Framework

The proposed school seeks to redefine the ICT education by introducing the following key elements in the curriculum both in the undergraduate and graduate programs:

1. Knowledge seekers and avid researchers
   
2. Experience with real-world projects
3. Interdisciplinary education   
4. ICT enabled product design and systemic problem solvers
5. High quality specialized  research labs and specialized degrees leveraging cutting edge technology

1. Knowledge seekers and avid researchers: The curriculum will focus on instilling the principles of “Scientific enquiry in the students”. The students will be rigorously trained in being excellent researchers and life-time knowledge seekers and problem solvers.
2. Experience with real-world projects: This will be based on principles of “Problem driven theoretical learning”. The curriculum will focus on engaging the students in industry driven or societal projects starting from the first year of engineering education. The students will learn to be:
   
   • Social-change agents: The students will have consistent involvement with real word problems, industry projects and NGOS in all the program’s. This will inculcate in the students the necessary connect with the society. This will provide the students the opportunity to be “change agents” by applying the engineering principles to make contributions to the society.
   • Well grounded scientific/technical principles: Through well crafted modules the students will be encouraged in observing the real time context, identifying problems, discovering solutions and then be trained in firm scientific and technical fundamentals.
3. Interdisciplinary education: The Institute of ICT will offer interdisciplinary programs positioned between engineering, management, design, sciences and humanities. Being a part of the Ahmedabad Education cluster within 5 km radius of Ahmedabad University both the students and faculty will have the opportunity to take courses or conduct collaborative research projects with institutes such as Ahmedabad Textile Industries Research Association (ATIRA), Physical Research Laboratories (PRL), National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad (NID), Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), and Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University (CEPT University), Indian Institute of Space  Research Organization (ISRO) and Institute for Plasma research and  Vikram Sarabhai Community Science Center.etc. Student projects will involve interdisciplinary groups.  The students will learn key fundamentals in:
   
   • The value and importance of interdisciplinary teams in product development
     
   • Working in teams to reach a common objective
     
   • Learn to be good team players and team leaders
   • Professional ethics
4. ICT enabled product design and systemic problem solvers: Design education will be introduced as one of the key elements in the curriculum and the students will learn the fundamentals in the following:
   
   • Systemic thinking and problem solving: The students will be trained to be systemic thinkers-which means- learning to think beyond silo’ed technological solutions to system level solutions. To learn to leverage the greatest strength of ICT and ground the solutions at a systemic level so that the overall impact is on development of a “knowledge society”
   • ICT enabled products and services: Indian ICT industry desperately seeks ICT enabled products and services rather than just focus on software development for services. This knowledge of in house product development will be incorporated in the course curriculum.
   • Humanizing technology: User centered approaches will be the key guiding principles of the product development courses.
5. High quality specialized  research labs and specialized degrees leveraging cutting edge technology:
   
   • High quality specialized research labs: will be established together with industries leveraging upon the strength of Gujarat as an industrial hub to address the Indian and global growth sector industries such as healthcare and energy. These labs will serve as the platform to conduct high quality research for both the faculty, graduate and undergraduate students.
   • Specialized masters degrees programs in ICT: At graduate level unique specialization will be offered by combining the technical/industrial sectors such as (but not limited to) networking and security, human computer interaction, data analytics and visualization, mobile/cloud computing, supercomputing and bioinformatics, etc. This will be dependent on the faculty specialization and the research labs that will be established. The labs will allow the faculty the opportunity to be at pace with the state of the art, thereby regularly update the technology curriculum.