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The high-profile programme carried out jointly by the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and other premier institutions, including the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala (IIITMK), has successfully completed its initial phase. Supported by the Union Ministry of Human Resources Development, NPTEL has marked the country’s entry into the global arena of ICT-enabled education in science and technology.

Over 300 teachers of international repute from IITs of Mumbai, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Rourkee, as well as IISc, Bangalore, have pooled their skills to generate 130-odd web courses and 110 video courses in main branches of engineering. And more than two million engineering students and their teachers in the country stand to benefit from it.

The NPTEL content available at http://nptel.iitm.ac.in is being regularly updated. “It is a mirror site, which we update regularly,” says K.R. Srivathsan, director of IIITMK, Thiruvananthapuram. The video content, however, is yet to be made downloadable. Prof. Srivathsan says students and teachers will be able to access video lectures on the Net by the end of November.

He says the NPTEL content should be aligned with the syllabus requirements of our universities and engineering institutions. The Kerala Education Grid devised by IIITMK has proposed help align the content with the requirements of the State’s engineering institutions.

It has planned to set up an educational grid gateway system. Top officials from the industry and academia are expected to attend a meeting convened by IIITMK in December. IIITMK is also planning a few courses aimed at increasing the proficiency of teachers. The seven IITs and IISc are currently functioning as resource institutions of NPTEL.

Each of them has Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) committee with faculty from different departments. Other premier institutions are associated with the NPTEL for different activities.

Launched in 2003, NPTEL has been meant not only to improve the quality of education in our engineering colleges, most of whom suffer from acute shortage of experienced teachers, but also to help IITs themselves get better students in their postgraduate programmes, says Prof. Srivathsan. He has been associated with NPTEL since his IIT Kanpur days.

The experienced faculty of IITs and IISc have developed the 240-odd e-learning courses meant to enhance learning of basic science and engineering concepts at the undergraduate level. Core sciences and engineering, civil engineering, computer science and engineering, electrical engineering, electronics and communication engineering and mechanical engineering have been in focus in the initial phase. Each course is given in separate modules with several lectures in each module.

Each lecture has several pages. The course content is available in html format, and some in pdf format as well and can be easily accessed from the site.

In core sciences and engineering, IIT Bomay has web courses of engineering chemistry, mathematics and engineering physics; IIT Delhi has engineering chemistry and environment and ecology; IIT Guwahati has mathematics-3 and engineering physics-1; IIT Kanpur has numerical analysis in computer programming and mathematics-2; and IIT Madras has basic electronics and lab, management science-1 &2, and environment science and ecology. In civil engineering, IIT Bombay has web courses in structural analysis, foundation engineering-1 and transportation engineering-1; IIT Delhi has courses in strength of materials, and environmental air pollution; IIT Guwahati has construction planning and management, fluid mechanics and soil mechanics; IIT Kanpur has water and waste water management, advanced transportation engineering, modern surveying techniques; IIT Kharagpur has structural analysis-2, design of concrete structures, water resources engineering; IIT Madras has design of steel structures-1 & 2, hydraulics, pre-stressed concrete structures, engineering geology; IIT Roorkee has surveying, planning and design of buildings; and IISc has fundamentals of environmental geotechnology, optimization methods, reliability engineering, composite materials, and computational hydraulics.

In computer science engineering, IIT Bombay has web course in design and analysis of algorithms; IIT Delhi has introduction to problem solving and programming, computer graphics; IIT Guwahati has computer organisation and architecture, data structures and programme methodology, theory of automata and formal languages; IIT Kanpur has compiler design; IIT Kharagpur has computer networks, software engineering, artificial intelligence, and internet technologies; IIT Madras has object oriented system design, introduction to database systems and design; and IISc has digital systems, microprocessors and microcontrollers, operating systems, system analysis and design, and data communications.

In electrical engineering, IIT Bombay, Madras, Delhi, Kanpur and Kharagpur and IISc offer courses. Other courses offered: electronics and communication engineering - IIT Bombay, Guwahati, Kanpur, Delhi, Roorkee, Kharagpur and Madras and IISc and mechanical engineering - IIT Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkee.

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