2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A Collaborative International Active Learning Workshop for Engineering Education in India – An Experience Report

Presented at International Division (INTL): Case Studies and Trends

In this paper we present an experience report on enhancing learning in engineering education in India through a workshop conducted on active learning pedagogies. This experience report describes a 4-day, collaborative international workshop on active learning pedagogies, conducted at a large University in India, conceptualized and conducted by three faculty members (two from USA and one from India) with extensive research-based practice experience in evidence-based active learning pedagogies for engineering education. We chose two pedagogical approaches that have shown to improve student learning in engineering classrooms in the United States – Peer Instruction (PI), and Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Based Learning-Like (POGIL-Like). In PI, students actively participate in their learning through small group discussions and real-time answering of conceptual questions posed by the instructor. POGIL-Like utilizes a structured student group model with well-defined student roles, where students co-construct knowledge through one or more Explore-Invent-Apply (E-I-A) cycles in learning during the class session. While PI and POGIL-Like have been shown to improve student learning outcomes in engineering disciplines in America, they are yet to be adopted in a widespread fashion in India. This workshop was specifically aimed at introducing these pedagogies to engineering educators across India. The primary goals of this 4 day workshop were: 1) to introduce PI and POGIL-Like to engineering and science educators in India, specifically to University faculty members, 2) to help them identify sections of courses they teach at their Universities that could be taught using PI and POGIL-Like, and 3) assist them in developing classroom materials for both pedagogies in their respective disciplines, that they could take back with them and implement in their courses. During the workshop we conducted several sessions on active learning using PI and POGIL-Like including small-group and individual activities for participants in the PI and POGIL-Like formats, to develop PI and POGIL-Like course materials for the courses that they teach. In this paper, we discuss the workshop in detail and report on the results of the activities that our participants undertook, including their pre- and post- workshop survey responses, and potential challenges for adoption of these pedagogies in the Indian context.

Authors

Dr. Bhuvaneswari Gopal http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1796-2789 University of Nebraska - Lincoln [biography]

Dr. Bhuvaneswari (Bhuvana) Gopal is an Assistant Professor of Practice in the School of Computing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she teaches Software Engineering, Software Security in Practice, the industry internship course, and leads the Learning Assistant Program that serves several computing courses at the School of Computing. Dr. Gopal has extensive experience in the software industry, where she spent 14 years in various roles, including Software Architect and Lead software engineer positions before switching to full time academia. She is also a Microsoft certified professional, with an MCPD certification. Her research work is focused on evidence-based, active learning pedagogies to improve software engineering education. She has published papers specifically on Peer Instruction and Process Oriented Guided Inquiry-based Learning-like pedagogical approaches in the undergraduate software engineering classroom, both in person and virtual. She holds a Bachelors degree in Physics from the University of Madras, Chennai, India. She holds two Masters degrees - one in Computer Science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and one in Medical Physics from Anna University, Chennai, India. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Byrav Ramamurthy http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4104-7513 University of Nebraska - Lincoln [biography]

Byrav Ramamurthy is currently a Professor in the Department of UNL School of Computing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). He is the author of the book "Design of Optical WDM Networks - LAN, MAN and WAN Architectures" and a co-author of the book "Secure Group Communications over Data Networks" published by Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer in 2000 and 2004 respectively. He served as the Chair of the IEEE Communication Society's Optical Networking Technical Committee (ONTC) during 2009-2011. He served as the IEEE INFOCOM 2011 TPC Co-Chair. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief for the Springer Photonic Network Communications (PNET) journal.

His research areas include optical and wireless networks, peer-to-peer networks for multimedia streaming, network security and telecommunications. His research work is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Agriculture, NASA, AT&T Corporation, Agilent Tech., Ciena, HP and OPNET Inc.
Dr. Prasad Edamana [biography]

Dr. Prasad Edamana is an Assistant Professor working at Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT M) since 2006. He did doctoral study at NIIST, Trivandrum, India during 1995-2000. Subsequent to his Ph. D. program, Dr. Prasad had

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The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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