NPTEL - Construction of 3 state-of- the-art studios at IIT Madras

Description

About the Cause

NPTEL (National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning), is a joint venture of the IITs and IISc, funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) Government of India, and was launched in 2003. The primary objective was to provide e-learning through free online web and video courses. Today, NPTEL offers MOOCs of 4/8/12 weeks duration which are free for enrolment. USP of the NPTEL certification process which lends credibility is the final proctored certification exam for which the candidate has to appear in-person at designated centres available in more than 100+ cities across India. All the candidates who successfully complete the examination will get a certificate from NPTEL with the logo of the institute whose faculty offered the course.

NPTEL online certification is one of the largest MOOCs program in India today and the statistics shown below are indicative of the same.

Number of total courses created: 1400+
Number of website views: 700 million+
Number of enrollments for certification courses: 3.5 million+
Number of certification courses offered between 2014-2017: 514 (ongoing: 226)

Requirement of studios:

NPTEL office used to be housed in the third floor of ICSR building along with a 100 seater gallery type studio and a 50 seater studio. A massive fire in April 2017 razed to the ground the office as well as the studios.

In the current phase of certification courses, about 100 new courses are being created every semester and IIT Madras contributes about 15-20 in this. And many faculty members prefer to record the lecture as they teach a semester class within IIT, which lends a natural feel and a class atmosphere to the recordings. This has also been widely appreciated by the audience viewing the same. Hence the requirement for good quality studios with state of the art equipment that can accommodate between 50-100 students is urgent and immediate, if we are to manage creation and offering of new courses at this pace.

These can also be used for other initiatives such as GIAN and online M.Tech courses if required.

* 1982 Batch contributed Rs. 11.3L for NPTEL.

The proposed plan is as follows:

3 rooms in Class Room Complex (CRC) second floor have been approved by Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi for construction of studios. The capacity of each will be:
Studio 1: 120
Studio 2: 120
Studio 3: 10

Along with an independent control room for each.

How the Money will be used

For construction of the studios which includes acoustics, interiors, equipment which costs Rs.4Cr