National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)
NPTEL is an acronym for National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning which is an initiative by seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Roorkee) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for creating course contents in engineering and science.
NPTEL as a project originated from many deliberations between IITs, Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) during the years 1999-2003. A proposal was jointly put forward by five IITs (Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Madras) and IISc for creating contents for 100 courses as web based supplements and 100 complete video courses, for forty hours of duration per course. Web supplements were expected to cover materials that could be delivered in approximately forty hours. Management courses contents on Finance, Marketing, Operations Management, Management Information Systems etc are based on the model curriculum suggested by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the syllabi of major affiliating Universities in India.
The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) was initiated by seven Indian Institutes of Technology (Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, Guwahati and Roorkee) along with the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2003. Five core disciplines were identified, namely, civil engineering, computer science and engineering, electrical engineering, electronics and communication engineering and mechanical engineering and 235 courses in web/video format were developed in this phase.
The main goal of NPTEL Phase II (2009-14) was to build on the engineering and core science courses launched previously in NPTEL Phase I. An additional 600 web and video courses were created in all major branches of engineering, physical sciences at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and management courses at the postgraduate level. Several improvements such as indexing of all video and web courses and keyword search were implemented.
Highlights / New Initiatives:
Largest online repository in the world of courses in engineering, basic sciences and selected humanities and social sciences subjects.
Laboratory workshops - in person, to give hands-on experience to learners
Lab workshops for students at some of the top institutes, such as the IITs, IISERs and IIITs is proposed, which will be attended by them in person.
Internships for course toppers with course instructors
To improve the skills and employability of students and to prepare them for taking up jobs in the industry.
Soft Skills Workshops for improving employability: Train students to face interviews, hold mock interviews, train in business communication skills - speaking and writing.
GATE exams: This effort will create a portal that has both video content and aligned questions from previous year question papers.Support to attend technical conferences: NPTEL to sponsor the cost of travel and conference registration fees for Coordinators of different Local Chapters (colleges who partner with NPTEL). This will help them upgrade themselves and be abreast of the latest developments in the field which will benefit the students they are teaching.
Analytics of the data accrued: This will help identify the gaps in course offering and better the pedagogy and learning experience.
Continuous portal development: NPTEL involves incorporating more features for better testing of knowledge accrued.
Translation of English Transcripts of NPTEL Videos: Translation of the English transcripts of NPTEL video courses are being carried out in 10 regional languages. The goal is to help the students coming from local language schooling.
