- good incentive to students as you rightly point out, and even from the perspective, that there is more to the work they are doing than simply to have a report at the end of the day
- opportunity for EE department to "get a feel" for the general direction and needs for EE skills
- opportunity for industry to obtain basic research or testbed for ideas of interest
While I speak from the EE department perspective, I believe this is a sentiment shared by others at the Faculty of Technology or other institutions. Question is more on the actions (or lack thereof).
In terms of actions, are there members on this list, who would be interested in developing collaborative projects for fourth year EE projects (typically a 9-month project)? If yes, I would greatly appreciate hearing from you.
Regards,
Dorothy
At 10:03 PM 7/22/2004, you wrote:
Most people will not produce results unless there is a meaningful incentive. There are 2 parties involved in this equation-the government, which supplies funding and the students who supply the projects.
Let me give the example of how this works at the University of Waterloo, please dont bash me, it may not be practical in Uganda's situation but it illustrates the idea of incentives.
The University of Waterloo has created a technology triangle where graduating engineering students have started up small profitable businesses from projects they submitted at the end of their course. Why is this possible?
Government provides the funding and in turn becomes the incubator of these ideas and having a monetary stake in these new technologies through the university.
The students are therefore extremely motivated to be creative and put in a lot of effort to ensure their project generates sufficient commercial viability.
In essence, everyone benefits. The university gets the funding they need, the students get a chance to start a money making venture from a technology they love and the government gets a stake in the the businesses that are started.
The students I studied with in Makerere 1997-2000 were among the brightest I knew(Mass Comm). Engineering students in Uganda by virtue of choosing such a technical subject must be bright and therefore given the right incentive would do a fabulous job of developing viable technologies or at least useful research.
Results = Incentives
Joyce
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