MUMBAI: Seven leading IITs, Infosys
BSE 0.43 % , TCS BSE 0.64 % , Cognizant and
industry lobby Nasscom are coming together
to launch a bunch of free, online courses that
could potentially help 100,000-150,000 people
a year get high-quality education and make
them job-ready.
The courses will be offered using the model of
massive open online courses (MOOCs), which is
globally creating an upheaval in the world of
higher education. The first three courses in
computer science are expected to roll out this
October.
"This programme is particularly relevant to
India because of the high number of young
students who need to be educated and
trained," says Lakshmi Narayanan, vice-
chairman of Cognizant.
MOOCs make high-quality education from top
universities accessible to anyone, anywhere in
the world, online and for free.
The model was rolled out in early 2012 back-
to-back by two start-ups, Udacity and
Coursera, both emerging out of Stanford
University. This was followed by edX, MIT-
Harvard's online courses platform.
About 15 faculty members from the seven
older IITs will form the faculty and are
currently designing the course.
The participating IITs are Delhi, Madras,
Kharagpur, Kanpur, Roorkee, Bombay, and
Guwahati.
"We are currently working out the details of
the programme in consultation with Nasscom,"
says Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi, director, IIT-
Madras. "We are also hoping to rope in more
than 500 mentors on a voluntary basis from
industry and academia," adds AK Ray,
professor of the Centre for Educational
Technology at IIT-Kharagpur.
This is the biggest industry-academia
partnership to help students and professionals
access top-quality course content and meet
specific industry demands. "For the first time,
students from both rural areas and metros will
have access to the same content, channel,
tests, experts and certification," says
Cognizant's Narayanan.
People who take the courses will be eligible to
write proctored exams for a minimal fee and
get certificates. For the computer science
courses, IIT will give certification. For the
foundation courses, industry will give
certificates. It could also be a joint
certification with IITs.
"Students from the second year onwards in
science and engineering from any college can
take the courses that will be offered multiple
times a year," says Andrew Thangaraj, associate
professor of electrical engineering at IIT-
Madras. "It will make a difference in their
career progress."
Google is providing its Course Builder platform
for hosting MOOCs. HackerRank will provide
their web portal, where students can practise
their programming assignments and get them
verified and graded.
Till now, IITs have been offering open
courseware on the National Programme on
Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). This is
a repository of video lectures created by
professors of the seven older IITs and IISC-
Bangalore available to anyone, anywhere in the
world on Youtube etc. However, NPTEL does
not give any certification; neither does it have
any interaction or synchronised classes. In the
next phase of NPTEL, all these seven IITs and
industry have joined hands to offer courses on
the web-based MOOCs platform, which will
also offer certification.
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