The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) is creating what will become the world’s largest video repository of lecture course content in engineering and science. I stumbled on one of their video courses on Satellite Communication some few weeks ago as I was searching for some information for a paper which I am writing.
NPTEL was initiated by seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkee) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc). The objective of NPTEL is to provide open course materials for engineering and science students and teachers freely. This is similar to the objective of the Open courseware project by the MIT which makes available course materials by professors of MIT freely to the rest of the world. But the NPTEL approach is tailored for the Indian situation in that it is directed towards providing learning materials in Science and Engineering by adhering to the syllabi of All India Council for Technical Education and the slightly modified curricula of major affiliating Universities. Developing countries, such as Malawi, can also customize these courses to their own circumstances. They may wish to get in touch with NPTEL to learn one lesson or two.
NPTEL intends to build a course-specific web space for each course where students, teachers and other users anywhere in India and outside would be encouraged to create threaded discussions. It is said that direct interaction among students all over the world and teachers would be encouraged through a bulletin-board approach/threaded discussions with the help of moderators who would be appointed for this purpose. The purpose is to eventually build a digital library for each subject which will include a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for the section.
Phase I of the programme was completed recently. Course materials have been developed for approximately 125 web courses and are accessible freely through the NPTEL website. The video content, composed of 110 video (approximately 4500 hours) lecture courses, is available in MPEG-4 format with a bit-rate of 512 kbps with H.264 compression for streaming through the Internet. They are accessible freely through the YouTube channel. Google Inc. has offered NPTEL free bandwidth for hosting this channel. In phase II, NPTEL will create about 400 video lecture courses (with about 16000 hours of lectures). In addition, IITs have large repositories of video lectures prepared already from their own efforts outside of NPTEL and these are also being made available as free and open educational resources for all. When this is completed, it is reported that it will become the largest video repository of technical lecture-courses in the world in the streaming video format and will be helpful to everyone who is interested in enhancing his/her learning.
Any one who has a connection to internet can access the contents freely and without any registration to the website. For viewing video lectures which are streamed with the help of YouTube, broadband connectivity is a must. However, if your connectivity is limited or you do not have broadband and if you want to get the lectures in DVD media from them, you need to pay a fee per course.
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17 users commented in " India developing the largest video repository of technical lecture courses in the world "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackIt’s good to read something about India on your blog.
NPTEL is a great initiative of IIT’s, these institutions are great gems of India. This program will really help students and teachers world wide.
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That looks like a really good idea. It makes education more accessible to people and more and more institutions are beginning to do that for example lectures being available to students via itunes. But, it could lead to people watching the videos and not having actually done all the required work and then seeing themselves as experts in the matter.
Gerri´s last blog ..The Best Deal For Your Old Electronics – TradeUps, Gazelle or BuyMyTronics
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Clement Nyirenda says:
August 24th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
@Gerri, People who watch these videos have to enroll at a particular college/university where they will have to sit for exams in order to get certificates
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Thanks for writing about this. There are many other such initiatives and when you search for education material on google, you will be surprised as to how much there is.
Nicole Price´s last blog ..Operation Computer Speakers
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Thanks for sharing. India really works hardly to maintain on top and very useful in technology area for all nations.
George´s last blog ..A Budget Orlando Vacation
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It is good to see you are writing about India. Thanks for sharing this.
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Cheers for the pointer about this project – looks really good. Unfortunately the videos don’t yet have a Creative Commons license – though sounds like they will do in the future (see: http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/faq.php#9)
alex
Alex Little´s last blog ..Can cloud computing work in Ethiopia?
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Hmm.. I wonder if this can actually work. Personally I prefer to be able to ask questions back at the lecturer.
Glenn Torres´s last blog ..QA1: Should I Refinance?
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Good to hear about INDIA in a blog.
The NPTEL is doing a very great job. Sounds like India is developing.
Streaming the video with bit rate of 512 and H.264 compression is a very nice idea, cause H.264 is the best compression useful for internet streaming.
Akshob
http://www.p2w2.com/akshob
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It’s good to see you to write about India. well seems like everyone over here saying the same.
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education is the base of any country. if there is good education facilities available in a country this will lead to increase in growth rate of that country. at this time the growth rate of India is 7%. This is because of organizations like NPTEL. NPTEL is really doing good job. well it is a nice post…
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It’s free and doesn’t require any registration. Unbelievable! Now, other online courses businesses may need a very new strategy.
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It is great and useful information for everyone in search of great free online courses.
By the way you have very nice blog. I’m going to bookmark it.
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I never thought India would top this list. Its very heartening to see India edging out other countries in this arena.I hope India to excel in this field over a sustained period of time.
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NPTEL are doing a great job, good for India!
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Clement Nyirenda says:
August 24th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
@Steph: I guess for the whole world.
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I would really appreciate if you could use your name when commenting.Using just keywords makes your comment seem spammy, and it's liable to get deleted.Please read my comment policy for more details.Many thanks for your cooperation!
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