can take the opportunity of the Tinkering lab to develop from basics to advance projects. The University also promotes Best Project Awards to motivate undergraduate students to develop some good projects addressing prevalent issues with their innovative ideas.

Felicitating Innovation

The University also provides Vice-Chancellor’s Innovation Fund to shape innovative and socially relevant research ideas of our students. Two of the proposals that have been approved are ‘Efficiency and Performance Improvement of the LPG Cooking Stove’ worth Rs 1.75 lakh and ‘Remote Monitoring and Protection of UPS locations across The NorthCap University Campus’ worth Rs 50,000, ‘WiFi Powered Indoor Navigation System with Multilingual Support (Nav Me Bot)’ worth Rs 20,400, ‘Power generation through moving vehicles on road’ worth Rs 1.35 lakh, and many more. The main motive of the scheme is to nurture young ideas, passion, skills, and transform them into commercial products to attract different industries and can contribute to society. Besides helping students to mould their ideas, the VC Innovation scheme also helps students to develop and enhance their communication and management skills as their progress of the project is regularly evaluated. With this participation, it also gives an opportunity to students and faculties to file patents based on their ideas and prototypes presented.

Last but not the least, the University works hard to provide students with a platform to improve their analytical thinking and a decision making capability that helps them make a successful transition to the industrial world.

About the author

Manvi Breja is the Assistant Professor (Sr. Scale) of Department of Computer Science & Engineering at The NorthCap University, Gurugram.

Note: The views expressed in this article are solely author’s own and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha