Seven IITs, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and Nasscom team up to provide free online courses

Seven leading IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), Infosys, TCS, 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.

Seven IITs, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and Nasscom team up to provide free online courses. “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.

“Cognizant has been discussing this idea with academia and industry for the past three years… Cognizant will make available infrastructure at its training facilities during off-peak times, such as weekends, to enable students to take tests and get certified,” says Narayanan.

Initially, IITs will run three mini modules of a computer science course, including programming, algorithm, and data structures. Each module will have 12 lectures and there will be a total of 36 lectures over 12 weeks. Going forward, the plan is to repeat this model in VLSI (very large scale integration) embedded systems and other branches of engineering and general sciences.

“Industry is getting involved with inputs on applicability and problem-solving aspects with the aim of making students more industry and job-ready,” says Sandhya Chintala, executive director, sector skills council, Nasscom, who is leading the programme for the industry association.

Industry has also shared a brief on the skills needed for 67 entrylevel job roles. IITs will make these available on MOOC platform. “This is the first time that industry has articulated the performance of an individual at an entry-level job role. This clarity will help formal or non-formal training institutions to get people job-ready,” says Chintala.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), July 19, 2013

Will internet replace the universities?

Several millions of students will enter higher educational institutions in the next one decade. The Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) wants to double the gross enrolment ratio (GER) in higher education by 2020. The brick-and-mortar colleges in the country are not equipped to meet their needs. Many believe that with higher internet penetration, the demand for online education will grow radically in India. Some even believe that the traditional university system might not survive for long. Though the internet penetration in India is low, in numbers, the number of internet users in India (150 million) is second only to China (575 million) and the United States (275 million), and the numbers are growing radically.

The Indian government is trying to address these needs though the National Knowledge Network (NKN). In January, the National Innovation Council launched the National Knowledge Network (NKN) with a lecture series held at the Delhi University. This is the largest online education network in the country, with 955 institutions across India already connected to it to share their educational content online, using a high bandwidth network. It aims to connect nearly 1500 institutions in the future. The National Knowledge Network gives a bandwidth of 1,000 MB to every single university in India. It is up to the universities to decide whether they should put it to full use. Through the national knowledge network, the material in one university can be used by students in any other Indian university.

The Delhi University Vice Chancellor Dinesh Singh said that in the future, whether the students might get credits for the online courses they take will depend on the university. “In Delhi University, this will be done on a case by case basis. If you come with a structured proposal, the Delhi University will definitely give credit though I cannot predict a time frame.” he said.

Open online courses are not new in India. In 2011, the Indian government had launched The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), which made the lectures at 7 IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and IISc (Indian Institute of Science) Bangalore available online. In future, the other IITs and NITs (National Institutes of Technology) too are expected to be part of NPTEL, India’s largest technical knowledge dissemination programme.

In India, there are now many private players too in the online education sector. Edukart, an online education portal, for instance, has bachelor and master courses with degrees awarded by Mahatma Gandhi University, Meghalaya, and certificate courses with degrees issued by various industry bodies. “Online education is a better option for many students who prefer to work while studying because it is more flexible and affordable. We have come across students from every strata of the society though most students are in the 17-35 age range.” Ishan Gupta, the CEO of Edukart said.

Substantive advance, however, are likely to come not from within the country, or from traditional universities and outlets because it is not just the traditional universities which make books and lectures available online. The Internet Archive, a non-profit internet library founded in 1996 makes a large number of texts, audios and images available to scholars and the general public in digital format. The Internet archive has more than 30,00,000 free e-books.

The Khan Academy, a donor-supported not-for-profit founded in 2008, for instance, has over 4,000 free videos for students on a wide variety of subjects ranging from computer science to Arts history for school students. The Khan academy is immensely popular. The YouTube channel of the Khan Academy has more than 5,30,000 subscribers. The donors of Khan Academy include Google and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy is of Indian and Bangladeshi origins, and has multiple degrees from MIT and Harvard. But, he thinks that most Harvard Graduates would refuse if they are offered their fee back, on the condition that they are supposed to never mention their credentials anywhere.

Michael Spence, an American economist who won the Nobel Prize in 2001 for his work on information asymmetry had argued that though the intrinsic value of formal education is little, students will profit from attending college because employers value college degrees. Employers value college degrees because a formal degree signals a student’s intelligence, conscientiousness and conformity. Many believe that students who learn online are likely to be lacking in these traits.

