Final year engineering students everywhere are preoccupied with project works and they are right in being so. Project work represent an entirely different ball game compared to all kinds of work they have done in the previous 3 years or 6 semesters. Project work is totally new to them and is a clean slate to begin from. It is unstructured, open-ended and a blank canvas. Earlier they have been used to theory and lab courses. Theory courses came with a predefined syllabus and prescribed text book(s). Lab works are described as "term works" to be done in the lab. Compared to them project work is a completely strange proposal. Even the strategies they had adopted to meet the challenges of theory courses and lab works - namely choosing chapters for study or testing luck with selected term works may not be helpful here. What is more important to note that, each student handled this task- preparing for theory and lab exams in his/her own way. It was a common goal (successful completion of theory and lab course) and a personal approach or strategy. On the contrary project work demands the determination of common goal and group approach.
Over the last few days, I have seen students coming together to form batches, explore domains to choose project from and criteria to choose a project and determine its worthiness. In the following blogs, I shall be presenting my ideas on how to go about project work.
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