The National Programme for Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), an e-learning platform, is revolutionising the concept of internet based higher education in India.
Developed on the lines of the Open Courseware by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to some extent, the National Programme for Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) is bringing some of the best teachers of the country together, enabling students to access courses on engineering, sciences, technology, management, humanities and more, free of cost, all across the globe.
Content on the platform is being used by many educational institutions. Faculty members are using it as part of their lesson plan to teach university curriculum, and students are using it to prepare for jobs and competitive exams.
Picture for representation only. Photo Credit: Flickr
NPTEL is a joint venture of seven IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. The seven IITs include IIT Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkee. It was developed with the aim of providing e-learning through course content in the form of web based supplements and video courses.
Up till Aug 2015, NPTEL had 420 web courses and 509 video courses, which can be accessed freely through the website nptel.ac.in. These include approximately 921 courses, and each course has about 40 video lectures, which are one hour long. There are online discussion forums as well where students can post and review questions. Courses are also accompanied by assignments, handouts, self-evaluations tasks, etc. Some of the disciplines include Aerospace Engineering, Biotechnology, Atmospheric Science, Chemical Engineering, Management, Humanities and Social Sciences, etc. There is no specific eligibility for the courses. The faculty member of a course may recommend some basic knowledge required for certain topics.
The video content is accessible free of cost. These videos can be downloaded through the official NPTEL website, in MP4, FLV and 3gp formats. They can also be streamed through the YouTube channel here. Students can obtain the video courses on hard disks as well, at the NPTEL office in IIT Madras.
The focus areas of the NPTEL project is to provide higher education, professional education, distance education and a continuous open learning atmosphere. It is a curriculum building exercise and the NPTEL content adheres to the syllabi of All India Council for Technical Education and the slightly modified curricula of major affiliating universities.
The courses are well structured and elaborate. Institutions are encouraged to build their own versions of NPTEL courses based on their curriculum using the NPTEL material available online. Thus the project is also meant to fill the gap between the current expertise level of faculty in institutions like IITs and IISc, and those in other engineering colleges across India.
Certification courses are also offered in association with industry partners like Aricent, NASSCOM and Google. These courses are offered 2 or 3 times every year. Students need to give an exam by paying a nominal fee, and after completion of the course, they get a certificate. Till August 2015, 7,267 students had received such certificates.
To know more about NPTEL, visit here.
Source….Tanaya Singh….www.thebetterindia.com
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