IIT Madras has taken up the initiative to make its high-quality courses in computer science available to everyone. The faculty from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering has built a portal containing the core courses that can be accessed by educational institutions, students and others who are interested. The objective of the initiative is to fulfil the vision of Prof. V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, who envisions to make high-quality education accessible to rural India.
The core computer science courses that are available on the portal — http://nsm.iitm.ac.in/cse/ are on programming, data structures, computer organisation and algorithms. Also, each course has YouTube recordings of live lectures taught to the students at IIT Madras during the pandemic.
Speaking about this initiative, Prof. C. Chandra Sekhar, Head, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), IIT Madras, said, “The recordings of live lectures for CSE core courses at the undergraduate level and the graduate level, by the faculty of the department are expected to be helpful to the students in engineering colleges to learn the underlying concepts and principles of the subjects of these courses in the right manner.” He adds, “It will also be beneficial to the teachers in engineering colleges to get to know how to effectively teach the important and fundamental subjects in computer science and engineering and how to equip the students with the problem-solving skills. It is hoped that the portal will be used to improve the quality of teaching and learning the CSE core subjects in engineering colleges in India.”
Computer science is one of the most promising engineering disciplines in India, especially in the IITs, and interests the students. Although a large proportion of students apply for this stream in IITs, there are only a limited number of seats available in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
