Short-term practical training for electrical engineering undergraduates

This paper describes a practical training program developed for electrical engineering undergraduate students at the University of Mauritius. The three-month training is offered at the end of the freshman year, and is a prerequisite for the second year. Students do not take more time to graduate as the training period is offered between two semesters. During the first month, students are presented with pragmatic engineering fundamentals and are exposed to some multidisciplinary engineering tools essential for engineering practice. For the remaining two months students are grouped in teams to undertake a mini-project each, under the guidance of an academic supervisor; as such they get an insight of working within design group in a simulated industrial environment. Experience has shown that the batches of students who underwent this structured training program maintained a constantly better performance in subsequent years and attained remarkable standard for their final year projects, as well as in their career as professional engineers.