NPTEL Phase II Frequently or Infrequently asked questions and answers

1. What is the purpose of NPTEL?
   The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning is a project funded by our parent ministry to provide alternatives to learning engineering and science. In Phase I, based on a curriculum suitable for many engineering students and teachers in India at the UG level in five disciplines (civil, cse, electrical, electronics, mechanical) and common core science and humanities, approximately 120 courses in the web based format and approximately 120 courses of video lectures (40 one-hour lectures per course) were developed.
2. Are these courses actually watched by anyone?
   I will upload the statistics. You can make your own judgement.
3. Can private colleges mirror these courses?
   Yes, for a small fee.
4. Where can I find these courses, and other ancillary material?
   Visit IITM site or visit the Youtube site You will find lots of questions about NPTel answered by visiting the IITM site, so I will stop saying more about NPTEL per se.

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5. So what's next?
   In phase II, additional disciplines, and PG courses are going to be developed. Since CSE was covered in phase I, we are focusing on PG courses now.
6. Which courses are going to be developed, and who will decide the syllabus?
   A meeting of discipline coordinators across the NPTEL partners was held on June 3-4 to decide this. A list of possible courses appears here. The syllabus will be decided by the names listed in the document. Kindly go through this, because this list might became final "very soon now".
   That said, the general guideline is that the course should be useful to a large number of engg students in the country. Make that "large number of engg students who do not have teachers or good teachers for the course that is already there in the curriculum as proposed by AICTE, Anna Univ, etc. for those students to get a degree". Consider the course "Percolation Computing". Would you consider that course to be a stable course in the country? How long has it been there in IIT? Is it there because one or two researchers need this course, or is it a national or international need? These kinds of questions are hard to ask, and of course, hard to answer. A biased view does not help.
7. Are there assignments in these courses? What is the course instructor's responsibility (official) as far as answering queries etc. from students who might view the course later on? Can I opt to say that I will not commit to answering any such queries, except when they are from my class in IITB?

Courses are left to the instructor. So if you choose to have assignments, then so be it. NPTEL does not require you to answer questions from the students, although the web site has forums.
8. Is there an honorarium? How much? What are the expectations?
   Yes.
9. Suppose I am offering course CSXXX through CDEEP. Can this be used for NPTEL? In other words, can I use the same time (and resources) to do a recording for CDEEP and NPTEL simultaneously?

   It was decided by Director IIT Bombay that the courses for NPTEL-II have to developed separately as per the guidelines of NPTEL. So even if a course has been recorded for some other project or activity, it has to be redone for NPTEL II.

10. What are the time lines for recording these courses? Can I commit now to record after a year or a year and a half?
    As long as you finish positively by June 2011, the answer to your question is yes. in other words the (a) intent to offer deadline and (b) keeping your word deadline is important. anything else is up to you.
    Keep in mind that, just like "finishing" a piece of work, and then writing a research paper sometimes take time. Specifically, a course may be delivered by you, but you need to review it to make sure that you have not inadvertently made some mistake, or wanted to add something based on current technology trends. You may want your students to review the course. You may want to wear a different shirt for a particular lecture:) So finished means finished -- end of alpha, beta 1, release candidate etc
11. For web courses, is there any support -- for example, TAs, project staff.
    You can hire project staff. Source of funding will come from NPTEL, but please keep them in the loop.
12. For web courses, are there any standard templates to use? Is it compulsory to use these?
    Yes.
13. Can a professor offer both video and web courses on the same topic (and thus getting it counted as two courses)?
    Yes.
14. The workshop that is planned for teachers -- how long is that?
    It's upto you to decide as course instructor.
15. For video - what is the venue for the course? Can the timings be adjusted to normal lecture timings of the IIT Bombay timetable? If IITB students also attend the NPTEL video course, is there a capacity limit?
    Venue of the course is Math dept. The idea is to make a separate recording and not link it to the same course.
16. For video -- if a course is offered for live transmission in Rekhi building (for example), can that course be used (with proper modifications) for NPTEL.
    No. NPTEL will have its separate recordings.