Environmental Engineering courses :

Background: In developing countries due to rapid growth in industrialization led to a shortage of engineering personnel at all levels. This shortage is felt both in the industrial sector and in the provision of infrastructure. Recognizing this need, the Commonwealth of learning, Canada, examined new methods for the teaching of Engineers in Collaboration with the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science. This resulted in the launching of an initiative in 2000 to prepare a COL-IISC Series of learning Materials in Engineering Sciences. Rio Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 along with several UN conferences, have stressed the need for sustainable development. Since engineers play a key role in the process of development, the World Federation of Engineering Organizations came up with its proposal for the World Engineering Partnership for Sustainable Development. This necessitated the development of Environmental engineering Courses in Self-learning Format, so that Courses could be thought taking advantages of recent developments in Information Technologies (in DE Mode).

Based on the analysis of target audience, learning goals and objectives, and the desired course content with particular relevance to India, an outline of the content was created, which was reviewed by a committee of content and instructional design experts. The development of five self-learning environmental engineering courses included formative evaluation by project review committee and electronic list discussions. The summative evaluation included validation and pilot testing and brainstorm sessions to ascertain the suitability of materials to meet the project goals and objectives. The materials thus produced were revised on the basis of the feedback and are on offer at a distance initially in India. Nonetheless, these courses when suitably adopted with contextual examples can meet the continuous professional development requirements of the developing countries in the Commonwealth. It is also believed that these courses can be appropriately modularized to contribute to the proposal put forward by the World Federation of Engineering Organizations for the World Engineering Partnership for Sustainable Development.

Currently, Environmental Management Course is being offered during August –December session at the Indian Institute of Science Centre for Continuing Education (http://cce.iisc.ernet.in):