Every year IITs come up with off-beat electives that haven’t been offered in other engineering colleges, like the introduction of Odissi dance as a subject in IIT Bhubaneswar. For an IIT student, pursuing hobbies like film making, designing, basketball, etc. may be a secondary activity. Many of these students aren’t even aware of their extra academic talents and those who are tend to give up such interests in a bid to pursue engineering. IITs have now started introducing such activities as mandatory subjects in the BE curriculum. Apart from providing as a stress buster, PaGaLGuY tried to find out how these extra academic activities help students in better learning of engineering concepts.

IITs put extra emphasis on understanding the application of
engineering theories by constantly giving students practical projects as a part
of their curriculum. Similarly, students feel that extra academic subjects in
sports, design and art give them an applied perspective of their studies. Divya
Shrivastava, a 2nd year student of IIT Kharagpur says, “We have an
elective in basketball. As an engineering student, I tend to analyse the
distance of the basket and the speed and angle of the ball while playing.  We have lectures per week wherein we are
taught to measure such dynamics.” Infact, modern scientists have also proved
the application of theories of translational and rotational motions while
throwing the ball and the impact of backspin on its velocity.

Apart from that, IIT-Kgp also provides courses in graphic
design and design semantics. According to Tarun Manchanda, a first year
student, “design concepts in terms of colour, density and shape can be applied
to subjects like 3D drawings and perspective drawings in mechanical
engineering.” Besides, even in automobile engineering, theories like the golden
ratio 1.618 are used in designing the look of a car. Various
automobile companies use rules of colour and shape to give their models a
specific outlook. For e.g. the primitive idea behind commercial cars having two
headlights and a cage in the middle was to make it resemble a human with eyes
and a nose.

While many IIT students agreed that such courses provide
them with an organic and alternative education, they also believe that being
primarily science students, they use these courses to enhance their engineering
skills. Shubham Atreja an electrical engineering student from IIT-Kanpur says, “Electives
in arts like film making or modern art teach us the use of light and colour to
enhance the perusal of an object. Similarly we use properties of light in
creating electrical machinery, the application of which I was able to
understand better while learning film making.” Also, in modern art there are
theories like formalism and existentialism which concentrates on the density,
texture and composition of objects. Scientists have long been drawing semantics
between these theories and model building.

Prof Vandana Kadam, chemistry professor from Thadomal
Shahani Engineering College, Mumbai says, “the true intellect of a student is
gauged when they are able to convert their learning into fruitful practice. When
students are given practical projects as a part of their curriculum, their
thinking is mostly uni-directional. Bringing in peripheral activities into the
picture gives them a multi-dimensional approach to problem solving. In TSEC we
have lots of such activities, but since they aren’t mandatory or credit based,
students may not take them seriously.”

Some other subjects in IITs include philosophy, literature,
badminton, classical music, meditation, etc. “Subjects like architecture have a
lot of similarities in theories with mechanical or civil engineering.
Understanding of music and its wavelengths can be reciprocated in designing
musical instruments” says Gunjan Amrohi from IIT Madras.

Thus, IIT students don’t consider these electives as an
unnecessary distraction from core curriculum but feel that it broadens their
experiences in the field. In short, every college has activities as stress
busters, but IITs have found a way to collate recreation with learning.