The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) has launched a slew of new courses on its online SWAYAM portal for learning. The courses which range from electric vehicles and renewable energy to Internet of things, business and sustainable development will be taught by the faculty of IISc and the IITs.
The courses will be a part of the July-December semester, and admissions for the same have already commenced on the website. The last date for enrollment is August 2.
According to Prof Vignesh Muthuvijayan, Coordinator of NPTEL. IIT Madras, the programme has tied up with 4000 educational institutions across the country, spanning across the fields of engineering, science, commerce, arts, and management. Some of the more popular courses have been Data Science for Engineers, courses on programming languages such as Python and C++, and soft skills.
The programme has been providing free courses to learners across the country since 2003. A joint venture between IISc Bengaluru and IITs Kanpur, Roorkee, Kharagpur, Madras, Bombay, Guwahati and Delhi, it has reportedly recorded 1.4 crore enrollments for its courses to date. People from all backgrounds and ages can access any of the courses, and get themselves certified too, through the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) format, which are basically video lectures with integrated tests, accessible without restrictions.
The programme's most useful aspect, (apart from the all-access feature, perhaps) is the domain certification which allows learners to gain expertise in one of the 51 domains across 12 disciplines.
