Introducing ‘life-long learning’ in Engineering Education

Outcomes Based Education (OBE), is penetrating the Engineering Education system at an increasing pace. Today, every activity, every course, is measured by the Outcomes being addressed. The outcomes of a program are the set of competencies acquired by the student at the time of completion of the program. The broad guidelines for desired competencies are defined by the accreditation bodies. The focus of this work is to present possible methods of introducing `self-study', in the engineering education so that it eventually leads to `life-long-learning'. The suggested methods can be included in any course and when successfully implemented in most courses, leads to the graduating engineer understanding the need for `life-long learning', and it is expected that the engineer shall engage in independent study through-out his professional career. The work also discusses the role of the faculty in developing the `self-study' component in a course. We present few examples of having integrated this component through few courses of the curriculum through a suitable definition of the Course Outcome.