Colleges can now opt for online courses. There is ample material, including from international universities that engineering students can benefit from.
The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) with around 900 courses for engineering colleges, mostly as videos, has so far only a small number of takers. If more colleges got involved, it would help not just the students but also colleges and teachers, says Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, Indian Institute of Technology — Madras.
At present, only five per cent of the teachers in the IITs and Indian Institute of Science and some private institutions are involved in creating the content.
On their part, NPTEL proposes to extend the programme to include Arts, Sciences and Law programmes too. The plan is to rope in the AICTE and UGC for non-engineering courses and carry forward the programme, he says. But an online programme is not a substitute for a teacher in the classroom, he insists.
