An approach to design curricula to build competencies for employability - A case for IT industry

Curricula definition is a key driver of the effectiveness of any Education program. It enables the identification of the right content that the students must become proficient in. This paper is based on the idea that education must impart both `knowledge' as also competence to deliver, in the work that he applies his learning on. What they must be able to do after the Education (outcomes) and the pedagogies used to impart education - all these are key inputs to the design of curricula. We find this reference to the idea of competence not reflected in literature on curricula design. This is important since employers tacitly look for is competence that derives out of knowledge. Therefore, the effectiveness of curricula derived on this basis and deployed through the defined pedagogy will be visible as good employability. Curricula design is therefore driven by these four parameters - knowledge, competence pedagogy and outcomes. This paper examines the design of curricula with employability and Competence as the key parameters. Literature has a lot of work on curricula design, most of these base the curricula on imparting related knowledge with little focus on building ability to do or Competence. This is potentially a reason for poor effectiveness and employability. Research done by the authors and the Pilot results achieved will be used to validate.