Adapting to Learning by Doing (LBD): Challenges Faced in Implementing the Student Enhancement Program (STEP)

Engineering colleges in India have been increasing tremendously in the last 10 years. However, most of these engineering colleges are inadequately equipped with suitable infrastructure and qualified faculty members leading to lack of quality in undergraduate education resulting in unemployable graduates. These graduates lack problem solving skills, soft skills, and are unable to map their academic knowledge to real world problems. To enhance the quality of education in engineering colleges, an innovative Certificate in Information Technology (CIT) program using learning by doing methodology was started. We have worked with over 50engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh, India, to train their faculty members and implement student training referred to as Student Enhancement Program (STEP) at the colleges. This paper focuses primarily on the main challenges that we have faced during STEP implementation. We highlight solutions that we have implemented for overcoming these challenges and discuss how we can scale them further.