The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M), which recently introduced engineering courses on Google and YouTube, is set to get up to INR 50 lakh as an academic grant from Google to fund its National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). The US-headquartered search giant is helping IIT-M develop a text-based search engine to index its video courses. The company will provide the grant to IIT-M in a few months. NPTEL plans to enhance the quality of engineering education in the country by developing curriculum-based video and web courses. Seven IITs and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, have collaborated to carry out the venture. The IITs have been nominated as the fourth-best institutions in providing free university courses. 'NPTEL was started with the idea of reaching people and teaching them by the means they possess. We do provide content to government colleges, government aided colleges and private universities too,' said Mangala Sunder Krishnan, National Web Courses Coordinator, IIT-Madras. NPTEL in the first phase of the project, has developed around 250 courses. All of these are available online for a duration of 4,500 hours, free of charge.
The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has sponsored the project with INR 20 crore. In the second phase, the institute has asked for INR 50 crore from the MHRD. The institute will double the of number of courses and will also conduct 200 workshops for the faculty involved to train themselves. The second phase will be complete in three years.
