National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL): The Vision and the Mission

The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning, NPTEL, launched jointly by the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science and funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India is an online curriculum development programme in sciences and engineering at university and research levels. Its objectives are: to provide detailed and supplementary curricula to students enrolled in science and engineering institutions in the country; to train young faculty in these institutions in technology enabled teaching-learning processes and help them design curricula in their own areas by adopting contents provided under the project as free and open educational resources; to enable Indian industry adopt the contents in their training and up grade the skills of employees and contribute to a learning environment focused to specific employment opportunities; to set up a virtual technical university which will be able to provide quality engineering education to a large number (in hundreds of thousands every year) of students and industry professionals interested in career advancement and; to provide lifelong learning opportunities to every one. The challenges in technology and pedagogy associated with online curriculum development in fulfilling the needs of learners with diverse backgrounds and expectations and teachers who will need to understand the paradigm shift of online education versus on-campus education, are enormous. While this Conference clearly addresses the core issues, I shall present the Indian effort so far which is unique in the world and which involves many partners among academic, industrial and government agencies. Details of NPTEL programme and educational contents developed so far under this project are available from the website http://nptel.iitm.ac.in.