Engineers of future: Aspiring students brought one step closer

62 students from lower-income households given training in technical drawing.

ISLAMABAD:

Sixty-two students from four private schools, catering to low-income families in Rawalpindi, are now about as trained in technical drawing as some qualified engineers.

A local Information Technology service provider, Trojans Pakistan, organised a month-long course in July to teach the ninth and tenth grade students Computer-Aided Design (CAD). The project was funded by UKaid under their ILM education grants for Pakistan.

At a concluding award ceremony for the course on Saturday, Saad Ahmed Khan, business development manager of Trojans Pakistan, said, “At the global level, 32,000 secondary school students in over 70 countries are learning CAD, but this is the first time such an initiative has been taken in Pakistan.”

He cited a survey that only four percent of Pakistani secondary-school students want to be engineers.

“This means that science aptitude is decreasing among our youth and creativity is diminishing,” Khan said.

The CAD course was a pilot project designed to create interest among matriculation students, who might have little or no access to computer, about designing equipment and visualising ideas.

Naunehal Public School, Pakistan Cambridge School, Brightland Public School and Aims Education System, all in the Satellite Town and New Katarian area of Rawalpindi took part in the training course.

Khan said they experienced a poor response and “red tape” behaviour from the government schools, but the response from private schools was encouraging.

“The level of cooperation shown by the private school teachers was wonderful,” Khan said. “They even identified bright students who were interested in learning about engineering,” he added.

CAD uses computer software tools to draw technical drawings of industrial equipment such as the parts of a car. The parts can be modelled in 3-D and connected with each other. This allows for easy modification and analysis of technical aspects of the equipment. It is usually taught as a course at mechanical and electrical engineering universities.

The students, who volunteered for the course learned to use ‘Creo’– a CAD software designed by Trojans Pakistan. They also learned to draw technical drawings and ways to incorporate them to build 3-D virtual models of larger machines. One instructor and three teaching assistants taught the 36-hour CAD course over four weeks at the NICON institute on 6th Road.

“Learning the design software seemed difficult on the first day, but later it felt like I was playing a fancy computer game,” said Waqas bin Najam, a tenth grade student.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 23^rd, 2012.