Maker Bhavan Foundation: Modernising STEM education, promoting a culture of Makers

CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Ms. Damayanti Bhattacharya, CEO, Maker Bhavan Foundation

Kindly brief us about the MBF’s mission and its trajectory.

Maker Bhavan Foundation was set up in 2019 with a vision of modernising STEM education in Indian science and engineering colleges by promoting a culture of making and active learning, nurturing talented makers – students and faculty – so that the education imparted is more relevant and responsive to the real-life needs of people and society.

Since our inception, we have been partnering with higher education institutions in science and engineering by building top-notch maker spaces, supporting collaborative classrooms and providing world-class equipment, resources, knowledge and implementation support for new methods of teaching and learning that can be integrated into existing curricula.

In 4 years, our footprint has extended to 12 institutions, including 6 IITs and two campuses of the Birla Institute of Technology. In addition, though our programme titled LEAP, which is focused entirely on tier II colleges, we have a presence in an additional 9 colleges in Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. We intend to be in 50 colleges by 2030 and create more than a million makers for the nation.

In what ways does the Maker Bhavan Foundation contribute significantly to the improvement of the calibre of undergraduate education?

Psychologists have identified several modes of learning as important in the development of a learner. One such mode of learning, deemed quite effective, is learning by experiencing. It is believed that the knowledge thus acquired is deep and lasts for a lifetime. This learning mode is also sometimes referred to as learning by doing (LBD) or project-based learning (PBL).

These modes of learning, however, remain alien to the Indian education system. This is in direct contrast to the hands-on experimental opportunities available to college students and even high school students in the West. With the mass production of desktop manufacturing machines like 3-D printers and easy access to online learning, students abroad have tremendous opportunities to experiment with learning by doing and project-based learning, which in turn heightens their ability to innovate. Faculty in most international engineering colleges have adapted and incorporated working these machines and giving students the freedom to experiment into their teaching. They act as guides and mentors rather than lecturers. The work done by Maker Bhawan Foundation is a modest effort at redressing this gap and the skill crisis looming on the horizon.

By promoting learning by doing, we believe we are helping engineering colleges create better engineers – graduates with strong technical competence, who have the necessary skills to be innovators, out-of-box thinkers, master builders and effective leaders.

Which are the top five institutions that you have collaborated with?

Our deepest engagement is at IIT Bombay and IIT Gandhinagar, where almost all of our 6 programmes are seeded in some form or other. However, we have found most of our partner institutions to be extremely receptive, and it is only a matter of time before we have a similar depth of engagement with all our partners. We are a young entity, and our ability to scale and expand would also depend on our ability to find friends and supporters who believe in and support our mission.

How has the Maker Bhavan Foundation managed to revolutionize the educational journey of students over the last four years? 

True revolutionary change takes time especially when it is a bottoms-up approach to change. And the Foundation’s work definitely falls in that category. Yet there are early encouraging signs. Let me illustrate this with one example. One of our programmes – Invention Factory – is a 6-week-intensive residential summer workshop in inventing. It is targeted towards first- and second-year undergraduate students who have no prior experience in hands-on building. Every year they come together in a single location and form teams with fellow participants and then identify a problem that meets a significant need, then invent a tangible product and write and file provisional patents both in the US and India. All this is done in just 6 weeks!

Most engineering students don’t do this in the entire course of their engineering degree. If you ask any of our past participants, they would tell you that it is a life-altering experience. In 3 editions, it has resulted in 44 patent declarations in USA and India.

How will STEM (Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics) education create an impact on the careers of the students?

It is a well-accepted fact that our collective future is going to be technology driven. The global workplace is changing at a mind-boggling speed. The skilling and learning landscape now is such that knowledge is no longer stacked up in silos and any new skill sets learnt will last only a decade or so. Having a core technical skill (which you gain through a degree in STEM) gives you an edge in your career. Having said that, let me also add that it is no longer about how to write code. Students need to ask themselves how relevant is the knowledge gained through their degree and what skills have they acquired in the four years of an undergraduate degree. What is needed today apart from technical skills is a problem-solving ability, a creative and inventive mindset and soft skills to negotiate the 21st-century workplace. An engineering education strengthened by maker education inculcates all these skills and ensures that students are successful in their future careers.

How can the application of AI enhance inclusivity in the education sector? 

Today there is tremendous anxiety around machine learning and AI as the transformation wrought by AI is at a speed more rapid than educational institutions can react to or even adapt to. Take, for example, ChatGPT, the new ‘it APP’ that is helping students ‘write’ their assignments, but can it help ‘teach’ students ‘how to apply the knowledge gained to real-world problems and come up with a solution’?

What if we paused and ask ourselves what is it that humans can do that AI cannot?

Machines don’t have creativity and inventiveness. Machines cannot replace lived and learned experiences. AI responses are born of exhaustive enumeration and evaluation of existing data and information.

Our education needs to go beyond just imparting theoretical knowledge and focus on the creation of new knowledge, fostering creativity, an inventive mindset, design thinking abilities and social and cognitive skills like teamwork and collaboration in students. There is a pattern here, as these are all skills imparted in experiential learning that maker education encourages. An education imparted in this mode would always remain relevant.

On the flip side, AI can definitely improve the way instructors/faculty teach. If AI is used for conducting controlled experiments on what students respond to and how they earn better and what areas they struggle with in a given topic, then that is valuable information for educators to up their teaching game.