But, Tyler Cowen, an economist dubbed as “America’s Hottest Economist” by Bloomberg Businessweek, thinks that the students of Khan Academy and other online universities are far superior to typical students. “I do not see their low conformity as a problem. Those are conscientious learners who are not quite satisfied with more traditional approaches. Students in India might get transfer credits from online universities abroad.” Cowen said.

Tyler Cowen had recently founded a free massive online open course (MOOC) platform which has a series on India. Delhi and Bangalore were among the top ten cities from which Cowen’s Marginal Revolution University’s course on development economics drew registrations. The reason is perhaps that Indian students find theoretically rigorous online material on development economics more appealing. It is almost impossible to access them through traditional routes. Cowen thinks that employers are already valuing online education and that it will have more acceptability when there are credits attached to it. He thinks that in the future, a hybrid model of education is more likely than students completely relying on online material.

Apart from online universities and private portals, there are internet libraries which make even recent works accessible. Bookfi.org, an internet library has 1,232,446 books available for free download, as of now. The Online library of Liberty run by Liberty Fund, a private, educational foundation has 1367 classics on economics, history, law, literature, philosophy, political theory, religion, which at times, go back more than four thousand years. The Mises Institute, a US think-tank in has made more than 600 e-books, videos and thousands of papers and articles accessible to students and scholars. It is many such non-tradition and relatively small portals that made countless otherwise inaccessible books in humanities presently within the reach of Indian students.

However, some believe that it is difficult to separate out the good from bad over the internet. Anyone can create a website and put content online. There is too much misinformation. There are many fraudsters who sell worthless degrees online. But, the DU VC Dinesh Singh said that such apprehensions are baseless. “Many otherwise wise, respectable, and sane people have reservations about online education. They think that there are quality issues. True enough. But, there are quality issues everywhere. If I put material on the web today, I can improve tomorrow. This process of improvement can go indefinitely.” he said.

Another strong criticism against online education is that the internet can never replace face to face interaction between students and the teacher and among students themselves. Tom Palmer, the Director of the educational arm of Cato Institute, one of the most influential think-tanks in the world thinks that it is difficult to learn many subjects over the internet. “There are many mathematicians who are self-taught. But, it is an invalid inference to say that teachers are not important. You have to distinguish pure mathematicians from people who learn mathematics to be an engineer. The internet cannot replace face to face interaction. It is also very taxing on the professor to reply to students on the internet.” Dr. Palmer said.

But, Bryan Caplan, a professor at George Mason University says that some internet forums offer more meaningful interaction than even elite universities. When Bryan Caplan was studying at University of California, Berkeley, he had a really difficult time finding students interested in discussing ideas though it was one of the most reputed elite public universities in the world. Caplan felt that even his professors at Princeton were quite narrow in their outlook, despite their high IQ’s. Caplan is presently working on a book, “The Case against Education“.

Caplan however thinks that the online education is very unlikely to replace traditional universities. “The first students to try online education will be the ones who are low in conformity, and that will affect how employers perceive online education. I am far from sure that online education will thrive in countries like India. But, when there is no well-established education system and when there is a high share of qualified yet uncredentialed workers, the stigma attached to unconventional degrees will be much lower,” he said. Caplan thinks that because of the stigma attached to not attending a college, students who study online instead of going to a brick-and-mortar university are likely to be very eccentric. Employers are likely to shun them because they also might have authority issues when they join the workforce.

Dinesh Singh, however, thinks that the low conformity of such students is an asset, and not a liability. “There is nothing wrong with a person who studies online. If you have a prejudice, you will look at someone and think that he is strange. If you do not have a prejudice, he can do anything and you will not think that he is strange. Everyone has their own quirks, and we should mind that at all.” Dinesh Singh said.

Many point out that what we call “the college experience” is a reality today only for a rare minority of students. Dinesh Singh thinks that with the low level of interaction in Universities today, the internet would not diminish the returns to students much either. “I had some good teachers and some very bad teachers. People say that the professor on the internet will never be like my Guru. But, how many such Gurus have we ever had? On the web, you can choose your professors.” Dinesh Singh said. “If the internet is going to replace Universities, perhaps books and VCR would have done it long ago. But, all of them had many problems, like no interactivity. With the internet there is more interactivity, and this model has a better chance of success.” He said.

In 2012, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had collaborated to launch, EdX, a not-for-profit enterprise that offers many classes of Universities like Harvard, MIT and Berkeley for free online. Other prestigious universities are soon likely to join. EdX also looks into how technology and the internet can transform learning in the future. But, even before the advent of such MOOC platforms of elite universities, there were several millions of online students across the world.

