Bridging the Industry–Academia Gap: An Experiential Learning for Engineering Students

This work epitomizes an innovative application of industrial FMEA (failure modes and effects analysis) into the educational context through an experiential co-curricular activity as an engineering learning mechanism. Students were sensitized regarding the FMEA procedure and were asked to divide into teams for constructing the FMEA worksheets on the given problem statements as a part of the activity comprising the competitive usage of the concept. The students allocated values to the severity, occurrence and detection rankings. These rankings were on the higher side which indicated a more vigilant approach towards the pre-defined problem statements. The experiential co-curricular activities like constructing the FMEA worksheet is first-of-its kind as an industrial applicatory tool which is applied for the benefit of students of mechanical engineering. The multitude of benefits which this formative mode of learning offers is discussed at length. This activity shall provide an experience of the industry-way-of-approach to the student which in-turn shall make the student more employable by making them industry-ready thereby expecting to reduce the industry-academia gap.