The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) has been focussed on online learning for more than a decade now. NPTEL is a project run by the IITs and IISc Bangalore, and is funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. Through its portal http://nptel.ac.in, NPTEL offers one of the largest collections of video and web courses in engineering and allied areas.
NPTEL has recently embarked on offering online courses through its new portal https://onlinecourses.nptel.ac.in/. The portal is powered by Google, and the certification is in partnership with NASSCOM, India's umbrella organisation for IT and other high tech industry. This new effort has been termed NPTEL Online Certification or NOC, in short.
While the delivery of courses is similar to MOOCs, a few important innovations in NOC make for a good fit in the Indian milieu. Firstly, the certification is based on a proctored exam through a test administration service. Secondly, the certification is being provided along with an industry recognised body. Thirdly, the certification has an eligibility clause - only students who score above a certain cut-off can get the certificate.
NPTEL's partnership with Google has been enduring. All NPTEL courses have been available through a dedicated YouTube channel for several years now. The online courses portal is built on Course Builder - an open-source MOOC platform released by Google. The portal has important innovations such as an online edit/compile/run system which is useful for programming assignments.
From March to July 2014, an online course on Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms was run on the portal https://onlinecourses.nptel.ac.in/ with great success. The certification process is in the final stages of completion. Currently, two new courses - Introduction to Programming in C and Basic Electrical Circuits - are open for registration. It is our hope that
NPTEL Online Certification (NOC) proves to be invaluable for both students and employers, who can benefit from high quality learning and certification in the future.
a guest post by Professor K. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras and Chairman, Programme Implementation Committee (PIC), NPTEL
This is a golden opportunity for students to learn from some of the best Computer Science faculty in the country. Registration for the course is open until 10-March-2014. The first set of lectures and assignments have been released on 3-March.
See this introductory video from various organizations involved in this course.
After the course, an in-person, proctored exam can be taken by paying a nominal fee. Those who pass the exam will get a certificate.
We are honored to be a part of this initiative which aims to make high quality education accessible to a large number of students in India. NPTEL has been recording and uploading lecture videos since last several years. Their YouTube channel has more than 13,000 videos and has crossed 100 million video views.
Posted by Ashwani Sharma, University Relations Manager
