Building engineering e-learning grid to foster engineering aptitude and Engineering attitude by leveraging ICT

Today each and every country is facing the challenge to keep up its competitive advantage vis a vis other countries. They have realized the importance of innovation, research and development as necessary tools to keep them competitive and build their leadership position. Engineers play a pivotal role in building such sustainable competitive advantage for the country by providing solutions to the various technical and social issues. There is a strong need in country like India to build engineering pool with high caliber of Engineering attitude and aptitude. This pool will provide the requisite capability to create innovative solutions in various technical fields. The challenge being faced by academic institutes is how to provide engineering educations which will enable them to build such pool. The convergence of information and communication technologies (ICT) is providing such enabling platform for these institutes. They can build collaborative learning environment and link it to the education grid for engineers. This paper focuses on how an e-learning grid can be created and collaborative learning environment can be established in the various engineering collages and ICT can be leveraged which will facilitate in building research oriented mindset and high caliber engineers with high aptitude to find solutions to problems. This paper will provide the guidelines on what engineering institutes should do to leverage the ICT technologies and how they can build collaborative learning environment and contribute to the national engineering e-learning grid.