New Delhi :

HRD minister MM Pallam Raju on Friday launched the Massive Open Online Courses of IIT-Madras that comprises distance education courses for a large number of participants through internet, video, text material, problem sets and will also provide an interactive platform for students and teachers.

Over four million engineering students can look forward to quality online distance education material rolled out by IITs in association with partners such as Nasscom and Google.

The “unique” part of the entire initiative is that students can get the chance to learn from the best professors. It’s aim is to provide IT industry-ready and job-ready courses to the students and emphasis has been given on foundation skills in IT and engineering proficiency programme, professors associated with the programme said, addding over four million students would be benefitted from it. One has to visit onlinecourses.nptel.ac.in and sign up for the programme that are of 10 weeks duration and the first offering has been prepared by IIT Madras.

“I hope that the expansion of the programme does not lead to deterioration of the quality of the content,” Raju said. Online courses will begin on March 3.

IIT Bombay has also entered into an agreement with Edx and will be launching the first MOOCs course in July this year. The online courses will be followed by an in-person protracted exam that will be held on the lines of GATE in various centres across the country. The scorecard from the certification exam and a course completion certificate will be issued to all the successful candidates.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> Education> News / TNN / March 01dt, 2014