India’s online educational market itself is estimated to be over twenty billion US dollars and is growing very fast. Some expect it to double in the next five years.

Source: Business Standard (Online Edition), March 21, 2013

Now, classroom content of IITs can be accessed by MIT students

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have agreed to a proposal by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to join their OpenCourseWare community. This move will enable MIT students to access classroom content of the IITs online at a click of the mouse.

However, this is not the only way by which the IITs are opening their doors to the world; lectures from IIT classrooms will soon be available on Apple’s multi-media platform iTunes. YouTube already has a separate channel for IIT courses, which, as of December 2011, had 6.36 million viewers.

When MIT had first invited the IITs to join the OpenCourseWare community in 2007, the IITs felt their initiatives were too young to join the world of open source learning. But four years on, the IITs feel that they have caught up with the other members of the open source community, who had started making their course material public a long time ago.

“We have finally decided to join the Open Education Resource Consortium. This move will help us share open source tools. It’s an academic enhancement exercise,” said Mangala Sunder Krishnan, NPTEL Coordinator from IIT-Madras. Several other universities like Yale, Peking, Harvard Law School, Notre Dame, Tufts, UC Irvine and Utah State have allowed MIT to host links to their courseware. The Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B), is also a member of MIT’s OpenCourseWare.

The IITs have their own initiative on similar lines, the National Programme for Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), which seven of the old IITs and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) had jointly launched. The NPTEL has over a thousand courses in technology and the humanities. But there is an elementary difference between the efforts put in by the American universities into open courses and the NPTEL. While the former is an enriching exercise, not completely substituting class work, the NPTEL encompasses all topics in every course, from their introduction to the end, allowing students to sit at home and study.

More than 500 Indian engineering colleges have been given the NPTEL content, and students can access it through the college intranet. The number of visitors on the NPTEL website has also increased from over 937,000 in 2008 to 4.43 million in December 2011.

Source: The Times of India, January 2, 2012

Soon, virtual varsity to hand out degrees: Online initiative started by IITs & IISc

It’s amongst the most popular educational programmes on the internet, registering more than four million hits across 17 countries, and now poised to turn into a virtual university. The online initiative started by the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to enhance engineering education through virtual classrooms will soon be expanded by adding more courses, even physical infrastructure, and by granting degrees and diplomas.

The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), which got under way in 2003 with web and video content to support engineering students nationwide, will next year see increase in number of disciplines taught from five to 20, and the number of virtual courses offered will go up from 260 to 1000. With fresh approvals from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), the project coordinators soon plan to offer the equivalent of a degree or a diploma to students enrolled in the virtual university.

“Currently we offer 135 video courses and 125 web courses. By the time we launch the Open Virtual University in 2012, we will have around 1000 courses in both undergraduate and postgraduate,” said Usha Nagarajan, Principal Project Officer of NPTEL. Unlike Phase I which offered only undergraduate courses, Phase II will see postgraduate courses being offered in five out of the 20 disciplines.

NPTEL, conceived in 1999 to support technical education in underdeveloped areas, has grown rapidly in popularity. The programme, which includes recordings of lectures by IIT faculty, has a reach that spreads across the north east and central India to institutions in the deep south. IIT Madras Director M.S. Ananth recalled a conversation with a Nagaland university Vice-chancellor, who spoke of how NPTEL had kept academic activity on his campus from being derailed during a staff strike. “What my profs took 15 lectures to teach, you teach in three, was what he said,” Ananth told an alumni gathering recently.

Private engineering colleges with inexperienced staff have been the biggest beneficiaries of the NPTEL programme. The only requirement on their part is to ensure broadband connectivity to each teacher to access the online content. “After its introduction last year, the teaching staff at my college used it to the maximum and the students are now getting its benefit. There is a standing instruction for teachers here to spend at least two hours a day to learn the online courses of NPTEL,” said Dr. S. Subrahmaniyan, Principal of Coimbatore’s Sri Krishna Institute of Engineering and Technology. The college is planning to ensure access for all its engineering students the next academic year onwards.

The IITs are currently in the process of identifying 15 college clusters across India where lab facilities could also be provided to supplement the Virtual University. To ensure that students getting online lessons are not denied practical knowledge, colleges equipped with large labs will be identified. Most colleges do not use their labs in the summer months. Hence, students who are part of the open virtual university will be encouraged to use these labs.

Source: The Times of India, December 24, 2010