With the economy gathering steam, requirement for skilled workforce, especially in the engineering sector, seems to be reaching unprecedented levels in India, if experts are to be believed. Though the mushrooming engineering colleges are stepping in as suppliers of workforce to the industry, lack of proper infrastructure is feared to affect the quality of students graduating from these institutions.

"It's the complaint we often hear from captains of industries when we speak to them in larger forums," said Jairam Pillai, Managing Director, National Instruments (India), who develop software and hardware tools for designing and prototyping systems for measurements, automation and embedded applications. "Yes, our students have very good theoretical understanding of engineering and mathematics, but unfortunately, they don't have exposure to the practical side of things."

National Instruments is one of several engineering firms who are striving to remedy this woeful inadequacy in the Indian education system. Head quartered in Austin, Texas (US), the company boasts of providing strong support for science education in that country by working closely with several institutions, schools (in K-12 segment) and researchers.

Tony Vento, Vice President, Application Engineering, takes pride in the fact that education is in the company's DNA. "Not only because we hire engineers who graduate from educational institutions, but also because we look at students as future innovators who need to be excited by science," he says.

The company has an education model with a very clear emphasis on practical knowledge. Complementing textbook-based learning, it trains the teachers to use technology in classrooms, which would help students relate definitions and formula to real life situation.

"Things like simulators, for example, can help students (in middle and high schools) to understand how concepts work in reality," says Ravi Marawar, National Instrument's academic relations manager.

"Once they learn the concepts, they must be taught to develop prototypes, the very physical representations of engineering ideas, that give them a complete understanding of how devices are built using concepts. This model of learning would stand them in good stead in terms of job-readiness in future."

As for India, National Instruments started to work with researchers in IIT during the early days of their educational initiatives which kept activities concentrated around research coordination. Three years on, the focus has shifted to colleges, where they built labs for practical learning. Dubbed as 'Virtual Instrumentation Labs', they were built in 200 institutions across the country and covered all engineering disciplines.

Jairam Pillai thinks the labs are an important aspect of colleges not only to provide practical understanding, but also sustaining interest in core engineering. "Today there is a lot of craze about IT, due to which interest in core engineering disciplines is diminishing faster. We believe labs can offer exposure to practical learning and create certain excitement about core engineering," he says. Holding paper contests is another method National Instruments adopt to create excitement among students.

Each year, the company holds a gathering of educationalists and academicians (across the world) as a means of exchanging ideas and learn/evolve newer, much effective models to promote science education. A few weeks ago, one such gathering was organised in Bangalore, in which Tony Vento participated.

In addition, it has been working closely with IUC (Indo US collaboration for Engineering Education), a body that has been working to improve engineering education in India and US, to explore ways of encouraging research coordination and is also holding talks with other leading engineering companies to form a common front for promoting science education.

"Obviously, our effort can just be a drop in the ocean, because we are dealing with a large number of people and institutions in this country," Points out Jairam Pillai. "We feel joining hands with other players in the industry would help us cover more grounds and achieve results much faster."

In the foreseeable future, National Instruments is planning to expand its educational initiatives organically, much the same way as how it has done in the US. Once it achieves satisfactory progress in the UG segment, it has plans to gradually enhance its presence in the schools.