Methodology to Bridge the Gaps between Engineering Education and the Industry Requirements

Learning methods and the right curricula are both critical for the development of right competence in individuals. Learning pedagogies practiced by traditional educational centers, universities and corporate training groups are largely based on the knowledge needed to perform various kinds of work/roles. In the knowledge industry, where both competence and work definitions are intangibles and based on tacit understanding of deliverables, it is hard to design a curriculum that promises ability in individuals to build quality deliverables in the allowed time. Such competence is critical to the industry. In particular, the software industry today is seeing a lot of change in the environment and tools and techniques. The changes are rapid and dynamic. Methods of building competence in the individual needs focus, as the emergence of new methods, technologies resulted in paradigm shift in business. Building people with the right competence to deliver in short times is the need of the hour. Accordingly Training curricula and methods that can support such a scenario are critical to the survival and good performance of software organizations. The paper describes current educational practices, identifies the gaps along with the reasons for these gaps. The paper describes a methodology to bridge the gaps. The methodology explains how to identify the current user needs and required competencies, deriving competencies and how to build competencies. The paper also shares various concepts like Competency, Skill, Process Ability and Knowledge with definitions which are being used widely. The methodology enables one to understand the task to be accomplished with better clarity, thus resulting in higher productivity in less time.