Continuing Engineering Education for Developing Countries: a challenge and an opportunity
Title:
Continuing Engineering Education for Developing Countries: a challenge and an opportunity
Author:
Jha, C. S.
Appeared in:
European journal of engineering education
Paging:
Volume 10 (1985) nr. 3-4 pages 239-246
Year:
1985
Contents:
All developing countries are committed to use science and technology for the uplift of the economic condition of their population. Although development is a complex multi-variable optimisation process, and application of science and technology is only one of the dominant variables, no sustained economic development is possible without a proper infrastructure of education and training of scientists, technicians and engineers. Building such an infrastructure is beset with numerous difficulties in many developing countries, e.g. unavailability of trained teachers, lack of financial resources for upgrading laboratories and workshops, and making the course curriculum relevant to the needs of the country. In the context of these difficulties, it is suggested that developing countries should take advantage of continuing education programmes to meet their development needs for trained manpower. Updating the competence of teachers of engineering and technology, improving the skills of technicians and engineers in the wake of improved or new technologies and preparing the young engineers and managers for the technologies of the future have been identified as the major CEE needs of developing countries. Rapid development in educational technology tools, e.g. audio/video material, media-packages, programmed learning, computer-assisted instruction has made it possible to cut down the cost of manpower training and also meet the shortage of fully-trained teachers. Brief details of the CEE programmes being run in India are given. International Cooperation in the exchange of learning material including computer software for instruction purposes has been identified as a method to accelerate the growth of CEE movement in developing countries. A few criteria have been specified to ensure that such exchange of material is useful.
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