Impact of service learning and social immersion on education and career building of young Indian engineering graduates - a case study

Abstract

For more than a decade the engineering education has been a point of concern and debate since there is a large gap between the skill level cultivated by education and that required for employability. Though techniques like practice based learning and activity based learning are trying to address this, ethics and culture based learning can impact the gap to a higher level. The paper shows how service learning and social immersion projects increase the skill level of the students. When the students are encouraged to use the technology learned for real world problems it helps develop and retain their skills. The student data set was studied with and without social immersion projects and the impact was measured. The results show that the conversion rate is higher. Various factors like academic performance, behavioral and social attitude of the students are considered as inputs for analysis. The analysis on academic performance is performed using Rapid Minor and the students are categorized as A, B, C and D to indicate their performance. After the student has been introduced the service learning, the performance of the same students are compared and the results prove that the skill based learning and their focus improves when combined with service learning.