Applying "The New Age of Innovations Principles" to Software Engineering Education

Pradeep Kashinath Waychal

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Conference: 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: New Orleans, Louisiana
Publication Date: June 26, 2016
Start Date: June 26, 2016
End Date: June 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-68565-5
ISSN: 2153-5965
Conference Session: Classroom Practice III: Student-Centered Instruction
Tagged Division: Educational Research and Methods
Page Count: 10
DOI: 10.18260/p.26260
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/26260
Download Count: 477

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Pradeep Kashinath Waychal Guruji Education Foudation orcid.org/0000-0001-8142-2464

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Dr Pradeep Waychal is a founder trustee and the chair of Guruji Education Foundation that provides holistic support to the education of underprivileged students and operates on funding from friends. The foundation has recently extended its work in diverse areas such research in engineering education, youth employability and teaching computer science to adolescents. Earlier, Dr Waychal has worked at Patni Computer Systems for 20 years in various positions including the head of innovations, NMIMS as the director Shirpur campus and at College of Engineering Pune (COEP) as the founder head of the innovation Center.

Dr Waychal earned his Ph D in the area of developing Innovation Competencies in Information System Organizations from IIT Bombay and M Tech in Control Engineering from IIT Delhi. He has presented keynote / invited talks in many high proﬁle international conferences and has published papers in peer-reviewed journals. He / his teams have won awards in Engineering Education, Innovation, Six Sigma, and Knowledge Management at international events. Recently, his paper won the Best Teaching Strategies Paper award at the most respected international conference in the area of engineering education - Annual conference of American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). His current research interests are engineering education, software engineering, and developing innovative entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs.

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Abstract

Software engineering is a relatively young and fast-evolving discipline. It is natural that education in such a discipline would require continuous experimentation and innovation. This paper discusses the application of “The New Age of Innovations Principles” to a junior-level college course in software engineering that achieved notable results.

C K Prahalad and M S Krishnan mooted the principle of N=1 and R=G in their seminal book on ‘The new age of innovation’. The equation N=1 implies that every customer is unique, may have different requirements, and may call for different solutions. The R=G, on the other hand, recognizes difficulties in managing such plurality of requirements and solutions and suggests use of global resources. We have adopted these principles in the junior software engineering course.

We treated each student as a customer, identified their unique characteristics, and attempted to serve their holistic academic needs. This included assessments of their learning style, learning approach, and egoless behavior. It also included understanding students’ socio-economic and academic background consisting of elective and core courses that they liked and their performance in them. We utilized global resources in teaching and student assignments. We also utilized student-centered learning strategies such as project-based and team-based learning and active learning. We customized various assignments. Such customization required the use of a course management tool. Based on this information and the heuristics that we had developed, we carried out counseling sessions to discuss students’ career plans.

We had sought course-end feedback from students about their satisfaction and their learning. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with many students highlighting the impact of the principles. We tracked the career progression of the students one year after they graduated and found many students utilizing the counseling inputs. We believe that these principles have application beyond geographical and subject boundaries and will require further exploration. As we do that, we may have to tune the assessment instrument set and techniques used to implement the principles.

Citation
Format

Waychal, P. K. (2016, June), Applying "The New Age of Innovations Principles" to Software Engineering Education Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.26260

TY - CPAPER
AB - Software engineering is a relatively young and fast-evolving discipline. It is natural that education in such a discipline would require continuous experimentation and innovation. This paper discusses the application of “The New Age of Innovations Principles” to a junior-level college course in software engineering that achieved notable results.

C K Prahalad and M S Krishnan mooted the principle of N=1 and R=G in their seminal book on ‘The new age of innovation’. The equation N=1 implies that every customer is unique, may have different requirements, and may call for different solutions. The R=G, on the other hand, recognizes difficulties in managing such plurality of requirements and solutions and suggests use of global resources. We have adopted these principles in the junior software engineering course.

We treated each student as a customer, identified their unique characteristics, and attempted to serve their holistic academic needs. This included assessments of their learning style, learning approach, and egoless behavior. It also included understanding students’ socio-economic and academic background consisting of elective and core courses that they liked and their performance in them. We utilized global resources in teaching and student assignments. We also utilized student-centered learning strategies such as project-based and team-based learning and active learning. We customized various assignments. Such customization required the use of a course management tool. Based on this information and the heuristics that we had developed, we carried out counseling sessions to discuss students’ career plans.

We had sought course-end feedback from students about their satisfaction and their learning. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with many students highlighting the impact of the principles. We tracked the career progression of the students one year after they graduated and found many students utilizing the counseling inputs. We believe that these principles have application beyond geographical and subject boundaries and will require further exploration. As we do that, we may have to tune the assessment instrument set and techniques used to implement the principles.

AU - Pradeep Kashinath Waychal
CY - New Orleans, Louisiana
DA - 2016/06/26
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Applying "The New Age of Innovations Principles" to Software Engineering Education
UR - https://peer.asee.org/26260
DO - 10.18260/p.26260
ER -