AICTE wants all engineering college to follow IIT course

Engineering institutes in the country will now be able to access course materials designed by the Indian Institutes of Technology free of cost. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) is planning to make it mandatory for engineering institutes in the country to use basic sciences and engineering courses which IITs have introduced on websites like Google and YouTube.This will be done under the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), a joint venture by the seven IITs — Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Madras, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Roorkee — and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.At present over 200 engineering institutes across the country are using the complete content that IITs provide free of cost. NPTEL, an endeavour by IITs, was launched around three-four years ago to enhance the quality of engineering education in the country by developing curriculum-based video and web courses. NPTEL was started along the lines of Open Courseware by MIT in the US. The IITs have been nominated as the one of the best institutions in providing free university courses.IITs which are implementing the second phase of the project, plan to introduce around 950 courses in basic sciences and engineering, in the next two years on NPTEL. The Ministry for Human Resources and Development (MHRD) has recently released a grant of Rs 50 crore for the second phase. Total budget for second phase is Rs 96 crore.NPTEL in the first phase of the project, had developed around 250 courses. All of these are available online for a duration of 4,500 hours, free of charge. IIT-Madras which officially handles the venture, distributes web contents free of charge to the government-funded institutes.NPTEL is planning to have text of the video (of one hour) in the second phase. Faculty members from the new IITs will also develop course materials for NPTEL. Universities, research labs and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research are also part of the programme.