Learning by engagement and empowerment - a pragmatic approach to enhance student engagement in a service course and developing relevance of such a course to their own majors

New pedagogical approaches are developed and implemented in a service course in order to enhance the engagement of students in the learning process.Service courses are often perceived to be non-relevant and lame by majority of engineering students.The new approaches bring a climate where students are provided with opportunities to take charge and explore.The idea behind the new approach is built around a good mix of technology with old tools of the trade so as to create a system of challenge and reward.Trials based on this approach indicate that such a system of reward helps enhance classroom engagement and helps students discover the connection between the service course and their chosen field.