News »Browse Articles » IITs to launch 600 online courses in 2011

Chennai: For creating course contents in engineering and science, seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bangalore are preparing to launch 600 more online courses in 2011. This comes up following the good response from the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) - phase I, which is an initiative by seven IITs (IIT Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkee) and IISc, for creating course contents in engineering and science, creating web and video-based contents for courses.

This mission is being funded under National ICT mission. "Under that mission we have been funded to the tune of Rs. 96 crore. We have promised 600 courses and would make these courses free to the students," said Prof. M. S. Ananth, Director IIT Madras. The Programme Implementation Committee, headed by Prof. Ananth told that the NPTEL site was visited by 1.5 billion people so far. "The site gets around 5400 visits per day and it is heartening to see the response. Some of them told us courses are extraordinarily good," he added. Pointing out that in the first phase of the programme, about 350 faculty members in all partner institutions worked together to deliver lecture contents, Prof. Ananth said that this was likely to increase to well over 1000 faculty in the next phase. Other Institutions such as NITs and major University faculty are also likely to participate.

In the phase - I, which was completed recently, course materials have been developed for approximately 125 web courses and are accessible freely through the website. Lecture contents are also being made available for 110 video courses. Both the web and video courses cover five major engineering disciplines. "These courses are carefully chosen and enough care is taken to remove the repetition. These course materials could be used in future for the Vitual Tech University on which a pilot study is on," said Dr. Managala Sunder Krishnan, National Web Courses Coordinator, NPTEL.

Prof. Ananth said, ""We are now starting the second phase; it will take some time." In Phase II, the objectives are to create contents for science and engineering courses in all major disciplines as well as specialized and newly developing interdisciplinary subjects for which there is very little academic expertise in private colleges. It also aims at to bring in all the best teachers in the country under the umbrella of NPTEL and record their lectures and seek their collaboration with IITs and IISc and make their courses available for the community under free and open sources agreement.

Source:
http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/IITs_to_launch_600_online_courses_in_2011-n

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